Returning
from the funeral of a beloved--and elderly--great aunt has caused me to pause and
reflect on how time flies. I started out my life as part of the fifth "living
generation" of my family. All of a sudden, I'm second in line in a group of
living generations. As I've gone through each passing of a generation, I've
taken time to reflect on what I know about my family history. However, a lot of
my realizations have related to what I don't
know.
Looking back, my biggest regret is that I didn't ask
the questions I should have--and now it's too late. I've come to realize that I
didn't ask those questions primarily because of timing. (I'm reminded of the
Leonard Martin quote, "Timing in life is everything.") Either I didn't know how
to ask them, or what I want to know now wasn't as important to me earlier in my
life when I could have asked, or I thought someone else in my family would
know.
I think that my personal regrets are similar to
those being felt by organizations as they face the challenge of retaining
critical knowledge across the generations. It's hard to retain knowledge that
you may not even know you have or need. Many organizations don't know how to ask
the right questions, or they don't realize what's important until it's too
late. Those of us involved in this
knowledge economy have to admit that many of the jobs of the future have yet to
be acknowledged, much less documented.
APQC's definition of knowledge management is "a systematic approach to get the right knowledge to the right person at the right time so they can take action." I have worked with a number of organizations that are very focused on addressing the knowledge issues of the future by implementing approaches like peer mentoring, communities of practice, and access to experts. At APQC, we are formulating questions to deal with the challenges inherent in knowledge retention and transfer. For example:
-
What
knowledge will you need to be successful tomorrow, and how is it different from
what you have today?
- If you have identified critical knowledge, will a current community of experts that share ideas and best practices live long enough to encapsulate and transfer that knowledge?
- Does your current knowledge allow you to innovate for future customer needs?
Are you asking these same questions? What are the
other questions we should be asking? I'd
love to hear your thoughts about what we should do about the passing of time
and the passing of knowledge.
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