If you have
long-time, successful employees, at some point along the way you will need them
to train coworkers on the job.
Experienced workers transfer knowledge to ramp up new employees, to cross-train
existing employees who are changing roles, and to prepare for their own
departures when they retire. This
training must include more than the steps involved in doing the work. It has to incorporate the "secret sauce" that
makes the trains run on time. Wisdom.
Managers often
lament that it's too hard for their veteran employees to share with others the wisdom
they've accumulated. This type of tacit knowledge is too amorphous and too
dependent on years of experience to be teachable. After all, how can a veteran project manager
say what he's looking for as he "takes care" of his team or a long-serving
nurse explain how she just "knows" when a patient is in trouble? How can the research scientist describe 35
years of testing methodology or the maintenance technician describe how he can
"hear" a problem deep in the bowels of the plant? How can anyone impart all those years of
trial-and-error experience to someone else?
The answer is that it might not be easy--but we need to do better than simply
wringing our hands and admitting defeat.
I believe that
transferring tacit knowledge is a problem that can be solved, to a large enough extent, with just a
little effort. Here's my thesis:
You
can't replace the wisdom gathered over many years, but you can reduce the
amount of time it takes someone to begin acting
wisely.
Nowhere is the
need to transfer tacit knowledge more evident than in companies that must begin
replacing an aging work force. In some
industries, 35 to 50 percent of workers will be eligible to retire in the next 10
years. Even with a faltering economy
slowing the pace of their departure, this group will not be able to work
forever. And the generation replacing
them is smaller and more mobile that their elders--a fact that makes a quick
ramp to productivity even more important.
The prospect of
replacing so many long-time employees may be too overwhelming for some
organizations, or perhaps they believe the issue will work itself out. That could be why they don't yet have a
plan. The truth is that, like most
problems, this one can be broken down into realistic tasks, measurable goals,
and practical solutions.
Beth McCoy, team leader of the Chemical Technology Team
at the U.S. Army's Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center, is
a great example of a manager who is tackling this challenge head on. About
three years ago, she began
implementing a knowledge transfer toolset called Peer Mentoring. She proved that veteran scientists could
break their jobs down into manageable chunks, teach specific skills and the
associated wisdom with deference to generational and individual learning
styles, test to ensure understanding, and give feedback on the resulting
work.
Beth's experience shows that
generations can be aligned in this process and that the results are very
satisfying for both the mentor and the apprentice. Job satisfaction and productivity are up, and
attrition of younger workers is down.
Plus, the team's risk of not being able to do its important work has
been dramatically reduced because there is a known complement of skills
prepared and ready for the future.
Beth and I will be co-presenting at APQC's knowledge management conference next month. In addition to sharing Beth's story, we'll lay out specific steps that can be used to teach wisdom. I hope you'll be able to join us.
Steve Trautman is the creator of the Peer Mentoring Workshop
and the author of Teach What You
Know: A Practical Leader's Guide to Knowledge Transfer.
He will be among the presenters at APQC's upcoming knowledge management conference, The Knowledge Transfer Revolution: New Paradigms, New Payoffs, in conjunction with Elizabeth McCoy of the U.S. Army's Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center.
You can learn more about the conference by clicking here.
I am looking forward to Mr. Trautman's presentation at the annual APQC meeting in Houston. I certainly believe that wisdom *can* be taught. Gary Klein has written about this extensively and I particularly recommend his book "Inuition at Work" (retitled for the paperback edition as "The Power of Intuition"). Klein defines intuition as "the way we translate our experience into action" and notes that it is easy to define, but a difficult skill to build in practice.
The book has two entire chapters devoted to knowledge transfer and building wisdom: Chapter 8 How to Size Up Situations and Chapter 13 Coaching Others to Develop Strong Intuitions.
The book has three threads: practical, theoretical, and experiential
a) One thread of the book is aimed at practicality (tools) - an intuition skills training program consisting of methods for developing, applying, and safeguarding intuitions. The program is based on the muscular premise of intuition that you can speed up your learning curve.
b) The second thread is theoretical, showing how intuition is the translation of experience to action
c) The third thread is the use of exercises and decision games to help you experience the different aspects of intuitive decision-making.
d) The rationale for the tools presented in Chapter 3 is that we can treat intuitive decision making as we would any important skill that we wish to train: we clarify the training objectives (the decision requirements), we provide appropriate practice (the decision games), and we ensure feedback (the decision making critique).
Using the concept of muscular intuition, the characteristics of the intuitive decision maker are:
a) Performance is markedly better than we would expect by chance
b) Having a good sense of what is going to happen next
b)(Note: this book can be used to tune your ability to learn, particularly from those with expertise)
c) Can explain how the current reality has developed
d) Are aware of their fallibility. If you question their interpretation or forecast, they can come up with a different one.
e) Confident, particularly in the face of time pressure and uncertainty. They can anticipate problems in time to avoid or defuse them, and relish the challenge when the plans fall apart because it is an opportunity to find new solutions.
f) They know how to work around unexpected events when they happen. They know the routines, and they also know the limits of those routines so they are not trapped by them.
g) Continually trying to improve. They know they are not perfect. If you ask them about mistakes, they can tell you about recent ones because they have been mulling them over to figure out what they should have done better.
I also recommend the practice described by Peter Block in his Harvard Business Review article "Managing Oneself" that he calls feedback analysis. Writing down what you expect to happen when you make a key decision and comparing the actual results with your expectationsnine or twelve months later.