Page 126 -

Knowledge Capture and Codifi cation 109

Box 4.1
(continued)

Q: How did you manage to talk about this situation with the incoming PM?
A: I shared my hard-earned wisdom and gray hairs with him! (Laughing) — I told him to forget about
“ no news is good news ” — no news is unacceptable — don ’ t wait for the formal briefi ngs — keep your nose
in it at all times — talk to everyone — walk around — get a feel for the morale and ask questions — just
keep asking everyone the same question and you call the shots — get them in for a meeting the minute
you sense there that something is off. . . . ( interviewee is not in full-blown tacit mode — a number of terms
will need to be pinned down in later follow-up interviews — need to capture good memorable sounds bites such
as “ no news is disastrous news!! ” and defi ne feelings such as “ feel the morale ” and “ get a sense that something
is off ” — next in the interview template is a set of questions to assess how open the person is to new methods
of doing handovers, e.g., videotaping ).
Q: Sounds like the sorts of things that have to be learned the hard way — what is the best way of getting
the new PMs up to speed? Do you prefer to leave them some documentation or to meet with them face-
to-face? How about this new initiative of videotaping PMs and leaving the clips on the intranet? ( up to
this point in the interview, the subject was very relaxed, intent, engaged and appeared to be very comfortable;
upon hearing this question, his level of agitation increased — he leaned forward, appeared to scowl )
A: Those oddballs — listen some people have too much free time on their hands — this isn ’ t the place
for paparazzi — we are serious folks and we don ’ t need a bunch of techies pestering us — they don ’ t know
what we do — all I need is a good heart to heart to put the fear of. . . . to get my points across — that ’ s
it, that ’ s all — we don ’ t need anything fancy here. . . . ( defi nitely not open to new ways of transferring this
knowledge ).
Q: Of course the best way is to meet face to face — but do you have the time to go over everything?
You must have to refer to some documentation as the projects span so many years.
A: Well yeah — I also give them my notes and all that — they can sift through and fi nd out about all
the details — but the real stuff is what I need to say to them — and that won ’ t be shown on YouTube
any time soon!

achieve these organizational objectives, knowledge-sharing stories need to be auth-
entic, believable, and compelling. Stories need to evoke some type of response and,
above all, be concise ( Denning 2001 ) so that the moral of the story or the organizational
lesson to be learned can be easily understood, remembered, and acted upon. In other
words, organizational stories should have an impact: they should prevent similar
mistakes from being repeated, or they should promote organizational learning and
adoption of best practices stemming from the collective organizational memory.
Denning (2001) describes the power of a springboard story, knowledge that has
been captured in the form of a brief story that has the ability to create a strong impact.
He outlines a number of key elements required to use stories to encapsulate valuable
knowledge, such as:
• The explicit story should be relatively brief and just detailed enough so the audience
can understand it.