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390 Chapter 11
The overriding initial emphasis should be on knowledge capture — the creation of
concrete, tangible knowledge containers to transform tacit knowledge into explicit
knowledge. Ideally, this should be done before the departure of retirees and this should
be done on for knowledge and know-how that is of high business value to the orga-
nization. Always keep in mind that the point of the exercise is not to document
everything.
Next, given the highly collaborative nature of the knowledge work and knowledge
workers today, some form of shared virtual workspace should be put into place to
enable members to quickly access key information and easily contact key members of
their community. This would reduce some of the risks associated with the high
employee turnover expected over the next few years but only if supported by organi-
zational processes, procedures, rules, rewards, and censure that promote the existence
and use of the tools. The overriding emphasis should now be placed on an organiza-
tional culture and tools that facilitate knowledge sharing .
Finally, the task support systems should be embedded in the shared work environ-
ment in order to promote knowledge application, use, and reuse, as well as learning
or internalization of this knowledge, know-how, and know-why.
Organizations using this three-tiered approach to knowledge capture, retention,
and transfer will be in a better position to proactively stem the potential loss of
intellectual capital due to attrition of their most experienced and expert employees.
This approach was fi rst tried by Transport Canada and has subsequently become a
best practice for the Canadian government, as described further in the vignette
here.
Key Points
• Organizational learning is the process of applying knowledge from the past to
present-day work challenges. Learning organizations are those organizations that have
succeeded in implementing OL and OM.
• Organizational memory systems are containers that serve to identify, preserve, and
make available valuable lessons learned and best practices.
• Lessons learned and best practices are fl ip sides of the same coin — they represent the
accumulated results and learning from trial and error experiences that the organization
has accumulated.
• Corporate amnesia is a risk when no systematic approach has been applied in creat-
ing organizational memory systems.