Wonky Definition
(btw – it’s actually a great paper imnsho. Just a little hard to read if you’re leading a 100 person organization who just want to get things done faster)
Here’s a quote from another (great) article:
“The complexity of knowledge has also been regarded as a major impediment to the success of knowledge transfer. Knowledge complexity refers to the number of interdependent routines, individuals, technologies and resources linked to a particular knowledge (Gosain, 2007). Narteh (2008) contended that complex knowledge is likely to involve many interdependent components and may be difficult to be communicated between the source and the recipient. Causal ambiguity is another inhibitor of knowledge transfer success.”
Sounds Great! What exactly does that mean?
Lol. The hard part of reading these articles is that at the end of the article you feel pretty smart (because you made it through an article that uses the word praxis) but you don’t know how to apply it to your own organization. It’s just so wonky! Even worse, even if you did know generally wth they were talking about, it’s still confusing to which technology can you rely to help with that practice.
Okay. Let’s reboot. What is Knowledge Transfer for the rest of us? And how do you do it? Maybe even, why should you do it? I mean, isn’t two people conversing over a coffee knowledge transfer?
Well what is knowledge?
I. Stuff that’s written down and available easily at your finger tips
II. Stuff that’s written down but not necessarily on easy tap
III. Stuff that’s not written down
IV. Stuff that really isn’t even written-down-able…
I. Stuff that’s written down and available easily at your finger tips
The easiest type of knowledge to transfer is type I. This is canonical “look here before you do anything else” type information. In the modern age, it’s been indexed and always available at your finger tips. All companies pretend they have this. Very few companies actually have this…
Remember the 300+ pages of manuals and procedures that you used hand off to a new employee on day 1 because you weren’t really sure what to assign him. This new employee would dutifully pretend to read everything. I emphasis pretend because even if he’s actually reading it, without context, it’s going in one eye and out the…err… well they’re not really absorbing it. Come on, admit it. You used to do that also.
That’s because it actually secretly type II information pretending to be canonical…
II. Stuff that’s written down but not necessarily on easy tap
Next on the hierarchy is type 2. So it’s written down, but not really available. What does that mean? Well this is stuff like email threads, chat logs, random bits of notes, basically it’s been written down, but not in any coherent way. This maybe even formal documents stuck in random folders…. or mixed in with other completely obsolete documents.
Paradoxically, employees can absorb more from this type of knowledge sometimes because there’s context around the nuggets… but there’s just so darn much of it! And it’s hard to get to! Familiar situation? new hire, they ask a question, you exclaim good question! then forward him a dozen or so email threads and random snippets of chats. You also ask your coworkers to do the same.
III. Stuff that’s not written down
Next we have the type 3. This is the type of knowledge that develops when the new hire feels like he’s wasted enough time going through the (pretend) type 1 and 2 knowledge and gets down to start working. It’s the stuff they’ll figure out and promptly not document 
Usually when somebody complains about a lack a documentation, an initiative gets started to change type 3 knowledge into type 2 and 1.
IV. Stuff that really isn’t even written-down-able…
Finally, we have type 4 knowledge. This is stuff where you wouldn’t really even know where to begin if somebody asked you to document it. Examples of this type of information is, who’s the go-to-g(al)(uy) in the organization that seems to know everything. What rules can you break a bit to get things done. Where’s the best after hours spot to hang out to get yourself acquainted with everybody in the organization. Where is the watercooler, literal and metaphorical? I guess you *could* write it down, but how do you document that fact that Bob is an Ass and you should avoid asking him for anything without starting a major (minor?) HR incident?
The transfer of this type of knowledge is usually done by what’s called “onboarding”. Onboarding is a type of torture where the onboarder desperately tries to put themselves into the perspective of a new hire and the new hire pretends to listen intently and scribble down notes that he’ll never read again. The most useful part of this type of knowledge transfer are those rare genuine moments when the good stuff is inadvertently shared: “oh that was Bob you just met. He’s an ass. But let’s keep that between you and I okay? Even though he’s program manager for XYZ project, don’t go to him. He’ll just stonewall you. Go see Alice. She’s the go to girl for XYZ.”
Most of the time, the onboarder just gives a whole much of type I and II knowledge to the person and tells them to contact them if they need anything. Then they go away and act busy.
Okay, know that we have a dirty working model to what knowledge is, how do we transfer it?
Well, how do we “transfer” it and also make sure that it actually gets transferred. Especially in the case of the lower levels of knowledge.
A well the first thing to realize that the act of transferring knowledge is a Social activity. Social? In the Bidness? That sounds like Enterprise 2.0! In the next few posts, I’ll cover each type of knowledge in detail and recommend practices and tools you can use. I’ll also try not to pimp our own product (MindQuilt – Try it! It’s teh awesome!) too much.
