Author: Jim Lundy                                 Date: December 21, 2012
Topic: Knowledge                            Research Note Number: 2012-T4

Issue: What are the technologies that will be used to harness and deliver knowhow?

With up to a third of workers in many enterprises approaching retirement, capturing their extensive job knowledge is more important than ever. Much of what they know may not be codified in any way. Some of them may have started working under apprenticeship programs before the use of modern process documentation. Moreover, their subconscious expertise – the subtle “tips and tricks” layer of hidden job skills – is so intuitive, subjective and contextual that it does not lend itself to a tech writer’s narrative.

Yet this tacit knowledge can be critically important to the next generation of workers’ own safety and productivity as well as the success of the enterprise. So how can it be captured? The best way is to get the workers to talk about – or even demonstrate – what they do, how they do it, and how they know when it’s done right, and capture that conversation on video.

This toolkit provides the steps and methodology for conducting these interviews and producing videos to be used as part of the training for incoming workers. Don’t put this off! Once these workers retire, it will be a lot harder to get the information they hold in their heads.

Contents

Introduction

Step 1: Identifying Who Has the Knowledge

Table 1: Knowledge Capture Interview Worksheet

Step 2: Setting a Capture Policy

Step 3: Planning the Interview

Step 4: Filming the Video

Table 2: Business Video Storyboard

Step 5: Publishing

Step 6: Re-Use in Training

Introduction

With up to a third of workers in many enterprises approaching retirement, capturing their extensive job knowledge is more important than ever. Much of what they know may not be codified in any way. Some of them may have started working under apprenticeship programs before the use of modern process documentation. Moreover, their subconscious expertise – the subtle “tips and tricks” layer of hidden job skills – is so intuitive, subjective and contextual that it does not lend itself to a tech writer’s narrative.

Yet this tacit knowledge can be critically important to the next generation of workers’ own safety and productivity as well as the success of the enterprise. So how can it be captured? The best way is to get the workers to talk about – or even physically demonstrate – what they do, how they do it, and what they consider the important elements of success: essentially asking, “how does it feel to do this right?”

Video capture used to be expensive and time consuming. It isn’t anymore. Capturing a person on video, just talking about their job or showing people what they do provides inestimable value to future workers for very little cost or effort.

These workers are often a silent group that gets the work done without saying much. They are what they do. With that in mind, many enterprises face some tough challenges in the future should they fail to take on this task of capturing their knowledge. This toolkit identifies the steps and methodology for conducting these interviews and producing videos to be used as part of the training for incoming workers.

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