Small and medium-sized enterprises depend on the expertise and skills of their employees. However, particularly valuable specialist knowledge and skills are often concentrated in just a few people within the company—if one of these experts leaves, this can quickly lead to a significant loss of know-how.
Employee knowledge in companies can be divided into two categories: implicit and explicit. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that is available in explicit form—for example, as notes, instructions, or documentation. As a result, this information can be transferred to new employees in the company quite easily. Unfortunately, in most cases, only about 20 percent of the knowledge relevant to the company is available in explicit form. That is the challenge!
The remaining 80 percent of existing expertise consists of implicit knowledge. Influenced by personal experience and associated emotions, this is the more relevant form of information—but we only find it stored directly in the minds of employees. Although they intuitively access this wealth of knowledge in their everyday work, it can generally only be described superficially, if at all. This makes it difficult for colleagues to access.
Some examples:
Pumping up a bicycle tire is a simple example of explicit knowledge. We can easily illustrate this process in documentation or instructions. In contrast, you will not find detailed documentation on how to learn to ride a bicycle. This knowledge only comes from personal experience.
I have done this myself: at my previous employer, I had to train my successor. The problem was that I knew the relevant subject areas very well and intuitively made the right decisions. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to convey the relevant knowledge. In return, my successor was just as unable to assess the value of the implicit information stored in my head as I was. The result? When I left the company, I took knowledge that was relevant to the organization with me.
The task of a leader: Making implicit knowledge explicit
The good news, however, is that implicit knowledge can be explicitly mapped. That much is clear. This process can be carried out using documentation or demonstrations, for example. That is also clear. What remains unclear is "how?" There are various methods that can help employees reflect on their own work and become aware of their implicit knowledge.
To return to my personal example: Today, I understand that we did many things right in the old company. Every employee shared their knowledge in a company-wide network—not unlike Wikipedia. This allowed us to transform implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge. As a result, employees not only improved and worked more confidently in their field, but they were also able to take on new tasks with almost no problems. Checklists, documentation, and instructions from their colleagues helped them do this.
The problem with an internal Wikipedia, however, is that experience cannot always be explicitly recorded. My expertise, for example, lies in marketing. Here, much is based on the principle of "trial and error." In most cases, it is simply not possible to explicitly record the processes involved.
One possible solution
My colleague Mr. Hummel taught me an exciting way to pass on experience here at the Grundl Leadership Institute. If I package the relevant information in a story—in marketing, this is also called storytelling—my counterpart can remember the experience by referring back to the story.
Protecting implicit employee knowledge is fundamental to the success of a company. Accordingly, it is very important to make implicit knowledge visible and explicit—so that it is freely accessible and can be used by as many employees as possible.
Yours, Marcel Roll
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