Perhaps subliminally I drew on many of the techniques I encourage others to adopt when trying to capture critical knowledge from people about to retire or relocate:<\/p>\n
- \n
- I used a timeline to look at significant milestones in his life with photos as a prompt.<\/li>\n
- We talked about books he had read that had helped shaped his thinking.<\/li>\n
- We talked about people he most admired.<\/li>\n
- We went through his ‘blue book’: a transactional history and ledger of all assets.<\/li>\n
- We sat and watched something and used that as a neutral space for a conversation.<\/li>\n
- I spent days ploughing through his archives.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A big regret is that I didn’t record any of these discussions but the stories and artefacts remain and I am now their custodian with a duty to pass them onto his great grandchildren so that they too can appreciate John’s legacy.<\/p>\n
And finally<\/h2>\n
When people leave organisations after a long period legacy is a word often cited as the justification for a knowledge capture interview. What many overlook is the step of thinking up front what is the critical knowledge they are looking to surface during the process.<\/p>\n
This mirrors many of the stories emerging from the interviews my co-author Patricia Eng is undertaking for “Navigating the Minefield: A Practical KM Companion” <\/em>book which we are aiming to publish next year. Often the driver for these initiatives has been a reorganisation, takeover or downsizing; in effect a firefighting exercise.<\/p>\n
Setting up a programme to consciously capture knowledge is expensive and time consuming: it needs a clear rationale\/driver and a set of measurements to track its efficacy and value.<\/p>\n
![\"Knowledge](\"http:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Knowledge-Capture-Event-300x188.png\")
<\/a>I am looking forward to evolving my own thinking when I am in Lisboa next month running this masterclass<\/a> with Ana Neves<\/a>. It aims to raise awareness of the importance of critical knowledge: how to identify it, how to go about capturing it and how to go about making it available for reuse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
John Corney, my Dad, died in August a month shy of his 87th birthday. Though not unexpected the timing of it was.\u00a0 I was lucky in the sense I got to say goodbye and to reflect while he was still … Continue reading
![\"Knowledge](\"http:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Knowledge-Capture-Event.png\")
<\/a>I am looking forward to evolving my own thinking when I am in Lisboa next month running