bp oil spill capture

Stop the brain drain

Copyright (c) 2008 Success Performance Solutions

The alarm was ringing in the ears senior management and business owners recently become stronger and more painful as they may change their occupational pensions and the theft of his organization "Gray matter". It became clear that companies have not done a very good job of documenting and preserving the knowledge of his key personnel and experts in the field.

Each organization can learn from British Petroleum.

In February 2006, a small leak in a hole quarter inch in the pipeline from Prudhoe Bay was discovered. In August 2006, oil spill caused the closure of most large oil company in the United States. During the night, 8% of national oil production has been closed and hundreds of thousands of oil spilled.

A congressional investigation followed and it was discovered that senior corrosion engineer BP retirement a few years earlier. The work had been vacant for over a year creating a major gap in knowledge. This post, and others, hindered BP ability to maintain an overview strategic activities to prevent corrosion.

It is clear that BP has been withheld or knowledge of its superior corrosion engineer. But BP is not unique. Unfortunately, knowledge management and lack of planning to asphyxia many talented organizations the ability to perform its growth plans. Ask yourself: who makes the acquaintance of my organization that could prevent the hole "quarter inch" becomes a disaster that results catastrophic loss of customers, suppliers, employees and most importantly – confidence.

Stop the brain drain.

To start capturing and transfer of knowledge in your organization, where to start? I offer the following steps.

Identify your subject matter experts and experts super. If any of these experts were to leave his organization in the morning and at the door offered to "get rid of their brain, with your username and password on your computer, and the knowledge would leave behind? What questions do you ask if you have a chance at getting what you need to know?

Be careful what you ask. One corollary of this brain dump is: what to do with this lot of knowledge left behind? As clean your cabinets and cupboards, all the information you find may not be relevant. You will probably find that the experts are mental "Packrat." They keep everything because you never know when you might need such information. After they left, someone will have to decide what to keep, what to file, and what to trash.

Identifying the right target. If you expect that this knowledge transferred to live without the support You will find a big surprise. The receiver can not only take the "mental" boxes left at the door your file and took them to safety. The successor must have the information and integrate not only the file in your own knowledge base. Not everyone has the cognitive ability of interest or motivation to do so.

To assess the talent pool. Having identified the employees that you are capable of capturing knowledge it is essential to the assessment of cognitive abilities and potential. It is not enough to identify those employees smart and ambitious. A successful transfer of require knowledge that an employee receives (s) have the capacity to meet the highest levels of complexity, ambiguity and accountability. If you are not sure that these receptors are more important to assess their joint work on the successors.

Mentor, mentor, teacher internship. Now that you have identified experts and their successors, it is time to match. Many relationships develop naturally. others struggle. It takes time to build trust. Many experts have difficulty communicating at a level that the world understands. Some are reluctant to share their knowledge to feel its value down the organization once reveal this knowledge. The mentor may need to be trained on how which the mentor and mentee to learn. potential violations of the personality must be recognized in advance or transfer of knowledge will speak as such – talk. The same evaluations as those used to identify the talents can be used to connect the right mentor to the right of the learner.

Not like I have a plan tomorrow. Start today. You can plan your retirement, but you can not plan for illness, disability and death of key employees or those who abandon their herds to greener pastures. The transfer of knowledge in the implicit level takes years, not months or weeks.