In Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization: How to manage the unprecedented convergence of the wired, the tired, and technology in the workplace, author Ira Wolfe provides an exercise designed to encourage discussion about generational differences and commonalities.
The exercise can be conducted with a group or with a larger group divided into several smaller groups.
1. Ask each participant: What’s your middle name and why did your parents give it to you?
2. Have participants form pairs, small teams, or one large circle to discuss their answers.
3. Observations:
a. Were there any similar names of the participants shared by different age groups?
b. Were there any similar reasons given by the participants from different age groups?
c. Were there any names more associated with one of the four generations than another?
4. More questions:
a. Growing up at home, what were some of your favorite TV or radio programs?
b. As a teenager, what was your favorite musician or band and why?
c. What is one lesson your parents taught you that still sticks in your mind?
d. What was your favorite game you remember playing as a child?
e. What kind of car do you drive (or would like to drive) and why?
f. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
g. What would you like to be famous for?
h. What song makes you want to get up and dance?
i. What is a movie you have seen in the last year that you really enjoyed?
j. Who are two famous people you really admire?
k. What is an historic event that had a great impact on you?
How would you describe that impact?
This activity can be used as an icebreaker for a meeting or for a session dedicated to understanding generational differences. The questions will stimulate discussions about ways in which the generations are similar and provide insight into why there may be differences.
Showing posts with label Knowledge transfer tools and strategies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knowledge transfer tools and strategies. Show all posts
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Why should you mentor?
Mentoring is widely recognized as an extremely beneficial career development tool. Research has shown that mentored employees:
• Perform better on the job
• Advance more rapidly within the organization
• Express lower turnover intentions than their nonmentored counterparts.
• Report more job and career satisfaction
The Business Case for Mentoring
According to a mentoring study conducted by the American Productivity & Quality Center:
• Thirty-five percent of employees who do not receive regular mentoring plan to seek other employment within a year.
• Only 16% of employees with good mentors planned to leave their companies.
• More than 60% of college and graduate students listed mentoring as a criterion for selecting an employer after graduation.
• Training alone increased managerial productivity by 24%, but jumped to 88% when mentoring and coaching were combined.
The high cost of employee turnover is well known. Costs due to an employee leaving include:
• Lost knowledge, skills, contacts.
• Time/productivity and/or mistakes of fill-in staff.
• Hiring and training new person.
• Lost productivity of new employee is 12 weeks on average
• Lost productivity of departing employee during transition: when their head leaves before their body does.
• Executive time planning transition, interviewing.
• Lost training provided to departing employee.
• Perform better on the job
• Advance more rapidly within the organization
• Express lower turnover intentions than their nonmentored counterparts.
• Report more job and career satisfaction
The Business Case for Mentoring
According to a mentoring study conducted by the American Productivity & Quality Center:
• Thirty-five percent of employees who do not receive regular mentoring plan to seek other employment within a year.
• Only 16% of employees with good mentors planned to leave their companies.
• More than 60% of college and graduate students listed mentoring as a criterion for selecting an employer after graduation.
• Training alone increased managerial productivity by 24%, but jumped to 88% when mentoring and coaching were combined.
The high cost of employee turnover is well known. Costs due to an employee leaving include:
• Lost knowledge, skills, contacts.
• Time/productivity and/or mistakes of fill-in staff.
• Hiring and training new person.
• Lost productivity of new employee is 12 weeks on average
• Lost productivity of departing employee during transition: when their head leaves before their body does.
• Executive time planning transition, interviewing.
• Lost training provided to departing employee.
Types of Mentoring
Within any organization, there are at least three distinct mentoring needs.
• Onboarding
• High Potentials
• Knowledge Transfer
Onboarding is the period of time and activities required to integrate a new employee. The benefits of an effective onboarding program are:
• New employees are more productive during the onboarding period.
• New employees reach full productivity faster
• New employees choose to remain at the company
• New employees refer other candidates.
High Potentials - Identify high-potential individuals who would benefit from a formal mentoring program with the following qualifications:
• Commitment to learning
• Genuine interest in professional & personal growth
• Active listening skills
• Openness & receptiveness to receiving feedback & coaching.
• Self-management skills
• Willingness to take risks
• Desire for self-fulfillment
• Willingness to develop a sense of self & personal vision.
Knowledge Transfer
• Identify what essential knowledge is at risk.
• Identify projected retirement dates.
• Determine indispensability of employee
– Single Points of Knowledge (SPOK)
– Create a position risk matrix/factor
• Create detailed succession plans for capturing knowledge including the use of mentoring relationships when appropriate.
• Onboarding
• High Potentials
• Knowledge Transfer
Onboarding is the period of time and activities required to integrate a new employee. The benefits of an effective onboarding program are:
• New employees are more productive during the onboarding period.
• New employees reach full productivity faster
• New employees choose to remain at the company
• New employees refer other candidates.
High Potentials - Identify high-potential individuals who would benefit from a formal mentoring program with the following qualifications:
• Commitment to learning
• Genuine interest in professional & personal growth
• Active listening skills
• Openness & receptiveness to receiving feedback & coaching.
• Self-management skills
• Willingness to take risks
• Desire for self-fulfillment
• Willingness to develop a sense of self & personal vision.
Knowledge Transfer
• Identify what essential knowledge is at risk.
• Identify projected retirement dates.
• Determine indispensability of employee
– Single Points of Knowledge (SPOK)
– Create a position risk matrix/factor
• Create detailed succession plans for capturing knowledge including the use of mentoring relationships when appropriate.
Is Mentoring a one-way street?
Do most mentors enter the mentoring relationship expecting it to be a reciprocal learning relationship? I don’t think that the more senior member of the mentoring team often considers that they will be learning from their protégé, however; that is exactly what should be taking place. The younger generation or “digital natives” have much to teach the older generation of “digital immigrants”. Generation Y’s comfort with technology and ability to connect so quickly and easily are skills that could benefit older employees.
Benefits of Mentoring
The benefits of an effective and productive mentoring relationship can:
• Help new employees learn the culture and inner workings faster.
• Help newly promoted staff understand and fulfill their new responsibilities faster.
• Increase communication and strengthen employee bonds.
• Ensure that accumulated knowledge and experience is shared and passed on, reducing the impact when employees leave.
• Promote underrepresented employees
• Develop future leaders
• Project a strong and positive employer brand
However, mentoring relationships can be a disaster when:
• Mentor and Mentee are not a good match.
• Unrealistic expectations on the part of either parties.
• Trust and rapport never established.
• Lack of skills, time, or commitment on one of the parties.
• Protégé’s supervisor sabotages the relationship.
• Resentment on the part of other employees.
Mentoring can be a very successful method of tacit knowledge transfer. However, the success of a mentoring relationship is highly dependent on the ability of the Mentor and Mentee to connect and build report, which requires a level of trust and respect as well as very good interpersonal skills.
• Help new employees learn the culture and inner workings faster.
• Help newly promoted staff understand and fulfill their new responsibilities faster.
• Increase communication and strengthen employee bonds.
• Ensure that accumulated knowledge and experience is shared and passed on, reducing the impact when employees leave.
• Promote underrepresented employees
• Develop future leaders
• Project a strong and positive employer brand
However, mentoring relationships can be a disaster when:
• Mentor and Mentee are not a good match.
• Unrealistic expectations on the part of either parties.
• Trust and rapport never established.
• Lack of skills, time, or commitment on one of the parties.
• Protégé’s supervisor sabotages the relationship.
• Resentment on the part of other employees.
Mentoring can be a very successful method of tacit knowledge transfer. However, the success of a mentoring relationship is highly dependent on the ability of the Mentor and Mentee to connect and build report, which requires a level of trust and respect as well as very good interpersonal skills.
Knowledge Transfer Toolkit
No one approach to knowledge transfer will be a complete solution; best practice organizations develop toolkits of approaches to address the issue of knowledge capture and transfer. The approaches best suited for capturing and /or transferring knowledge depend entirely upon the type of knowledge, the culture of the organization, and the relationship between the sender and receiver involved in the knowledge exchange.
Reward/recognition system that promotes and captures knowledge transfer.
Individuals who share and retain knowledge can better perform their jobs and consequently receive recognition as key contributors and experts. It may be necessary to create more structured reward and recognition systems to encourage employees to change their behavior. A standardized reward system may help institutionalize the practice into the common culture. Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. Best practice organizations see the need to align reward and recognition with sharing knowledge. Knowledge Bucks can be used as prizes for contributing good ideas, and spot bonuses for exemplary knowledge-sharing efforts.
Mentoring
Mentoring is widely recognized today as an extremely beneficial career development tool. Mentoring can minimize multigenerational conflict Studies have shown that mentored employees:
• Perform better on the job
• Advance more rapidly within the organization
• Express lower turnover intentions than their nonmentored counterparts.
• Report more job and career satisfaction
• Thirty-five percent of employees who do not receive regular mentoring plan to seek other employment within a year.
A good mentoring program can:
• Help new employees learn the culture and inner workings faster.
• Help newly promoted staff understand and fulfill their new responsibilities faster.
• Increase communication and strengthen employee bonds.
• Ensure that accumulated knowledge and experience is shared and passed on, reducing the impact when employees leave.
• Promote underrepresented employees
• Develop future leaders
• Project a strong and positive employer brand
Beginning any mentoring relationship will be a unique process based on the needs & skills of the people involved.
After Action Reviews/Lessons Learned
Created by the U.S. Army to improve team performance by reflecting on action. Involves reviewing the overall mission of a team and establishing the ground truth of the actual events by replaying the critical moments. By the exploring the causes of the actuals results, the team can focus on key issues and reflect on lessons learned and critical success factors. The review concludes with a review of the next project and an anticipation for future issues. The review works best when it begins at a project team level and percolates through the reporting structure. The entire team should be involved to gain multiple viewpoints. Whomever leads the review must understand that trends should be the focus and not individuals. After Action Reviews should be held after any identifiable event.
Communities of Practice/Networks
Groups of people who come together to share and to learn from one another face-to-face and virtually. They are held together by a common purpose; they contribute to a body of knowledge and are driven by a desire and need to share problems, experiences, insights, templates, tools, and best practices. Community members deepen their knowledge by interacting on an ongoing basis.
Pecha Kucha
Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-cha ku-cha) was started in Tokyo, Japan in 2003. The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up.
The 20x20 format of Pecha Kucha is now also being adopted in the business world, with some company internal business presentations being run in a strict 6 minutes 40 seconds, with all discussion and questions held to the end of the presentation. This is primarily a device to help timebox presentations, force presenters to be more focused in their message, allow them to flow uninterrupted, and ultimately to avoid the "death by powerpoint" syndrome, of sitting through long and often tedious PowerPoint presentations.
Repositories
Repositories are primarily used to capture explicit information and typically contain databases that have structured content. It is common to use a customer relationship management system to hold this kind of information.
Subject Matter Experts Directories
Expertise locator systems can point to individuals both inside and outside the organization. This allows access to humans rather than information to enable an actual conversation or an e-mail exchange that sets the contest around information.
Process Improvement
Integrate knowledge replication and capture into the organization’s process improvement. Best practice organizations integrate knowledge sharing with people’s work by embedding knowledge sharing in routine work processes.
Host Visible Knowledge-Sharing Events
Make knowledge sharing a highly visible activity in which members of a network gather to exchange knowledge, insights, stories, and practices. Knowledge Fairs or Knowledge Weeks can be high-profile activities, with addresses by senior managers and outside speakers. This makes sharing knowledge a public, sought-after activity and shapes behavior by making participation in knowledge-sharing events desirable.
Interviews
Interviewing can be a very effective means of tacit knowledge capture. Types of interviews include: project completion/review, project milestone review, reactive exit interview, preemptive exit interview, after mission-critical or innovative work, and after special projects and/or pilot projects. Videotaping is an option it allows for a richer capture of the knowledge because one can capture more of the interaction between the interviewer and interviewee.
Knowledge maps
Guide to, or inventory of, an organization's internal or external repositories or sources of information or knowledge. These sources may include documents, files, databases, recordings of best practices or activities, or webpages.
Knowledge audits
The knowledge audit (K-Audit) is a systematic and scientific examination and evaluation of the explicit and tacit knowledge resources in the company. The K-Audit investigates and analyses the current knowledge-environment and culminates, in a diagnostic and prognostic report on the current corporate ‘knowledge health’. The report provides evidence as to whether corporate knowledge value potential is being maximized. In this respect the K-Audit measures the risk and opportunities faced by the organization with respect to corporate knowledge.”
Storytelling
Researchers have proposed that individuals learn the best from stories. Narratives, or storytelling, are a rich medium for transferring tacit and implicit knowledge. When experts share stories they help to prepare listeners to deal with similar situations that may occur in the future and they communicate tacit knowledge regarding their perceptions, feelings, interpretations values, strategies, etc. in rich and meaningful ways.
Web 2.0 technologies
Web 2.0 technology is a user-centered form of information management and retrieval using collaborative creation and tagging of digital knowledge repositories. Web 2.0 technology has the potential to advance online learning, knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer beyond traditional methods of knowledge delivery.
Examples include: wikis, blogs, social-networking, open-source, open-content, file-sharing, and peer-production.
Reward/recognition system that promotes and captures knowledge transfer.
Individuals who share and retain knowledge can better perform their jobs and consequently receive recognition as key contributors and experts. It may be necessary to create more structured reward and recognition systems to encourage employees to change their behavior. A standardized reward system may help institutionalize the practice into the common culture. Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. Best practice organizations see the need to align reward and recognition with sharing knowledge. Knowledge Bucks can be used as prizes for contributing good ideas, and spot bonuses for exemplary knowledge-sharing efforts.
Mentoring
Mentoring is widely recognized today as an extremely beneficial career development tool. Mentoring can minimize multigenerational conflict Studies have shown that mentored employees:
• Perform better on the job
• Advance more rapidly within the organization
• Express lower turnover intentions than their nonmentored counterparts.
• Report more job and career satisfaction
• Thirty-five percent of employees who do not receive regular mentoring plan to seek other employment within a year.
A good mentoring program can:
• Help new employees learn the culture and inner workings faster.
• Help newly promoted staff understand and fulfill their new responsibilities faster.
• Increase communication and strengthen employee bonds.
• Ensure that accumulated knowledge and experience is shared and passed on, reducing the impact when employees leave.
• Promote underrepresented employees
• Develop future leaders
• Project a strong and positive employer brand
Beginning any mentoring relationship will be a unique process based on the needs & skills of the people involved.
After Action Reviews/Lessons Learned
Created by the U.S. Army to improve team performance by reflecting on action. Involves reviewing the overall mission of a team and establishing the ground truth of the actual events by replaying the critical moments. By the exploring the causes of the actuals results, the team can focus on key issues and reflect on lessons learned and critical success factors. The review concludes with a review of the next project and an anticipation for future issues. The review works best when it begins at a project team level and percolates through the reporting structure. The entire team should be involved to gain multiple viewpoints. Whomever leads the review must understand that trends should be the focus and not individuals. After Action Reviews should be held after any identifiable event.
Communities of Practice/Networks
Groups of people who come together to share and to learn from one another face-to-face and virtually. They are held together by a common purpose; they contribute to a body of knowledge and are driven by a desire and need to share problems, experiences, insights, templates, tools, and best practices. Community members deepen their knowledge by interacting on an ongoing basis.
Pecha Kucha
Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-cha ku-cha) was started in Tokyo, Japan in 2003. The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up.
The 20x20 format of Pecha Kucha is now also being adopted in the business world, with some company internal business presentations being run in a strict 6 minutes 40 seconds, with all discussion and questions held to the end of the presentation. This is primarily a device to help timebox presentations, force presenters to be more focused in their message, allow them to flow uninterrupted, and ultimately to avoid the "death by powerpoint" syndrome, of sitting through long and often tedious PowerPoint presentations.
Repositories
Repositories are primarily used to capture explicit information and typically contain databases that have structured content. It is common to use a customer relationship management system to hold this kind of information.
Subject Matter Experts Directories
Expertise locator systems can point to individuals both inside and outside the organization. This allows access to humans rather than information to enable an actual conversation or an e-mail exchange that sets the contest around information.
Process Improvement
Integrate knowledge replication and capture into the organization’s process improvement. Best practice organizations integrate knowledge sharing with people’s work by embedding knowledge sharing in routine work processes.
Host Visible Knowledge-Sharing Events
Make knowledge sharing a highly visible activity in which members of a network gather to exchange knowledge, insights, stories, and practices. Knowledge Fairs or Knowledge Weeks can be high-profile activities, with addresses by senior managers and outside speakers. This makes sharing knowledge a public, sought-after activity and shapes behavior by making participation in knowledge-sharing events desirable.
Interviews
Interviewing can be a very effective means of tacit knowledge capture. Types of interviews include: project completion/review, project milestone review, reactive exit interview, preemptive exit interview, after mission-critical or innovative work, and after special projects and/or pilot projects. Videotaping is an option it allows for a richer capture of the knowledge because one can capture more of the interaction between the interviewer and interviewee.
Knowledge maps
Guide to, or inventory of, an organization's internal or external repositories or sources of information or knowledge. These sources may include documents, files, databases, recordings of best practices or activities, or webpages.
Knowledge audits
The knowledge audit (K-Audit) is a systematic and scientific examination and evaluation of the explicit and tacit knowledge resources in the company. The K-Audit investigates and analyses the current knowledge-environment and culminates, in a diagnostic and prognostic report on the current corporate ‘knowledge health’. The report provides evidence as to whether corporate knowledge value potential is being maximized. In this respect the K-Audit measures the risk and opportunities faced by the organization with respect to corporate knowledge.”
Storytelling
Researchers have proposed that individuals learn the best from stories. Narratives, or storytelling, are a rich medium for transferring tacit and implicit knowledge. When experts share stories they help to prepare listeners to deal with similar situations that may occur in the future and they communicate tacit knowledge regarding their perceptions, feelings, interpretations values, strategies, etc. in rich and meaningful ways.
Web 2.0 technologies
Web 2.0 technology is a user-centered form of information management and retrieval using collaborative creation and tagging of digital knowledge repositories. Web 2.0 technology has the potential to advance online learning, knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer beyond traditional methods of knowledge delivery.
Examples include: wikis, blogs, social-networking, open-source, open-content, file-sharing, and peer-production.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Knowledge Transfer Strategies, Processes, and Methods
Based on the research that I have conducted within the aerospace industry, the following implications and strategies reflect knowledge transfer initiatives that may effectively help to transfer knowledge from baby boomer engineers to Generation X engineers. These management strategies center on areas such as (a) building a knowledge sharing culture, (b) establishing mentoring programs, and (b) initiating teamwork.
Management actions can have a large influence on increasing employee engagement and affect the knowledge-sharing culture in the organization. Visible and engaged management support may enhance a knowledge-sharing culture. Management may influence employees by establishing a reason to care, a feeling employees are a part of something bigger than they are.
Employees must perceive management visibly advocates and supports the creation of the structured mentoring program. The effectiveness of the mentoring program will require management support in the form of adequate funding and work redistribution where necessary. To facilitate the exchange, the mentor and mentees should be in close physical proximity to each other.
Encourage, support, and facilitate the formation of teams within the workplace, combining members of all generations and functions whenever possible. Within the team environment, knowledge transfer and integration occurs between individuals. The result is a collective knowledge greater than any single individual could produce. Combining individuals with different and complementary skills and perspectives and achieving cooperation among them may result in the enhancement of optimal knowledge transfer if management recognizes the social or relationship aspect of team building.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Generations Interview
Claire Raines has been researching generations in the workplace for more than twenty years. She has written seven books, and designed a game that teaches people how to be more effective in work and family situations by adapting to generational differences.
In one of her books, Connecting Generations, I ran across a simple exercise that she recommends to help promote diversity in the workplace.
To promote learning and understanding of generational differences you could conduct an interview with a member of another generation and ask the following questions.
1. What generation do you consider yourself a member of?
2. What do you like about your generation?
3. What do you wish other generations knew or understood about your generation?
4. Do you feel all your work-related talents and skills are used on the job?
5. What challenges do you face at work that may have to do with your generation?
In one of her books, Connecting Generations, I ran across a simple exercise that she recommends to help promote diversity in the workplace.
To promote learning and understanding of generational differences you could conduct an interview with a member of another generation and ask the following questions.
1. What generation do you consider yourself a member of?
2. What do you like about your generation?
3. What do you wish other generations knew or understood about your generation?
4. Do you feel all your work-related talents and skills are used on the job?
5. What challenges do you face at work that may have to do with your generation?
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Appreciative Inquiry as a Tool to Improve Intergenerational Communication
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a term that was introduced by David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western University during the 1980’s. AI is a shift in thinking from a deficit-based approach to change to a strength-based philosophy. The thinking is that by focusing on what is wrong we pay too much attention to problems and end up amplifying them. If our mindset is to look for problems, we will be certain to find them.
The appreciative approach considers organizations to be alive appreciative systems in which the focus is on looking for what works best. AI focuses on doing more of what works while the problem-solving approach asks us to do less of what we do not do well.
The AI approach suggests that by asking positive questions we can bring out the best in people, teams, and organizations. Cooperrider and his colleagues suggest that “words create worlds” and by wisely and intentionally selecting positive questions leaders can set the stage for generating a more cohesive and productive workplace environment.
One application for AI concerning improving intergenerational communication would be to ask members of different generational cohorts to interview each other using three or four positive questions and to then note the things that they have in common. Some possible appreciative questions could be:
1. Step into the shoes of a member of a different generation. Through their eyes answer the following questions.
a. What matters most to you?
b. What unique contribution does your generation bring to the workplace?
c. What are your greatest skills and competencies?
d. What makes you tick?
2. Tell me about a time you had a wonderful working relationship with someone from a different generation from yourself. What was the high point of this relationship? What did you learn from this relationship?
3. What do you value most about yourself that contributes positively to the relationships between members of different generations in the workplace?
Appreciative Inquiry proposes that we live in the worlds that our questions create. Therefore, by changing the way we ask employees about generational differences we can begin to help our employees discover the strengths, assets, and best practices of each generation.
The appreciative approach considers organizations to be alive appreciative systems in which the focus is on looking for what works best. AI focuses on doing more of what works while the problem-solving approach asks us to do less of what we do not do well.
The AI approach suggests that by asking positive questions we can bring out the best in people, teams, and organizations. Cooperrider and his colleagues suggest that “words create worlds” and by wisely and intentionally selecting positive questions leaders can set the stage for generating a more cohesive and productive workplace environment.
One application for AI concerning improving intergenerational communication would be to ask members of different generational cohorts to interview each other using three or four positive questions and to then note the things that they have in common. Some possible appreciative questions could be:
1. Step into the shoes of a member of a different generation. Through their eyes answer the following questions.
a. What matters most to you?
b. What unique contribution does your generation bring to the workplace?
c. What are your greatest skills and competencies?
d. What makes you tick?
2. Tell me about a time you had a wonderful working relationship with someone from a different generation from yourself. What was the high point of this relationship? What did you learn from this relationship?
3. What do you value most about yourself that contributes positively to the relationships between members of different generations in the workplace?
Appreciative Inquiry proposes that we live in the worlds that our questions create. Therefore, by changing the way we ask employees about generational differences we can begin to help our employees discover the strengths, assets, and best practices of each generation.
Building a Knowledge-Sharing Culture
Employees tend to share knowledge if they feel emotionally committed to the organization’s vision and mission. Management actions can have a large influence on increasing employee engagement and affect the knowledge-sharing culture within the organization. Visible and engaged management support may enhance a knowledge-sharing culture. Management may influence employees by establishing a reason to care, a feeling employees are a part of something bigger than they are. Foundational to effective leadership is the establishment and communication of the organizational vision. People need to feel like they are valued and ‘part’ of the company. If they can feel that they are part of something greater than their own job or position, they may be more likely to pass on information.
Knowledge creation will occur in organizations exhibiting strong caring among employees. The presence of care increases trust, empathy, and tolerance and consideration for context and personal growth. In an organization in which care exists, employees will be more willing to bestow knowledge upon each other.
Knowledge creation will occur in organizations exhibiting strong caring among employees. The presence of care increases trust, empathy, and tolerance and consideration for context and personal growth. In an organization in which care exists, employees will be more willing to bestow knowledge upon each other.
Understanding Generational Differences
I learned a very helpful activity from Doug Caldwell that can be used to start a friendly dialogue between generations. The activity asks participants to draw and discuss their Generational Defining Events.
Have your audience break into groups of 5 or 6, ideally with multiple generations represented in each group. Each person is given a 5 x 8 card and crayons. They are asked to illustrate three of their most significant life experiences between the ages of 12 to mid-20s using graphics and numbers. After completing their illustration, each individual shares the three most significant events that occurred during their formative years.
This exercise is short and fun but very helpful in getting members of different generations to see the different types of influences that shaped and formed different generational perspectives. It is also useful for highlighting those individuals of a particular generation that had different live shaping events giving them a perspective different from the majority of their own generation.
Have your audience break into groups of 5 or 6, ideally with multiple generations represented in each group. Each person is given a 5 x 8 card and crayons. They are asked to illustrate three of their most significant life experiences between the ages of 12 to mid-20s using graphics and numbers. After completing their illustration, each individual shares the three most significant events that occurred during their formative years.
This exercise is short and fun but very helpful in getting members of different generations to see the different types of influences that shaped and formed different generational perspectives. It is also useful for highlighting those individuals of a particular generation that had different live shaping events giving them a perspective different from the majority of their own generation.
Do you know where your tacit knowledge is?
The first step in implementing any organizational knowledge transfer strategy begins with an analysis of where the organization’s tacit knowledge resides. Organizational leaders must find which employees hold within their heads the type of knowledge that cannot be written down. Where is the knowledge that gives the organization its competitive edge?
The paradox of tacit knowledge is that it cannot be easily copied by a competitor but neither can it be easily transferred to another employee. Any organization that has single points of knowledge (knowledge that resides with only one employee) is in serious trouble should that employee decide to leave.
There are several methods that can be used to help determine where the tacit organizational knowledge resides.
1. Knowledge mapping – identifies the location and flow of knowledge within the organization
2. Knowledge audits – a knowledge audit is an audit of an organization’s intellectual capital. The knowledge audit differs from knowledge mapping in that its purpose is to find the knowledge within the organization and put a value on it.
3. Social Network Analysis – maps and measures the relationships and flows of knowledge between people. People and groups are nodes in the network and the links show the flow between the nodes.
Regardless of which method is used, is it critical for all organizations to have an understanding of where their tacit knowledge resides and to appreciate how vulnerable they would be should that knowledge leave the organization.
The paradox of tacit knowledge is that it cannot be easily copied by a competitor but neither can it be easily transferred to another employee. Any organization that has single points of knowledge (knowledge that resides with only one employee) is in serious trouble should that employee decide to leave.
There are several methods that can be used to help determine where the tacit organizational knowledge resides.
1. Knowledge mapping – identifies the location and flow of knowledge within the organization
2. Knowledge audits – a knowledge audit is an audit of an organization’s intellectual capital. The knowledge audit differs from knowledge mapping in that its purpose is to find the knowledge within the organization and put a value on it.
3. Social Network Analysis – maps and measures the relationships and flows of knowledge between people. People and groups are nodes in the network and the links show the flow between the nodes.
Regardless of which method is used, is it critical for all organizations to have an understanding of where their tacit knowledge resides and to appreciate how vulnerable they would be should that knowledge leave the organization.
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