Comments on: Why document your company’s tribal knowledge?

By: Michael O'Daniel

Michael O'Daniel — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 21:57:21 +0000

Actually, documenting “tribal knowledge” should not be at the discretion of the manager or employee. It should be mandated as a business process within the organization that everyone is required to follow, and one or more individuals should have the responsibility for verifying that the process has been followed by anyone tasked with doing same.

By: Michael O'Daniel

Michael O'Daniel — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 19:14:00 +0000

One of your most important posts ever. An organization’s knowledge base — including its business processes, project history (even those that failed or were aborted), training history, software upgrades, its values (the pillars of its culture) — is among its most valuable assets. Further to Fima Vaisman’s point about consultants taking the “tribal knowledge” with them, any contract with a consultant should specify that they document the entire engagement including lessons learned. This is how you build sustainability into a company’s culture and avoid constantly having to reinvent the wheel, especially when key managers or employees move on.

By: Fima Vaisman

Fima Vaisman — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 20:20:38 +0000

Tribal or “institutional” knowledge is so very important. When a new sales person takes over a client account, the company suffers if the information is lost or the past mistakes are repeated. When an IT director leaves a complex network undocumented and reasons for choices unexplained for the next head of IT to figure out, the company suffers. There are those that feel that such information kept closely to the chest provides a measure of job security. Others, more comfortable in their skin, and focused on the overall good, make an effort to ensure that the work can continue unimpeded even if the employee leaves the organization. While personal choice will vary with individuals, there are tools that can be used to promote saving tribal knowledge. Using Slack as an adjunct or instead of email can help to organize information, as can the use of CRMs as mentioned above. Processes that promote addition of metadata can also be put in place for items such as REM statements in software code, reasons behind decisions in marketing campaigns, etc. An example of this is in management consulting organizations; when consultants roll off a case or a client and move on to other work or leave the company, they take much of this tribal knowledge with them; a better process supported by the right technical platform that is practiced by leadership and embraced by the organization can solve much of this pain point.