Knowledge management—how to transfer know-how when a colleague leaves

Know-how is crucial and is a major part of the capital of all organisations, including the non-profit sector. It has three main components:

1. Expertise and experience — the knowledge,
2. Methodological skills — the ability to apply knowledge,
3. Social skills — the ‘necessary’  soft skills that enable this application to achieve the desired outcome.

Many organisations limit themselves to knowledge management, which is the easiest part. But methodological and social skills are equally important, though they’re often tied to individuals who can apply these processes and have the necessary skills. And when someone leaves the organisation, this part of the know-how disappears with them. However, this doesn’t have to be the case!

By developing coaching and mentoring skills within the organisation, people have the relevant social skills to transfer know-how more effectively and naturally.

How to manage successful know-how transfer

Managing the transfer of a person’s know-how can create value for the organisation, the successor, and the departing person. Here’s an example of when a long-serving major-donor fundraiser resigned, it was clear that the organisation needed to retain the leaver’s expertise and network, so they quickly found a successor. The fundraiser’s know-how was pure gold and so the organisation put in place a comprehensive handover programme to avoid a collapse.

Things were different when an experienced campaigner had to leave another NGO. There was a significant gap until a successor relaunched the campaign a few months later — as if the lessons learned from the previous campaigner, weren’t as valuable. So, was this the case, or was the know-how transfer process not in place?

Sometimes, there is little know-how to be transferred

Of course, there are many cases where a departure doesn’t need a handover programme. For example, when the leaver has no organisation or sector specific skills. Like jobs where the necessary skills can be found on the job market. For a change in junior IT, a standardised exit process is usually enough: filing documents in an orderly manner, updating the database, and ensuring there’s some overlap with the successor (if this isn’t possible, the line manager can act as an interim store: taking over from the person leaving and handing over to the successor).

Extending the knowledge transfer timescale

Often, it is quite straightforward when someone leaves and their know-how has been openly shared in advance. But if someone’s been with the organisation for a while and has deep expertise in its core activities, it’s more effective to take longer to share their know-how in order not to lose any important insights.

When the communications team changes, for instance, we need to add organisation-specific skills like media contacts, or knowledge of which stories to tell and how. This becomes even more crucial when key skills providers like the aforementioned fundraiser leave. In such cases, we need to ensure that the organisation doesn’t lose too much expertise with each departure.

So, what should we do when someone leaves?

Three types of knowledge, explicit, implicit and tacit

The are two well known types of knowledge:

• Explicit knowledge – which can be articulated and is often captured in the form of books or manuals.
• Implicit knowledge – which is possessed by highly-skilled individuals or “master” performers, who may or may not be able to articulate the knowledge behind their expertise.

However, there is a third kind of knowledge, which definitely cannot be articulated, called “Tacit” knowledge. It is this intangible tacit knowledge, which organisations need to capture from their employees, which is the key to their competitive advantage. This is a type of knowledge, which is held by people, which has not been captured; lessons learnt in the workplace, which have not been shared or passed onto others. It is often knowledge linked to the senses and experience.

Tacit knowledge is a priority in knowledge management

Tacit knowledge is the specific information, skills, and expertise someone has in their mind and may have difficulty articulating. This knowledge can be unconscious, like the fundraiser’s ability to build genuine relationships with major donors. Simply updating the database and contacts isn’t enough.

Everyday routines can hide important expertise, like how someone intuitively decides what to read and what not to read. Or which contacts they maintain and how. This implicit tacit know-how can also be that of the soon-to-be-retired manager who’s developed a feel for the organisational culture over the years and knows what works and what doesn’t.

What process is best for transferring tacit knowledge?

So, how do we recover tacit knowledge? It’s all about transferring personal expertise. But before we can rescue and reuse it, we need to recognise it. Transferring and recognising expertise requires a structured process with these elements:

• An ‘early warning system’ to identify knowledgeable and long-serving employees early on.
• And if not, follow the standard exit procedure.
• If a key person is leaving, map out their expertise [1]
• And, with the team, separate the wheat from the chaff [2].
• Then, use some strategically formulated coaching and mentoring relationships to pass it on to the next person.
• It’s not possible to transfer everything, but you can definitely share some of it.

[1] An early notification system means that we can plan for departures like retirement, temporary contracts, or outsourcing in advance. Mapping means that we record and update the competencies and knowledge of the team involved (e.g., we may need to adjust the job description).

[2] Working together to figure out what’s important and what’s not involves making important decisions about what expertise can only be learned internally and which expertise is relevant to others and should be shared. By ‘together’ we mean the two main people, but also the team, the group, and the organisation. The key questions are: What expertise can only be learned internally? Which expertise is also relevant for others and should therefore be distributed among several people?

The perfect know-how transfer scenario

This happens when the person leaving the organisation has plenty of time and their team is ready.

1. Know-how Sharing Mindset

• Successor’s Mindset: Soak up everything the leaver has shown, practiced, said, and explained. Later, you can sort out what doesn’t work for you. You can teach this with a self-learning sequence. Give them time and support from the team.
• Leaver’s Mindset: Don’t just tell the successor what to do; let them grow into the role. Here a half-day workshop or an introductory webinar would allow for contracting to have the most effective coaching or mentoring dialogues in this situation.

2. Task List

• Make a list of the work areas or packages with the main activities and link them to the relevant documents. Use columns such as Work Package, Task Description, Status, Next steps & Stakeholders involved.

3. Capture Know-how

• Use mind mapping to find and record more expertise, including tacit knowledge. Consider fields of knowledge:
  1. Expertise: What is important to the successor?
  2. Target Groups: Who needs the knowledge? Just the successor or others?
  3. Format: How do I convey knowledge sustainably?
  4. History of expertise: Why do I do it this way?
  5. Contacts, network (internal & external): Who is important in the job?
• Think about implicit and tacit know-how:
  1. Everyday operational routines: Which ones do I have?
  2. How do I make decisions in everyday life? On what occasions? Which of these could be important for the successor?
  3. Hidden knowledge in the form of the intuitive assessment of situations, etc
  4. What “soft skills” do I have? Even those that I was unaware of and only found out about via feedback.
  5. Are there any special issues and pitfalls that your successor should be aware of?
• Consider organisational knowledge (be aware as this can often be subjective):
  1. What is important to know about organisational culture?
  2. History of organisational development and my behaviour (critically reflected).
  3. Informal contacts within the company and internationally that are not (primarily) job-related: Which ones have you established and what are they for?
  4. Insights & lessons learned: Caution — take care to highlight subjective views

4. Gap Analysis

• Compare the list and mapping with the successor’s gaps: What are the gaps that need to be filled? What do they already cover? This will help you prioritise what needs to be transferred and be the focus of any coaching and mentoring relationship.

5. Network Handover

• Organise the internal and external network according to relevance and plan the handover. This includes personal introductions to the most important stakeholders (and not just a list of names and e-mail addresses).

6. Cultural Knowledge

• Explore and record the cultural knowledge of the organisation and decide what to transfer or how to keep it in the organisation.

Remember, deciding what’s relevant and what’s not can be tough! NGOs that actively cultivate existing expertise and distribute important tasks among several people (e.g., through deputisation) are great examples.

Not every handover has to be a marathon. Sometimes, it can be done swiftly. But no matter how fast you go, the handover should always be deliberate and structured. Just showing the filing system on the server and saying, ‘Check it out and let me know if you’re confused,’ isn’t enough.

How to transfer — what methods work?

There are different ways to transfer know-how. Coaching and mentoring conversations, practical exercises, supervised practice, and shadowing are really important. Or, you can have interviews. The successor asks the outgoing employee what they ought to learn based on their strengths and weaknesses.

To organise these learning opportunities, you need to map out the skills involved. But that’s only useful if the know-how is transferred in a practical way. For example, if a campaigner brought a local oil trader to heel because they were a great listener and were able to negotiate a solution with him, it’s not enough to say, ‘Good campaigning means being a good listener.’ They can’t just pass on their listening skills. But if their successor gets to observe them during a negotiation, they’ll have access to that gift.

By the way, people who leave the company are often happy to mentor after they leave. They just need to be asked, and their successors need to be willing to organise the sessions, like a monthly videoconference to discuss the challenges.

A typical real-life know-how transfer example

Based on an original German article published by B’VM.

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