Did you experience how to hand off years of experience in two weeks only? Imagine the scene. A key employee comes to your office and says, “I’m sorry, but I’m leaving. I will be leaving in two weeks.”
The good news is at least you got two weeks, but the bad news is there is so much knowledge, even intangible knowledge, in this person’s brain that it’s a bit hard to figure out how to pass it all on – especially, within two weeks.
Transcript
Imagine the scene. A key employee comes to your office and says, “I’m sorry, but I’m leaving. I will be leaving in two weeks.”
Well, the good news is at least you got two weeks, but the bad news is there is so much knowledge, even intangible knowledge, in this person’s brain that it’s a bit hard to figure out.
How can you hand off years and years of knowledge, expertise, and wisdom in just two weeks?
Do you even have somebody to hand it off to? That’s the other question. If you still have to hire somebody, that can take a while. The two weeks could go by without even having somebody to train.
A friend of mine recently told me that’s happening in her company: There’s one week to transfer that knowledge after they have scrambled for one week to find a replacement. Now you have to hand off the knowledge in just one week.
This situation highlights how important it is to be prepared. It highlights how important it is to be mindful of capturing knowledge on an ongoing basis – and not just hope. And that’s really what it is. Hope that the key employees will be there forever. Well, how is that going to happen? They will leave sooner or later. Let’s be honest. You hope it’s not sooner and that it will be later.
But sooner or later, you will have to tackle this anyway. So, why not be prepared? Why not figure out a way to pull knowledge out of the brain and get it documented while they are working for you? Not just in the last two weeks.
That’s really what Brilliance Mining™ is in large part about. It is about documenting the knowledge that someone has, including even the knowledge that they’ve forgotten that they have.
That last part takes a little bit of time because subconscious competence is the knowledge that we pull out when we need it. But we’re not aware of it the rest of the time. It only bubbles to the surface when needed or when someone asks questions about it. It requires an interaction between the person who has that knowledge and someone else.
That is what we do in Brilliance Mining.™ We help you pull knowledge out of someone’s brain and document it so that when you have that question, “How do you hand off critical knowledge? Years of knowledge in just two weeks?” it’s a no-brainer. It’s almost a non-event. Of course, you will still miss that person, and there’s the personal side, but at least your knowledge is protected.
I’m Curious
Have ever been in this situation of having to hand off years of expertise in just two weeks? How did it go?
Dr. Stephie
P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this with others. Thank you!
