Surfacing and transferring expert knowledge: the sense-making interview

Abstract

Many corporations experience significant loss of intellectual capital and organizational memory due to the retirement of key leaders and experts. Human resource leaders can help their organizations by conserving this knowledge, which could allow for continued competitive advantage. But doing so requires a means of both surfacing this knowledge, much of which lies tacit within the experts, and transferring it to others within the organization. The authors have designed and implemented a knowledge retention and transfer process that accomplishes these goals. Illustrated from two projects, the article explains the interview portion of the process that the authors have used with more than 20 clients over the past 3years. Adapted from Brenda Dervin's sense-making methodology, the authors offer this systematic and repeatable solution for the elicitation of intellectual capital.

Keywords:

• knowledge retention
• intellectual capital
• interviewing
• transitions