While some industries have very high turnover rate, others are in constant evolution, with team mates entering and exiting different phases of a mandate, project, or teams. With every professional transiting, the knowledge acquired through their stay leaves with them. So how do you capitalize on this knowledge as a leader, and how can you transfer it to other team members? Here are three ideas, tried and true, to help your team make the most of the knowledge collectively acquired.

Shadowing

Shadowing can be an easy way of helping the transition from the knowledgeable people in your project to others. It consists of having the new team member look at how the job is being accomplished by a more senior team member. While straightforward in on-site teams, it can be a rather difficult process in the context of a remote team, which accomplishes most of the work from distance and then meets up together only for annual reviews, fellowship, important decision-making or post-mortems. However, it could still be done if the learning member exchanges a lot on what he observered with his mentor. The learning is most effective when the mentee validates observations and deepens his or her understanding through dialogue with the mentor.

Joint Problem-Solving

Joint Problem-Solving is another insightful way of transfering knowledge. Often, people just do tasks in a routinely way or in an unstructured way and when asked to write a document about what has been done and how their task can be taken over, they do not know how to describe their activities in systematic, step-by-step instructions. By working together, the observant has an active opportunity to decorticate the process and to question as things are going on why things are done that way.

The Problem with Knowledge Management

Transfering knowledge from one person to another is a good step but there can still be problems with that situation; what if one person leaves too quickly and the other person doesn't have time to learn? What if someone else in the organization has some knowledge a new member could use but isn't aware of it? What if someone is playing prima donna and is making himself indispensible through the knowledge he detains?

Knowledge Management Systems : Technology to the Rescue

Knowledge management is at the root of all of these scenarios : How do we manage the knowledge present in organizations? The easiest way to record all this is through systems like CRM and spreadsheets and such; it's not difficult to keep a copy handy of a project plan one of your members might have writen for one of his projects, or templates used for previous clients presentations. What's more difficult is all of this information inside people's head, the type of information we call tacit information. It's hard because as a leader, you want to get people to realize what is worth sharing and what isn't. What may appear obvious to a person who has long been on a project or in a certain environment can prove invaluable to a new person entering the context.

Many organizations have their own KMS (knowledge management system) within the organization - typically corporate social networks allowing members to collaborate and ask questions to the experts in the field. These are tools that let users centralize all documentation and discussions so that they may be accessible to all members at their convenience. Emails are also useful, although they hard to manage. Truth is it is inevitable to write emails and a challenge will be to understand how to structure them so they are read. Instant messaging also helps for keeping in touch with teams where colleagues are not within walking distance, but they are in my experience the most inefficient way to make a decision; so much of the non-verbal communication gets lost through it. A multitude of other solutions are used by organizations regularly, ranging from forums to project tracking systems. The different types of tools can be classified in broad categories: tools that gather information and data, expertise access tools, e-learning applications, discussion and chat technologies, synchronous interaction tools, and search and data mining tools. They are all efficient tools – and you may get a lot out of them provided you surmount the challenges of implementing it, and having users in your organization adopt it.

For more articles on digital strategy, improved team management and work-life balance for analysts, tech leads, managers and business developers, follow me on Linked In or on my blog, Corina on Work.