Another session at the IAFS was a discussion by David DeLong about Lost Knowledge. The term refers to the tacit knowledge within a company that gets lost as workers retire, quit or otherwise leave the company. In case after case, companies have found that a key piece of knowledge resides with one or two employees. How to capture and even recognize that knowledge is a key element of any social capital system. The area of knowledge management is supposed to go after this problem. But part of the real problem is auditing the company to understand what are the key piece of information. In most cases, the importance of the information is not apparent until the system fails: the 50 cent seal on a machine that really needs to be changed every 6 weeks rather than every three months that the service manual calls for.
For my point of view, this problems is one of worker involvement. The lost knowledge issue deals with risk of important tacit knowledge disappearing. It is about preventing bad things from happening. The flip side is how to spot and exploit opportunities based on that tacit knowledge. What is need is what we used to call "high performance work organizations." This organizational structure stresses teams and worker participation. In doing so, it helps share tacit information.
That should be to goal - sharing tacit knowledge. HPWO and knowledge management are steps in the process.
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