People leave their jobs for a variety of reasons. Employees with many years of service, an aging workforce, the last vestiges of pensions and/or a host of retirement options, organizational culture and the highly technical nature of the work means that there are a lot of people with a lot of knowledge that could be lost as those people leave. The consequences can include repeating mistakes and otherwise losing lessons learned coupled with new and inexperienced workers who lack the benefits of good mentors. This webinar takes a look at the underlying types of knowledge how each needs to be managed to ensure continuity of operations, and 4 steps that transform knowledge for future usage and safekeeping. Main points covered: • Identifying the critical knowledge that an organization relies upon for its processes, competitive advantage, etc. • The nature of knowledge and the two types of knowledge; • Identifying, managing and using both types of knowledge • Transforming organizational knowledge for future use and safekeeping Presenter: Dr. Ed Goldberg manages Eversource’ Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery and Threat Assessment programs in Berlin, CT. He serves as chair of the Edison Electric Institute’s (EEI) Business Continuity Committee and as Vice-President of the Connecticut Business Leadership Network, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for hiring people with disabilities. He served for four years as president of the Connecticut chapter of ACP (Association of Contingency Planners), and is in his 8th year on ACP’s National Board, first as its Education Director and now on the Executive Committee as Treasurer. Ed was an IT manager at Millstone Nuclear Power Station from 1993 through 2003. He is an expert on safety-conscious work environments and the creation and maintenance of such culture in nuclear and other industrial settings. Ed served as fulltime core faculty (8 years) and as adjunct faculty (6 years) in the School of Business and Technology at Capella University where he mentored PhD learners, taught and developed leadership, IT and management coursework. Ed served as adjunct faculty at Albertus Magnus College for 11 years, teaching a wide range of graduate and undergraduate management and IT courses. Recorded webinar: https://youtu.be/fBOe5-m_zYs

2. Institutionalizing Knowledge for the Next
Generation
1. Sustaining knowledge with an aging workforce:
succession planning challenges and evolving
organizations
2. Transitioning collective knowledge without housing any
unnecessary data;
3. Using practical tactics for balancing new and
experienced employees during a transition period
4. Embracing retirement eligibility rates as an opportunity
for a new way of doing business;

3. To a very large degree, this is the ultimate
exercise in change management!
• We are faced daily with a sea of change….and…..
• …we do grow tired of that evolution, especially towards the end of
our long careers;
• …as a result, we become less receptive to change, especially if the
timeline for a change extends anywhere near our retirement date;
• …change management and change in general is hard;
• Retirement is major change, often listed with life-altering
events such as marriage, dealing with loss of loved ones,
illness, etc.
• How do we motivate someone to share?
• Worst case: Outsourcing and forced turnover

4. 1) Sustaining knowledge with an aging workforce:
succession planning challenges and an evolving industry;
•Best practices in succession planning;
• Rotational assignments;
• Cross training;
• Routine coverage and other engagement of alternates
for given roles;
• Delegate consciously for development;
• Minimize tacit/tribal knowledge i.e. don’t keep it a
secret unless that’s necessary;

5. 2) Transitioning collective knowledge without
housing any unnecessary data
• We deal with two forms of institutional knowledge:
• In general, explicit knowledge is formal, rational, objective, written,
readily shared and is expressed with words, sentences, numbers,
formulas, usually without needing context;
• Conversely, tacit knowledge is generally informal, unwritten, tribal,
less readily shared, subjective, experience-based, subjective and is
expressed as beliefs, images, intuition, technical/craft “know-how”,
etc.;
• Converting from one type of knowledge to another is
necessary to preserve it and use it;

6. Preserving, transferring and using
knowledge
• According to Dr. Ikujiro Nonaka and Dr.
Hirotaka Takeuchi in
The Knowledge Creating Company…..
• Tacit knowledge goes with the person
when they leave; to preserve tacit
knowledge, it must be transferred directly
(“show me”) or converted to explicit
knowledge to be transferred later;
• Explicit knowledge is durable and
transferrable, but it can’t be used without
being converted to tacit knowledge.
Example: widget assembly instructions are
explicit, but we need to read them,
understand them and internalize them
before we can assemble the widget;

7. We need to consciously manage knowledge,
especially when it’s at risk!
• We already do a decent job with explicit
knowledge – procedures, policies, project
knowledge transfers, training, etc.;
• We do poorly at recognizing tacit/tribal
knowledge, and it is rarely well-managed;
• Not recognizing it means not dealing with it
effectively, and so it is often lost or mishandled
at best;

8. How do we convert and/or transfer
knowledge?
• Recall: Converting from one type of knowledge to another
is necessary to preserve it and use it;
• There are 4 processes for transferring or converting
knowledge from one type to another because that’s how
many combinations one can get from 2 types of
knowledge:
• Convert tacit to explicit;
• Convert explicit to tacit;
• Transfer tacit to tacit;
• Transfer explicit to explicit;

9. Convert tacit to explicit
• The process for converting tacit
knowledge into explicit knowledge is
“externalization”;
• Because tacit knowledge is internal, it
must be externalized to be more readily
transferred and used – written down or
otherwise decoded, explained, made
understandable….and recorded, written,
etc. to preserve it, move it, etc.;
• Face to face communication is needed to
extract, elicit, translate so that it can be
recorded, written, etc.;
• Example: interviewing an expert to learn
trade secrets, best practices, etc.

10. Convert explicit to
tacit
• The process of converting explicit
knowledge to tacit knowledge is called
“internalization”:
• Internalization is learning - it is the
personal conversion of what we think
of as information into knowledge – it’s
information in the book, and it
becomes our knowledge when we
internalize it i.e. when we learn it;
• It is experiential – we need to
somehow personally adapt the
information presented into a form that
we understand – aligning it with our
preconceived notions OR changing
those notions to achieve that
alignment;
• Example: Learning anything
(technically), but pointed examples are
learning to drive, learning how to
appreciate a fine wine, etc.

11. Transfer tacit to tacit
• Because the knowledge is tacit, it is internal to someone;
• Transferring that knowledge and keeping it tacit is a
process called “socialization”;
• Socialization is experiential and involves direct interaction
between the source and destination people;
• It relies on a shared experience that results in acquired
skills and other knowledge;
• It is a process that is between 2 or more people;
• Example: “Let me show you how things get done here.”

12. Transfer explicit to explicit
• Process is called “combination”;
• Combination benefits greatly from
Information Technology;
• Explicit knowledge is stored in documents,
email, data bases and therefore can be
transferred readily in meetings, briefings,
etc.;
• Steps include collection, dissemination and
editing/processing;
• Combination facilitates the movement of
knowledge between people, groups and
organizations;
• Example: think about how procedures are
created and disseminated;

13. 3) Using practical tactics for balancing new
and experienced employees during a
transition period
• Plan it! Be conscious of the choices, logistics,
consequences;
• Overlap start and end dates to transfer
tribal/tacit knowledge;
• Be selective as to who is “teaching” – manage
their skepticism, avoid cynics;
• Engage new employees to the extent possible
to encourage a questioning attitude, better
transfer of knowledge;
• Consider the pain of a transition –
outsourcing, for example. Forcing knowledge
transfer is harsh, fraught with peril, nearly
impossible to manage well;

14. 4) Embracing retirement eligibility rates as an
opportunity for a new way of doing business;
•What’s the issue?
• Just as traditional pensions are fading away, utilities are
in the midst of a wave of pension-eligible employees
retiring;
• There are 2 ways we can replace them:
• Bring the newbies up to speed with what we do and
how we do it…..or……
• ….take advantage of their “newness” and engage
them in examining what needs to be done so they
can contribute to how it gets done;

15. New employees present challenges and
opportunities
↓Less experience and knowledge than their predecessors;
↓Less likely to stay for decades than their predecessors, especially if
their retirement benefits are portable;
↔They’re not like ‘us older folks’ culturally, and as they enter the
workforce in numbers, WE have to change;
↑Not bound by ‘the way we always did it’;
↑Have fresh ideas, skills, education, etc.;
↑Likely energetic, eager to use their knowledge if only to
compensate for their lack of experience; (fragile!)

16. But what about “benchmarking” and “best
practices”?
• Seeking to incorporate best practices is smart, as is
benchmarking to establish a baseline for improvement; There’s
no reason not to do these things!
• But, aside from trying different combinations of best practices,
the process is not really innovative at all because the best you
can be implementing best practices is only as good as the way
someone is already doing it;
• Innovation is needs-driven, generally by structural changes to the
environment in which the process(es) is/are performed;
• New people with new ideas can spark innovation;

17. Have we been subject to environmental
changes? 
• “You betcha!” (Fargo, 1996)
• Weather events, other natural and man-made disasters, “black swan”
events that are commonplace now;
• Regulatory sea change;
• Mergers and acquisitions;
• Outsourcing;
• Technology including “the cloud”;
• Job markets, the economy, competition;
• Pension, retirement and other benefit plans;
• Cost of healthcare;
• Public reliance on energy delivery;
• The nature of threats;
• Politics;

18. Change is substantial and ongoing
• As an industry, when the ground moves and our
surroundings change, if we respond by just looking at each
other’s processes as ways to respond, we’re in trouble;
• There’s a difference between transferring knowledge and
indiscriminately transferring culture. If we replace our
experienced workforce with newbies and try to get them to
emulate the people who left, what they did and how they
did it, at best we’re anchoring our future to our past;

19. 3 Steps to Change
Management
 Use a 3 step change management process
(Lewin, 1948; Schein, 1992;) –
 Create common understanding of
what’s wrong with the current state
 Create common vision of what the
future state will look like, and what is
better about it
 Facilitate people’s moving form
current state to future state by
providing tools, processes, etc., and
by providing safety for those who do
change states.

20. • ISO 22301
Training Courses
• ISO 22301 Introduction
1 Day Course
• ISO 22301 Foundation
2 Days Course
• ISO 22301 Lead Implementer
5 Days Course
• ISO 22301 Lead Auditor
5 Days Course
Exam and certification fees are included in the training price.
https://pecb.com/iso-22301-training-courses
www.pecb.com/events

21. Copyright 2015, Logical Management Systems, Corp., all rights reserved
THANK YOU
?
edward.goldberg@eversource.com linkedin.com/in/dr-edward-ed-goldberg-cbcp-8b79551
www.eversource.com