Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Chapter 4. The Knowledge Learning Curve

With every new hire, an organization acquires that new employee's knowledge, which may include knowledge that is completely new to the organization and very valuable. But while the organization acquires this knowledge asset, it also takes on the employee's knowledge vacuum of job-specific operational knowledge. To fill this vacuum, organizations attempt to teach, train, and mentor their new hires and, thus, to inject new employees' existing knowledge bases with the job-specific operational knowledge they need to attain high productivity levels quickly. It is in this process of knowledge transfer (from the organization's standpoint) and knowledge acquisition (from the new employee's standpoint) that continuity management makes a major contribution.

"In every new job I start," confessed a midlevel manager, "I encounter the 'freshman effect.' The freshman effect occurs when the knowledge I have depended upon for success is no longer relevant, and I enter a condition of job ignorance. Job ignorance, however, is not an acceptable state. Not to me because I don't like to appear foolish or inept, and not to the organization because I don't appear productive. So what happens? I counter the freshman effect by attempting to pass as a 'senior,' which is what many organizations ask their new hires to do. They expect you to perform like a senior, but with a freshman's knowledge. It doesn't work. Only once have I ever been hired by a company that honored ...