Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Chapter 9. Developing K-PAQ: The Knowledge Profile Analysis Questions

The Dream Team met to design the methodology for harvesting operational knowledge from incumbent employees. Rob, our tech-knight, joined us to offer technological assistance while emitting serious amounts of radiation from mysterious black objects he carried. Roger was back, of course, and the Chip was parallel processing even before we started. We were joined by assorted other experts and team members.

The Dream Team established five objectives for the proposed methodology that would harvest the critical operational knowledge from incumbents and create the knowledge profile. They were:

1. To capture the critical job-specific data, information, and knowledge that incumbents use in their jobs

2. To capture the primary sources of this critical data, information, and knowledge (whether individuals, documents, or processes)

3. To identify knowledge priorities and leverage points (i.e., knowledge with the greatest potential to increase productivity and effectiveness)

4. To identify critical knowledge that was not available because of knowledge hoarding, inefficient or obsolete reporting systems, poor knowledge needs analysis, or a variety of other reasons

5. To analyze knowledge-based strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the job classification

With those objectives set and the knowledge categories of the Knowledge Profile template as our guide, we turned to the various methodologies that might be employed to ...