Knowledge Capture and Transfer in an Organization

Organization Background and Purpose of Planned Change

The products that my organization supports, services, and provide updates to have been in the US Air Force inventory since the mid 1980’s. My organization’s make-up is multigenerational with a high percentage of Traditionalists and Baby Boomers (Fox, 2011). While the employees are skilled and talented, the organization is suffering from single threaded skill areas and we are facing the high probability that we will lose the 30+ years of knowledge when our employees retire or transfer to other Boeing programs. Two years ago my Program Director and I agreed that I would be the champion of a knowledge capture and transfer activity that focuses on the processes and methods to capture and transfer tacit knowledge and wisdom of our employees with the specific objective to retain critical product knowledge and continue to support our customer (Mathew & Kavitha, 2008). The challenge we face is instilling a sense of urgency; when our members have no intention of retiring or transferring to another Boeing Company program, our members do not see a need for capturing and transferring their wisdom and vast years of expertise and knowledge to others. That mindset causes apathy for the knowledge capture and transfer activity and strengthening the organizations depth of knowledge and our sustainability. The other concern we have is our members of the organization struggle with thinking collectively about the benefits of transferring knowledge, most feel if their knowledge is shared, their value goes down and potentially becoming dispensable (Mathew & Kavitha, 2008).

Organizational-level diagnoses

After assessing the organizations environment, inputs, transformations, outputs, and ove...

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