Please help... Question surrounding the relationship between the Competency Framework & tacit knowledge transfer
Posted by Phillip Lo Castro on 13 June, 2012 - 17:20
I have recently completed my APMP exam and am now I am in my final semester of my MSc in Project Management - The Question that I have raised may need refining and if so I am open to suggestions?!
Within the oil and gas industry a majority of Veterans and Baby Boomers are predicted to exit the workforce by 2015 and are followed by a much smaller group of talent, Generation X. How can we capture and transfer these Veterans and Baby Boomers communal know-how-their tacit knowledge-especially if it has not been adequately identified, captured, codified and stored in corporate knowledge repositories?
My Questions
1. Has anyone had any experince dealing with these issues and have come up with any type of solutions?
2. Do you think this question is relevant to todays issues or is it a thing of the past?
3. Has this topic already been adequately addressed if so where?
4. What are the expectations of CEO's when people within the organsiation leave a project developmenmet team that are reliant upon such high levels of competencies and tacit knowledge.
For any further qualifications please do not hesitate to respond.
Regards
Phil
Posted in
Hi Phil,
Can I suggest that you report your question with a different heading?
I had expected a question about the compenecy framework, but the details are much more about knowledge transfer.
Its an interesting topic but my gut feelling is that it won't turn out to be a huge issue.
Generic knowledge tends to get captured through approaches like body of knowledge and other formal processes.
Previous project data should be captured through lessons learnt and post mortem processes (and in general there are issues there but that's not a boomer/Gen X problem).
i suspect that the big unique knoweldge that the experienced PMs have is how they managed and how they personally worked. But that's experience for baby boomer managers in a baby boomer world. As we move into a world of Generation X managers leading in a Generation X,Y,Z world then the previous experience and approaches may be less relevant to the new generation.
I'll be interested to see what other responses are, but in terms of part 4, I think the expectation of the CEO should be that they have grown the replacements before their current staff move on, in the same way that succession planning should always be an important factor in ensuring long term survival.
John