If you’ve been working for more than a few years in any sizeable business you may have encountered that rare gem of a person who knows everything about the business. They have worked there for decades, know everyone and can find any corporate knowledge you need – or at least know who to ask or where to find it.
They aren’t necessarily in a senior role and they’re probably not far from retirement, but they’re usually generous in sharing their knowledge if maybe a little jaded – having seen people and projects come and go.
When working in large organisations I’ve always made an effort to identify these rare individuals because they can save you days, even weeks of effort finding out information or understanding why certain decisions were made years before.
However when these individuals inevitable leave or retire it can create a huge gap for the organisation, with significant corporate knowledge lost for good, or requiring significant effort and fossicking to rediscover.
But what if this person never retired? What if they were available 24/7 to your entire team, so your corporate knowledge remained accessible and reusable? How many bad decisions might that avoid, how much value might be realised by adapting older ideas for new markets, or repurposing past ideas and content for new channels and formats?
We believe that the corporate knowledge of an organisation is too valuable to risk an individual’s retirement. We believe that it’s too useful to be stored in dusty folders in unmarked boxes in a basement room labelled ‘beware of the leopard’.
While not all your past corporate knowledge may be reusable, the parts that are can add immensely to your bottom line, help your organisation make better decisions, win more clients and cut training time for new staff.
So don’t just rely on that long-term staff that remembers everything, put in place a solution that provides continuity for your business into the future.
reKnow your corporate knowledge.