Capturing Tribal Knowledge

Every year, decades of experience walk out the door of our companies as the aging workforce retires, or employees move on to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, too often our training programs are not aligned to capture the experience, tips and techniques that exist only in the heads of our veteran workers. Capturing this tribal knowledge is both an art, and a science, but a critical task that can be achieved with a robust training program.

While assessing >1,000 manufacturing companies over the past couple of decades, it has been amazing to observe how often training is an afterthought in many organizations. And the longer a company has been in business; the more this seems to apply. Equally amazing is that the biggest offenders of this are the companies that overuse the sound bite “Our most important asset is our people”. When you really dig into the process and peel back the onion, it is clear that their commitment to training is not commensurate with that statement. No matter what you call it: training, coaching, mentoring, etc., what we are really talking about is turning people into a competitive advantage.

A keystone of a world-class organization is the depth and breadth of the training program. Training can be defined as learning that is provided in order to improve performance on the present job. A well-managed program in a manufacturer can mean the difference between average, and outstanding, performance. Of course, the more complex the process, the more it takes on exponential importance.

Contact me to see how I can help you improve the organizational knowledge & training program in your QMS for ISO 2015 or AS9100 2016 as painlessly as possible in your company.

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com