Review of David DeLong’s book "Lost Knowledge: Confronting the threat of an aging workforce", Oxford, Oxford University Press: ISBN 0-19-517097-0.

The issue

Do you know the age profile of your staff and their retirement plans? Can you identify those staff members whose knowledge would be most keenly lost by your organisation should they leave? Who’s responsibility is the retention of knowledge? Notwithstanding the scandal of under-performing pension funds in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere) and the current debates as to raising the age of retirement, there is a strong base of evidence across the world that the average workforce is aging. This will have implications at societal level, but its impact will be felt more immediately by employing organisations. The baby-boomer generation (born between 1945 and 1955) is obviously on the verge of retirement. Those of us with long-term continuous employment linked to good pension funds may well be seeking early retirement and remember that this generation is twice as big as the one that followed. Coupled with organisations’ normal staff attrition rates, it seems clear that this is a phenomenon that needs to be addressed. The issue is not just one about losing capacity, but about losing knowledge.

The book

David DeLong’s book begins with a discussion of current developments and provides examples of the types of impact experienced by companies when senior employees retire. DeLong’s studies appear solely within the USA, but nevertheless they offer examples that are deeply worrying should they be replicated elsewhere. For example, in the Defence Department, 75% of its civilian workforce is due to retire between 2002 and 2008. One third of all secondary school teachers are also expected to retire by 2008 and NASA’s workforce over 60 years of age outnumbers those under age 35 by three to one. Due to retirements and the fact that processes were poorly documented. NASA, should it wish to do so, no longer knows how to land someone on the moon. More worryingly, other organisations may have lost the knowledge needed to defuse nuclear equipment.

In part II, DeLong describes four types of initiatives for retaining knowledge for the organisation: practices to transfer knowledge; IT applications to fix and share knowledge; HR processes and practices; processes to build knowledge again. In describing the practices to transfer knowledge the author makes the often-rehearsed distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge. In order to transfer explicit knowledge most of the organisations suggested that they used instruments (documentation, interview/debriefing and training). Different techniques are needed when considering the transfer of implicit knowledge and these involve a choice of stories, interviews, mentoring. Communities or Practice are briefly discussed as one approach to engender a culture of knowledge sharing. In the field of IT applications a broad scale of applications is discussed, from e learning to social network analysis. Attention is given to HR processes, such as the evaluation of skills, career planning and measures to encourage staff to stay with the organisation longer than planned.

Part III part III concerns the implementation of conservation initiatives in the organisation: where and how start you, how you go for with organisational barriers and how you can align knowledge retention to your organisation’s strategic plans.

Commentary

The distinctions between explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge are well made although not new to experienced knowledge management practitioners. They may serve, however, to help others in organisations without a KM function to understand the importance of the distinctions and how they might be dealt with. Whilst this typology of knowledge is useful and, by now, a requirement for any book dealing with knowledge management issues, what is missing is an attempt to identify the different types of “organisational knowledge” that could be potentially lost. In making a business case for addressing the issue, practitioners will need to demonstrate the potential impact on many organisational specific processes. For instance, staff will have knowledge about product/services, processes, contacts, projects etc and some techniques for capturing and storing that knowledge are better suited than others.

Lessons learned programmes can form a part of a knowledge retention culture and the author does emphasise the importance of such a culture. Yet DeLong appears quite sceptical about IT solutions for addressing the problem. For instance, he seems to dismiss NASA’s lessons learned database as a simple IT solution without acknowledging that such a database is simply one component (the storage) in a programme that facilitates staff in a process of sharing knowledge gained through experience.

This is one of at least two recent books dealing with this important subject. Dorothy Leonard and Walter Smart’s concern is about the potential loss of tacit knowledge built though many years of experience. Such knowledge is often intuitive, what they call “deep smart” - a somewhat ugly term to define someone’s tacit knowledge. In contrast, David DeLong covers more ground, from the need to build a business case to lessons learned from his various respondent companies. There is a breadth of examples although more depth could have enhanced the value of the chosen case studies. That said, Lost Knowledge is an essential read for those practitioners seeking ideas as to how they can begin to address the future knowledge base of their organisations.

This is not necessarily a book for knowledge managers although there is much to be admired here. It certainly provides ammunition for an alignment of KM and HR strategies and interventions. Most importantly, as Trevor Bayley of NS&IB says elsewhere, addressing the potential of lost knowledge is a simply a case of good management.

Further reading

Dorothy Leonard & Walter Swap (2005). Deep Smarts: Enduring Business Wisdom, Boston, Harvard Business Review Press: ISBN: 1591395283.

Read also the attached case study on knowledge retention at UK's National Savings & Investment Bank and Mike's article "Knowledge retention - replacing the traditional exit interview" at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/2661.