Insider knowledge: why experience matters

When starting a new job, it quickly becomes obvious that everything you need to know isn’t written in the job description. It’s not even easily conveyed through manuals, policy documents or conversations. Mostly, it’s picked up “on the job” and builds over time.

It can take months, but more likely years, to figure out what makes an organization tick. So it follows that for most organizations, up to 90% of institutional knowledge is stored in the heads of employees. With many years worth of ‘mental knowledge storing’, long-term employees have an awful lot invested in their employer’s success, and vice versa.

However, as we know the only real constant is change, it’s important to ensure that employees with solid institutional knowledge are aligned with key positions—where their knowledge will translate into results instead of being lost in the shuffle of change.

The other key to stemming the flow of lost knowledge is to encourage people to share the knowledge they have, and this means fostering a culture that encourages and rewards this kind of behavior. It’s rarely on the top of managers’ priority lists, but it should be—when key knowledge walks, everyone feels the impact.

Read more in my latest white paper The Impact of Talent.