Organizations often wait too long to target and capture the lessons learned and takeaways gained from senior leaders’ experience and tenure. As a result, when senior executives leave or retire, key nuggets of institutional knowledge often leave with them. Knowledge transfer in the workplace refers to capturing, refining, organizing, and sharing knowledge across all levels of an organization so that knowledge can be used in beneficial ways. 

Organizations can prevent the unnecessary loss of essential knowledge by having structured conversations with key personnel before they leave their organization. This is one example of a tacit knowledge transfer activity, capturing knowledge that resides in people’s heads. These conversations, also known as knowledge transfer interviews, can enable smoother transitions between leaders, ensure continuity in organizational performance, and reduce the risk of repeating past mistakes or missteps. 

Capturing knowledge is the first step in making the most out of tacit/institutional knowledge activities. The next step is taking that knowledge and making it findable, reusable, and machine-readable with semantics to add context and/or content structure for ease of application to add real value to an organization. Retaining knowledge in a findable, action-oriented, and/or AI-ready format will transform knowledge transfer interview outcomes from interesting tidbits into valuable, distributable knowledge assets for companies to benefit from. 

In the following sections, this blog will break down the steps to conducting successful knowledge transfer interviews so that anyone can employ this technique at their organization and retain critical knowledge from experienced personnel. It will conclude with a discussion about how to enhance the knowledge gathered so it can be applied in the future. In all, conducting knowledge transfer interviews and subsequently transforming interview outcomes into a machine-readable, reusable format is a crucial strategy organizations should seek to employ. 

Preparing For The Interview: Identifying Critical Knowledge for Retention

1. Define and Prioritize Outcomes

To prepare for the interview, determine clear outcomes to obtain from the conversations with the interviewee, such as ensuring continuity in leadership or mitigating risks associated with leadership turnover. Reflect on what this knowledge capture will enable or who it will benefit, and prioritize outcomes accordingly (i.e., “Given this interviewee’s position, these are the top 3 pieces of information to walk away from this conversation with”). A clear outcome will ensure that interview sessions are efficient, focused, and targeted. While determining interview outcomes, plan for how and where interview takeaways (“aha” moments, lessons learned, preventable mistakes) will be captured so the knowledge gathered can be leveraged by the organization and others who can benefit.

2. Set Up an Interview Schedule

In most cases, multiple interviews will be necessary to achieve all desired interview outcomes. A particular topic might spark anecdotes or branch off into different topics. These segways can lead to the interviewee sharing unexpected but relevant and critical takeaways (it is amazing what stories will surface given the right amount of time!) that might not otherwise surface in a one-time session. Having multiple meetings helps account for the unexpected. Similarly, allotting enough time per session can be the difference between an uncomfortable interviewee and someone who is ready to open up. Plan multiple sessions for no less than 45 minutes and no longer than 60 minutes each, giving the interviewee enough time to get comfortable with the format and to start digging deeper into their experiences and expertise. If possible, consider recording the interview sessions to ensure the knowledge shared is accurately captured. Be sure to ask for the consent of your interviewee before recording.

3. Prepare A Guide For the Interviewee

An interview guide is a document that outlines the major topic areas–not the questions themselves–that the interview session will cover. Create an interview guide as part of the interview invitation to allow participants to think through the chosen topics and organize their thoughts ahead of the interview. A prepared interviewee can get to the most important nuggets of their knowledge more readily, making the most out of the limited time together. In addition to being a valuable resource for the interviewee, the practice of creating the guide will aid the interviewer in developing focused, on-topic interview questions.

4. Develop the Interview Questions

It is important to align interview questions with prioritized interview outcomes to direct the conversation and ensure all topics are covered. The aforementioned interview guide will aid in the development of focused questions. Even with interview outcomes as the underlying logic for question creation, developed questions should not be viewed as a strict script for the interviewer to follow. Instead, use the interview questions and outcomes as a guide, leaving room for adjustments and the ability to be flexible as the conversation flows. 

To get started developing interview questions, consider the following helpful categories.

• Contextual Background – Consider the interviewee’s current role and associated responsibilities. Seek to understand the context for their transition out of their current role. This background information will help set the stage for lessons learned and takeaways for future leaders in their role. 
  
• Knowledge Specific to their Role – Determine the expectations for their position. Ask about key mission successes and what factors could contribute to the success of their successor. Find out about the surprises the interviewee faced in their role or expectations about their role, frustrations they dealt with, pressing challenges, and how they overcame or addressed them. These strategies could directly apply to a successor and prevent repeated missteps or mistakes. Consider asking questions about how the organization could have made fuller use of the interviewee’s capabilities and expertise. Explore the culture of the organization and the ways it might affect how the role is executed (internal politics, etc.).
  
• Task-Specific Information – Focus the interviewee on describing a specific, demanding task. Have them break down the steps of the task and address factors such as complexity, time, criticality, and knowledge needed to execute successfully. Honing in on one activity can assist the interviewee in digging deeper into their time in the role, rather than providing generalized, high-level descriptions or takeaways.
  
• Summary and Wrap-Up – Wrap up the interview by inquiring about things the interviewee wished they had known before starting the job, and any advice they would offer to a future team. The end of the interview also provides a great opportunity to reflect on the interview thus far, potentially prompting insights that the interviewee had not initially surfaced. Ask the interviewee to summarize the three most important things about the role and anything else the interview may not have covered.
  

Conducting The Interview: Capturing High-Value Knowledge For Future Use

Once you have prepared for the interviews (set your interview intentions, created and passed along an interview guide to your interviewee, and developed interview questions), it is time to conduct the interview. When carrying out the interview, keep in mind the following advice:

1. Step into the interview with an open mind, leaving bias and opinions at the door.

2. Build trust by establishing confidentiality. At a later stage, key messages will be identified and sent back to the interviewee for their agreement to publish.

3. Strike a balance between free-ranging conversation and digging into real stories by looking for specific answers.

4. Be alert to the focus of the interviewee’s energy, focus, and interests, following their lead to areas of interest or concern.

5. Develop the interviewee’s train of thought by asking follow-up questions.

6. Ensure the focus is on the interviewee by refraining from telling stories or drawing conclusions based on what was said.

7. Request any artifacts mentioned in the interview and plan to follow up on obtaining them.

Try to hit on the topics that will be most valuable to others, using interview questions as a guide, rather than a strict script to stick to.

After The Interview: Codifying and Distributing the Knowledge

Knowledge transfer is not complete until the knowledge is made accessible to others. Once the interview sessions have concluded, review what has been said, send copies of potentially useful quotes to the interviewee for approval,  and look for key learnings to include in a final knowledge asset. A knowledge asset is a shared resource within an organization that captures and codifies insights, lessons learned, know-how, guidance, and other useful knowledge to enable staff to better conduct their work and make informed decisions. A great first step for creating the final knowledge asset would be compiling written documentation divided into sections based on subject matter or topic, with key takeaways or interview quotes. 
To make the knowledge asset even more meaningful and reusable, consider taking steps to prepare the knowledge asset for future applications (such as an input for AI or large language models). Here are some other content-related tips to get the most out of a final knowledge asset:

1. Utilize a centralized authoring platform to manage content in one place, leverage content types to standardize the final knowledge asset, and break content into semantically meaningful sections so they can stand on their own apart from the asset as a whole. 

2. Apply metadata tagging or a dynamic content model as part of a semantic layer, for example, to structure and semantically enrich the knowledge asset. 

3. Beware, even the prettiest reports get lost in people’s inboxes! Make a plan for circulating the final knowledge asset to those who will benefit from it and store it in an accessible, searchable, and centralized location where future knowledge transfer interview outcomes can also live.

Knowledge transfer interviews can also prompt additional actions like updates to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and policies. These actions can embed valuable knowledge into the organization’s day-to-day business–a significant knowledge management accomplishment. 

In addition to the creation of a knowledge asset, potential takeaways resulting from transition interview distillation and analysis can fall into two categories: (1) what was effective/what could be changed, and (2) strategic improvement opportunities. 

Closing

Knowledge transfer interviews with departing senior leadership can be a highly effective element of succession planning. The knowledge of the transitioning team member has immense value, which is especially relevant in roles where the team member has accumulated a significant amount of knowledge and personal connections. This practical guide can be a starting place for planning interview sessions, rather than waiting until it is too late to capture these invaluable insights. Adding in content and semantic strategies to prepare interview takeaways for AI can be the difference between knowledge simply captured and knowledge utilized and leveraged to benefit the organization, individuals, or business functions in the future. Effective knowledge capture and transfer results in knowledge that is findable, reusable, and AI-ready.  

Want to learn more about how EK can support knowledge capture and transfer efforts and transform your knowledge assets to be AI-ready? Contact us!