Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Chapter 14. Continuity Management in Practice

Knowledge continuity initiatives have been launched in thousands of American organizations wrestling with knowledge loss in the face of high job turnover, downsizing, and impending retirements. Such initiatives are in evidence in EMC Corporation's earnest attempt to preserve the knowledge of its retiring employees through an innovative mentoring program that matches retirees with their successors and in Deloitte Consulting's Senior Leadership Program to preserve the knowledge of its retiring employees. Designed to meet different threats, knowledge continuity initiatives have in common their attempt to preserve some degree of operational knowledge and to transfer that knowledge to other employees before it is lost.

Knowledge Continuity Initiatives

The end of the Cold War brought significant downsizing and consolidation to the defense industry. At that time, Northrop Grumman Air Combat Systems (ACS) found itself in a difficult situation with its B-2 stealth bomber. The plane was nearing the end of its production cycle, but Grumman, as lead contractor, would have to retain support and maintenance capabilities for the remaining decades of the bomber's useful service. As B-2 production wound down and employees prepared to leave, Grumman faced the loss of critical expertise and experience that had been built over decades. In the late 1990s, it instituted a program to preserve the tacit knowledge of B-2 experts by identifying 200 of them in 100 ...