The Wisdom Of Knowledge Transfer

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

By Rob Wright

The baby boomers are hitting 65 this year. So, why is that important to pharma and bio companies? Think about it. For most traditional pharmaceutical companies, senior leadership is made up of baby boomers. What is going to happen when these leaders are gone? Knowledge will be lost, unless the companies are proactive in preserving and transferring this information.

Knowledge transfer refers to the practice of transferring knowledge from one part of an organization to another. Ideally, this process should seek to capture, organize, and distribute knowledge, while ensuring its availability for future users. Sounds easy enough. You could just send a memo to all members of your organization spelling out the need to do knowledge transfer? But wait, how should you send it — in a blog, tweet, text, hard copy, voice mail, email? This is my point. The variety of communication methods I just provided illustrates the difference between generations, how they were taught and how they learn new information. This gap makes the process of knowledge transfer complex.

I recently spoke with Kathy Hagen, a knowledge management consultant. She was describing this dilemma to me. According to Hagen, there are four to five categories of knowledge, depending upon the company:

1. organizational – how things really get done
2. relationship – internal and external
3. business or industry
4. scientific or technical – not just the facts, but the understanding of how and why.
5. depends on the leadership at the top of the organization. If you have high performance leadership, then you have leadership knowledge.

All of this knowledge resides in people and their networks, and much of it is tacit and hard to articulate. Personally, I prefer a different term to describe this type of knowledge — wisdom.

Wisdom exemplifies a deep understanding. Wisdom is the ability to choose or act consistently and produce optimal results with minimal time and energy. It incorporates perceptions, knowledge, and the comprehension of what is right, coupled with optimum judgment as to action. It is the parent who tried to prevent you from having to learn a lesson the hard way. It is the fisherman, who knows not only where and when to fish, but what type of bait to use. Corporate leadership would exhibit wisdom by developing and implementing a knowledge transfer program — sooner, rather than later.