In Part 1 of this three-part series with Amy Bonner, VP of PRINTING AI, PRINTING United Alliance, we explored what print businesses risk losing when experienced employees retire, change roles, or leave the company.
Recognizing the risk is step one. The next challenge is figuring out how to actually capture that institutional knowledge before it heads out the door for good. In Part 2 of Preserving Institutional Knowledge, Bonner shares the mistakes print businesses should avoid, how to identify the knowledge that matters most, and practical ways to capture it.
What are the most common mistakes companies make when they try to preserve institutional knowledge?
There are three, and they’re all the same mistake wearing different clothes. First, treating it as a documentation project. Someone gets asked to “write an SOP” before they retire, and what comes out is a checklist that misses the judgment entirely because the person doesn’t know how to articulate 20 years of pattern recognition on a blank page. It has to be pulled out through structured conversation, not assigned as homework.
Second, waiting for the retirement announcement to start. By then you’re in stage two of that three-stage window, and you’ve already lost your best option.
Read this full article on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
