Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Preserving Knowledge the Right Way
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
When it comes to overlooked areas within the enterprise, a commitment to an ongoing knowledge transfer process has to rank near the top. Few organizations consciously think about the need to formalize this process, because for the most part it has no immediate benefit. Like saving for retirement, it seems there will always be time tomorrow. But nothing could be further from the truth, especially in IT. As a consultant I can’t begin to tell you how many times my clients have expressed their feeling of being held hostage by a select few within IT for no other reason than those people are the only ones that know how to support “The System.”
Ignoring the need to continuously codify and transfer knowledge within the organization is playing fast and loose with needless risk. Knowledge transfer should be part of every organization’s crisis management preparedness process. To know where the organization is at risk in the knowledge arena, ask yourself the following question:
What employees, if lost, could have a material impact on the organization’s ability to function successfully over the next one to three months?
For each person identified there exists a knowledge transfer shortfall. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, since you may not know all the high-risk knowledge repositories nor have any mechanism …
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"Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves." - Bertrand Russell |