At Hallmark, our Senior Support had 15 years of brand knowledge in her head. When she announced her retirement, we had 6 weeks to capture what made her 'just know' which concepts would work. Here's what failed, what worked, and the brutal reality about tacit knowledge capture.

Most approaches to capturing tacit knowledge fail because we treat it like explicit information. You can't just interview someone and expect to get the intuitive decisions that come from years of pattern recognition.

What Actually Worked:

• Shadowing during real decision-making (not retrospective interviews) - I recorded her rejecting concepts in real-time, capturing her immediate reactions
• Real-time explanation while working - Having her talk through live problems revealed the "why" behind her instincts
• Creating decision trees from her actual rejections, not just approvals - The "nos" taught us more than the "yeses"

The research backs this up. As one practitioner notes, when experts just observe without explaining, "there is only so much a person can glean when watching someone write or read on their computer." But when they explain everything in real-time, you capture the mental models that make their expertise valuable. Some people don't share specialized knowledge because they see it as job security.

Questions for you:

1. What's the most critical tacit knowledge in your organization that's at risk?
2. Have you tried knowledge capture interviews? What did you miss?
3. How do you identify tacit knowledge before the person leaves?
4. How do you overcome the "knowledge hoarding" mentality?

The attached article shows some exceptional ways to capture knowledge. It dives into advanced strategies with practical techniques like video-to-text transcription, real-time shadowing, and podcast-style knowledge capture.