A staff reduction landed in the middle of the knowledge program build.
Six executives were on their way out, and the system meant to hold what they knew was still months from launch. Here's what it took to capture their knowledge before their final dates.
The Situation
A mid-market services business was partway through building a company-wide knowledge management program with Glymr when it implemented a staff reduction. Six executives were leaving, several of them long-tenured, and each held operating knowledge that existed nowhere else — process detail, system and data dependencies, client and relationship history, and open issues that had never been written down because the people carrying them had always been available to ask.
The timing was the problem. The program being built to hold exactly this kind of knowledge was still months from launch, and the departures had dates on the calendar. A standard HR exit interview would not help: those are designed to capture why someone is leaving, not what they know.
What Glymr Did
Glymr ran structured Knowledge Exit Interviews with each departing executive ahead of their final date, working through the responsibilities and recurring decisions they actually owned, how their processes ran in practice rather than as documented, the systems and data they depended on, the relationships and history behind their accounts and internal stakeholders, and the risks and open issues that would otherwise transfer to no one.
Because the knowledge program was already in build, the captured material had somewhere to go. Rather than sitting in a set of one-off interview transcripts, it was structured to become early content in the knowledge base the company was already building.
What Glymr Delivered
- Structured knowledge capture from six outgoing executives, completed before their final dates
- An inventory of the knowledge most at risk of leaving with them
- Specific recommendations for avoiding business disruption after the departures took effect
- Captured material structured for reuse as early content in the knowledge management program still in build
"We had Glymr perform Knowledge Exit Interviews for 6 outgoing executives during a recent reorganization. They were extremely helpful in many ways."
Result
The company identified and documented the knowledge most at risk before the departures took effect, and acted on specific recommendations to avoid disruption — rather than discovering the gaps weeks later, when the people who could have closed them were gone. Glymr's engagement continued through the build-out of the knowledge management program.
Related Reading
Knowledge Exit Interviews address Critical Knowledge Risk at the point it becomes urgent. The durable version of the same protection is a Knowledge Management Program — which is what this company was building when the reorganization arrived.
Find out whether your company's knowledge is usable by the people and AI systems that need it.
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