Our 3-Step Process

The Knowledge Silo Matrix formats the results from our detailed information-gathering process into a simple grid that can be explained in minutes. It charts the degree of technical and professional expertise held by individual workers in a group or team relative to the knowledge areas—called silos—of your business (i.e. processes, tools, platforms, standards, systems, products, customers, physical locations, and history). The Knowledge Silo Matrix (KSM) reveals, in a glance, your talent shortages, redundancies, lack of backups, overloading, and more – collectively your talent risk profile. With our help, the KSM can be filled out for a typical team or division in a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months. The tool is scalable from small teams to enterprise-wide solutions.

After gathering KSM data for each team, you can compare and analyze the talent data of all your various teams. Then you can use this data up and down your organization to make better decisions. We teach your organization how to have informed talent-related conversations—grounded in the KSM data and using a common lexicon. And, we facilitate alignment meetings so that you can agree on which risks to prioritize for mitigation. With our clear framework, process and facilitation—and with your talent data laid plain for all—true alignment is not only possible, it is relatively quick and painless to achieve.

Once your organization is aligned on priorities, you can use our core knowledge transfer tools—the Skill Development Plan and the Knowledge Transfer Workshop to mitigate your talent risk. All our knowledge transfer tools are highly practical and designed for on-the-job use with even the most technical roles and busy experts. The Skill Development Plan (SDP) is a custom, date-driven schedule of skills and knowledge that must be learned in a given job role—along with the resources and mentors available to support that learning and a way to confirm that the right knowledge has been transferred. We also teach your organization how to act on your plan. The Knowledge Transfer Workshop provides 15 proven techniques for transferring a critical expert’s information, know-how, and tacit knowledge to their apprentice coworkers. And, we help you drive to completion of your risk reduction, tracking your efforts and training your leaders so that you have confidence that your risk is mitigated and your team is ready. By embedding 3-step Talent Risk Management in your organization, you make both a short term and long term play—staffing your current strategy while protecting your business’s future productivity, innovation, and competitive edge.