Let's get to know Jean-Philippe

Concrete and completely fictional case: You are the founder and director of BrouetteCorp, Limousin leader in the connected three-wheeled wheelbarrow market.

Jean-Philippe, fifty-four years old, has been the in-house expert on one of your key processes for twenty years: rounding the wheels. He set it up, only he knows all the details. He is very efficient, quite helpful although not with everyone. During meetings, he raises problems about the vulcanization of rubber that no one understands, to explain, after half an hour of collective panic, how he has already solved them and is congratulated.

Jean-Philippe is not yet a problem for your organization: he is keeping his goals, production has never been so fast and the wheels are so round.

But what happens if he gets sick? If he leaves the company? Or simply if their commitment decreases?

Your attempts to formalize its expertise

You have already tried to convince him to formalize its know-how in one (or several) Word documents, in Notion, in Excels, in Powerpoints... Unsuccessful:”no time with production to ensure”,”too complicated to synthesize”...

You gave him an intern, then an assistant, with the secret mission of doing this formalization work. They left, disgusted, because he did not delegate much to them and did not explain anything to them. “Well, here's the manufacturer's documentation... Ah, by the way, it's not up to date, we've customized the product a lot”

You started to suspect that Jean-Philippe had a slight ill will... unless it was a fear of losing his central place in the company if he shared his knowledge?

But then what to do?

Some possible solutions

• Value transmission, not expertise.
  ‍Either through individual objectives, which will include time for training or Transmission of knowledge, a numerical objective of processes covered or people trained.
  Or, more innovative, by abandoning individual objectives for support functions, which all too often result in this type of information retention strategies, in favor of collective objectives.

• Consider how it can evolve.
  The Jean-Philippes are often found in pyramidal structures that offer senior positions to managers and leave experts under a glass ceiling. So what other choice for the Jean-Philippe family than to cling to their expertise? What would their next position be? There are solutions to allow these experts to evolve: create Squads transversal experts for the largest structures, create an internal academy and offer them a training position, integrate them into a tutoring program (“mentoring”), freeing them up part of their time.‍

• Think about your company culture.
  ‍Is collaboration at the heart of your company's values? Is the high level of demand on results (we do not know any company that claims to be undemanding on results) accompanied by a strong individualization of objectives and directive management? It should be clear to Jean-Philippe that they will not lose anything by sharing, and that on the contrary, you value this time spent making such precious knowledge accessible to others.‍

• And of course, offer them a quick and easy way to pass on their knowledge (randomly, Komin.io).
  Jean-Philippe will no longer be able to hide behind the arguments of time, repetition, difficulty in synthesizing or inadequate format. He might even get a taste for it (in fact, we're sure, but let's stay modest).

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