This video shows what would have to be called a best practice in the world of archery and, for that matter, war, that was forgotten and lost over time. Lars Andersen has rediscovered the technique through careful study and practice. An archer with this skill set, as you will see, could devastate the competition and possibly change the outcome of both battles and wars. Take a look and then think about what practices your company has discovered through the years at the floor level and else where that have been lost due to turnover of employees, poor documentation, poor processes and lack of focus. With the departure of the baby boomer generation we are facing the equivalent of a mass exodus of skilled archers. Time is of the essence to capture their skills and knowledge and create training plans to leverage this knowledge to enlighten future employees. It would be great to capture it from the people but you might also need to go after it else where.
Key areas that might contain existing knowledge could be:
- Technical knowledge could be contained in your drawings, plans, purchasing records, maintenance craftsman's little black books and Computerized Maintenance Management System
- Operational process knowledge could be contained in log books, data historians, recipes, operators little black books
- Business processes knowledge might be found in those dusty manual up on the shelf in your office or old "as is and to be" documents scattered here and there on servers and shelves.
Once you have the knowledge it is useless if you can not find a way to transfer it. It would be like finding the picture of the archer and putting it in your desk drawer. The power is the conversion of history to application through training and communication.
You might choose to use e-learning, face to face training, video, coaching, simulations, project based application, and blended approaches that focus on the learning objectives that are taken away from your best practice documentation. We suggest you look at what you are doing today, what you would like to do different in the future and then determine what skills, knowledge and abilities that you need to communicate to facilitate the cultural change that you are looking for. Through this process you can keep the archers shooting fast and strait and win the war with the competition.
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