Leadership transitions, tacit knowledge sharing and organizational generativity

Leadership transitions, tacit knowledgesharing and organizational generativity

Melissa Peet

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present results from a two-part study that tests the efficacy of

a methodology for tacit knowledge retrieval, validation and sharing known as generative knowledge

interviewing with a group of senior leaders in a non-profit organization, and then assesses the impact of

that process on leaders, managers and knowledge creation efforts across the organization two years

later.

Design/methodology/approach – Researchers triangulated several different types of qualitative data

collection and methods of analysis during a 30-month period.

Findings – Earlier results showed the retiring leader’s tacit ‘‘core capacities’’ were successfully

retrieved, validated and shared with the new leaders in just four interviews. Two years later, these core

capacities and aspects of the generative knowledge interviewing methodology were being used across

the organization to improve knowledge sharing as well as recruitment, mentoring, coaching and training

processes. The changes that emerged focused talent management and human resource efforts,

leading to considerable cost reductions.

Practical implications – Results are applicable to leadership development, succession planning,

talent management and knowledge creation efforts within public, non-profit and private sectors.

Originality/value – The author proposes the concept of ‘‘organizational generativity’’ to describe the

dynamics that facilitated positive organizational change. Although there is growing evidence regarding

the types of conditions that enable knowledge creation, these conditions often take years to create. This

paper demonstrates how a specific methodology can be used to identify, document and transfer senior

leaders’ tacit knowledge during the short period of time that often accompanies leadership transitions,

and then use this knowledge to leverage long-term talent management gains.

Keywords Tacit knowledge, Succession planning, Knowledge creation, Knowledge transfer,Leadership, Leadership development, Management succession

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Experts and leaders within most fields possess essential knowledge that is largely tacit and

unconscious in nature. They often do not ‘‘know what they know’’ and cannot share their tacit

knowledge with others (Polanyi, 1966). When leaders move to another position or depart an

organization altogether, the loss of their essential ‘‘know-how’’ is often quite costly, especially

for non-profit organizations. In a 2008 survey of employee turnover in the non-profit sector,

81 percent of respondents reported that their organization was currently looking to fill a

management or leadership position (see OK Report, 2008). Within public and non-profit

sectors, results from the field of education (including higher education) showed the highest

levels of concern with regards to the soaring cost of management and leadership turnover

(see OK Report, 2008). Although costs will only rise as baby boomers continue to retire (see

OK Report, 2010), less than a third of US organizations are likely to have had discussions

related to succession planning, leadership transitions or knowledge sharing (Bell et al., 2006).

DOI 10.1108/13673271211198936 VOL. 16 NO. 1 2012, pp. 45-60, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1367-3270 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j PAGE 45

Melissa Peet is based at the

Department of Periodontics

and Oral Medicine, School

of Dentistry, University of

Michigan, Ann Arbor,

Michigan, USA.

Received: March 2011Revised: August 2011Accepted: August 2011

Turnover within the fund-raising profession presents a particular challenge for public higher

education institutions in the US as they are increasingly dependent upon philanthropy and

fund-raising for survival. As federal, state and local budgets continue to decline, institutions

must depend on fund-raising professionals to establish resource streams with donors and

philanthropic foundations. Yet despite the growing need for these talented professionals,

there is no educational or professional pipeline for this work. Thus, it is not surprising that in

nearly all non-profit and public sectors, fund-raising positions have the highest employee

turnover and remain unfilled longer than all other positions (see OK Report, 2008, 2010).

Moreover, there is not yet a body of formal knowledge to support this profession (Kelly, 2002,

pp. 45-46). Current leaders have acquired their knowledge largely through informal

on-the-job experience. With no formal discipline, theoretical base or frames of reference

from which to draw upon, the tacit knowledge of these leaders is especially difficult to

identify, retrieve and share with others. Of course, the challenge of retrieving and sharing the

tacit knowledge of leaders is not limited to the field of fund-raising (Nonaka and Takeuchi,

1995). The prohibitive cost of leadership turnover in every sector is well documented

(Phillips and Reisman, 1992; Van Hook, 2004; Employment Policy Foundation, 2004; Hall

and Preston, 2010). The case study presented here, conducted with a group of ten senior

leaders and talent management team members/managers in a successful fund-raising

organization at a large public research institution in the US (referred to as Midwest Public

Research Institution or MPRI throughout this paper), explores, analyzes and theorizes anew

about how to retrieve, identify and share the essential tacit knowledge that leaders possess.

This study emerged in response to a particularly challenging, yet all too common,

circumstance in which a well-respected ‘‘legendary’’ senior leader decided to retire. This

leader had worked for over 20 years in the organization, helping to build one of the most

successful fund-raising infrastructures in all of US public higher education. At the beginning

of the study, two new leaders had already been hired to replace this retiring leader. With the

guidance of a talent management team, efforts to cross-train and facilitate knowledge

sharing among the three leaders (the retiring leader and the two new leaders) had been

underway for several months. Yet, despite these well-coordinated efforts, the true nature of

the retiring leader’s knowledge – the very source of her success – remained elusive. One of

the new leaders described the knowledge disconnect in the following way:Q I can see the

results of what she is doing, but I don’t know how she gets there.In an effort to identify and

share the knowledge needed for successful leadership transition, in early 2008 the three

leaders participated in the first phase of this study, which focused on testing the efficacy of a

method of tacit knowledge retrieval, verification and transfer known as generative

knowledge interviewing (GKI)[1]. The results from this initial phase (see Peet et al., 2011)

showed that the methodology was effective in helping new leaders identify, validate and

personally relate to the retiring leader’s tacit knowledge in only four group interviews

(exceeding the leaders’ initial expectations). Early results also showed that the three leaders

and several members of the organization’s talent management team felt quite positive about

the insights and knowledge gained from this process and identified numerous ways they

intended to use the knowledge gained from this effort in various areas of their work.

The purpose of this paper is to present results from the follow-up phase of this study, which

began two years after the initial knowledge transfer process was completed (in total the two

phases covered a 30-month period) in order to better understand the temporal and social

issues involved in organizational knowledge creation. This follow-up inquiry focused on

exploring the impact of the initial knowledge transfer process on the perceptions and

experiences of senior leaders and talent management team members over time, including

the specific types of decisions, actions and strategies they engaged in as they translated the

knowledge and insights gained from the initial knowledge transfer effort into various human

resource, talent management and knowledge creation processes. The following sections

describe the organizational context in which the study took place as well as provide an

overview of the theory and steps of generative knowledge interviewing and a detailed

analysis of the kinds of individual, group and organizational changes that emerged in the two

and half years that followed the initial knowledge transfer process.

PAGE 46 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTj VOL. 16 NO. 1 2012

2. Background and context

MPRI consistently leads among public research universities in the US in generating

resources through fund-raising and philanthropy efforts. In late 2008, it completed a 3.8

billion dollar capital campaign, the largest in public higher education history, despite the fact

that the institution is located in a state that has one of the worst unemployment rates in the US

Since there is no formal curriculum for educating fund-raising professionals, the Office of

Development’s (OUD) talent management team is responsible for addressing the significant

personnel and training needs of more than 400 employees (including support staff, student

interns, gift officers, managers and leaders) across MRPI.

In late 2007, the leader of the OUD talent management team learned that generative

knowledge interviewing (GKI) was being successfully used in a number of academic units to

help students identify, connect and synthesize both their tacit and explicit knowledge

(MPortfolio Status Report, 2009). The OUD leader asked to experiment with this method for

the purpose of helping senior leaders and managers identify, validate and share the tacit

knowledge essential to their work.

3. Literature review

Tacit knowledge is often referred to as knowing ‘‘more than we can tell’’ (Polanyi, 1966, p. 4).

Nonaka and Takeuchi have also described it as the unconscious and subjective ‘‘insights,

intuitions, and hunches,’’ including both technical ‘‘know-how’’ (the knowledge needed to do

something) and ‘‘know-why’’ (the frames of reference, assumptions and values that guide

decision-making). Polyani also asserted that tacit knowledge involves ‘‘indwelling’’ (Polanyi,

1966, p. 17), the fact that we come to know something by identifying with it personally

(i.e. when a scientist relies on or ‘‘indwells’’ with a theory to help him/her make sense of data).

Even though tacit knowledge ‘‘rests’’ within an individual, it is also entirely relational and

embedded in people’s responses to different contexts and conditions (Polanyi, 1966). Tacit

knowing is therefore dynamic, always emerging and receding in relation to people, places,

ideas and experiences. Nonaka and Takeuchi posit that tacit knowledge emerges through

‘‘ba’’ or ‘‘the place of knowledge-making’’ that is created through the connections that exist

between people, ideas, and physical/virtual spaces (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).

Since tacit knowledge is seen as critical to the success of groups and organizations

(Drucker, 1991), recent scholarly work has focused on how organizations can create

conditions that enable knowledge creation, i.e. ‘‘the process of making available and

amplifying knowledge created by individuals [. . .] and connecting it to an organization’s

knowledge system’’ (Nonaka et al., 2006, pp. 1179-1193). Choo and Alvarenga Neto (2010)

reviewed hundreds of articles (over a decade of research) in order to identify the conditions

that enable knowledge creation in organizations. They identified the following four

dimensions (Choo and Alvarenga Neto, 2010, p. 596):

1. Social/behavioral. Social relationships and interactions based on norms and values such

as trust, care, empathy, attentive inquiry and tolerance.

2. Cognitive/epistemic. The need for both epistemic diversity and common knowledge or

shared epistemic practices (i.e. common terms) and commitments.

3. Information systems/management. The use of information systems and information

management processes to support knowledge-sharing activities.

4. Strategy/structure. The need for the organization and its management to provide direction

and structure for knowledge sharing and knowledge management.

Of these four dimensions, there is far more research on the information systems and

strategy/structure dimensions than on social behavioral and cognitive epistemic.

Although evidence suggests that high functioning organizations are heavily influenced by

the tacit knowledge of leaders who often create ‘‘the learning curve’’ for others to follow

(Kikoski and Kikoski, 2004), few studies have explored the efficacy or impact of specific

VOL. 16 NO. 1 2012 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTj PAGE 47

methods that can be used for identifying, sharing and expanding upon leaders’ tacit

knowledge during critical periods of leadership transition and beyond. Given the fact that

leadership transitions require considerable knowledge-sharing during relatively short

periods of time (Ruggles, 1998; O’Leary, 1998; Droege and Hoobler, 2003; Dalkir, 2005), this

is a significant gap.

Although several studies have explored methods of tacit knowledge transfer for competitive

advantage (Criscuolo et al., 2009; Arikan, 2009; Davis, 2009; Lichtenthaler, 2009), they have

been limited in scope and context. Most focus on the limitations of information systems for

fostering knowledge transfer (Linde, 2001; Stenmark, 2000). Growing evidence suggests

that electronic ‘‘lessons learned’’ systems, which focus on collecting and archiving

narratives, have not fulfilled their promise largely because they have failed to address the

fact that learning from stories is a social process (Linde, 2001).

The literature related to identifying and sharing tacit knowledge generally focuses on the

need to build norms of trust and facilitate storytelling in ways that emphasize context and

experience (Denning, 2001; Linde, 2001; Von Krogh et al., 2000). Linde suggests that new

leaders adapt to their roles by learning the stories of their organization (Linde, 2001). Yet

despite the growing emphasis on storytelling, relatively little is known about the kinds of

stories that need to be told, how those stories should be prompted and documented, or the

ways in which people need to be guided to respond to those stories in order for knowledge

sharing to occur. As Linde points out, ‘‘true’’ storytelling involves listeners who hear,

comment upon, relate to and ask questions about a story, but this social dimension is largely

ignored in the knowledge management literature (Linde, 2001).

Furthermore, the temporal issues involved in effective storytelling and knowledge sharing

are also not addressed in the literature. Very little is known about the best ways to validate

and document stories so that others will be able to identify and translate key insights from

those stories at a later time. The literature has not addressed how knowledge or insights

gleaned from a narrative may change, evolve or even diminish over time. Thus, the assertion

that storytelling can support effective knowledge sharing and thereby enhance

organizational functioning is not yet supported by methods that address the social and

temporal dimensions of knowledge creation. The focus of this study on testing a specific

methodology for tacit knowledge sharing, and then exploring the short and longer-term

impact of that methodology on knowledge creation and organizational functioning, will begin

addressing the gaps in the literature mentioned here.

4. Generative knowledge interviewing

Generative knowledge interviewing (GKI), the method of tacit knowledge retrieval, validation

and sharing used in this study, was developed as a result of a large participatory action

research effort within a professional school at MRPI between 2002-2006 (Peet, 2006a, b,

2010). The goal of the research was to develop a curriculum for educating leaders,

entrepreneurs and change agents. The researchers learned early that in order to become

change agents, students needed to access, identify and synthesize the tacit and explicit

knowledge they were gaining from both academic courses and real-life experiences. GKI

was developed in response to this need. Since 2006, GKI has been utilized across many

departments and units at MRPI, and due to its success, it is now being adopted by other

academic institutions[2] as well (FIPSE, 2010).

Similar to the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi, the approaches and concepts underlying GKI

are premised on the concept that human growth and development are governed by the

principles of complexity and dynamic self-organizing systems (Kelso, 1995). In this view of

human development, disequilibrium, fluctuation and change are constant. Human ‘‘growth’’

is characterized as a spiral process in which human beings are seen as unfolding and

emergent organisms that are constantly evolving and expressing newer and higher-ordered

patterns of complexity (Kelso, 1995). As people learn to adapt to new information,

relationships, conditions, they are continuously developing new neural networks, patterns


and ways of knowing. In relation to generative knowledge interviewing, these principles of

complexity and self-organization are relevant in the following ways:

1. Only a few elements or parameters are needed to generate order and similarity. Each

person possesses a unique set of ‘‘coordinating parameters,’’ a core group of

qualities/capacities that cause him/her to respond to chaos, complexity, fluctuation and

change in self-similar ways.

2. New patterns evolve as people continually adapt to their environment. As an individual

encounters new information, he/she develops new connections and neural networks. If

strengthened, these connections create new patterns of responses and new forms of tacit

knowledge.

3. Patterns of responses are an expression of tacit knowledge. As an individual responds to

life, each of her/his responses is an expression of her/his coordinating parameters and

tacit knowledge – the unique strengths, capacities, etc. that enable growth in self-similar

ways.

4. Individual responses can be ‘‘decoded’’ to reveal tacit knowledge. An individual or group

can be prompted to share stories in ways that reveal their patterns of responses and

make the coordinating parameters and tacit core capacities generating those responses

visible. Thus, it is possible to first identify and then reinforce the unique set of core

capacities that fosters optimal growth within an individual or group.

GKI, however, involves far more than prompting people to tell stories. In fact, storytelling is

just the beginning. The most crucial aspect of GKI is listening – a kind of ‘‘generative’’

listening whereby the interviewer seeks to dwell within the speaker’s stories, listening for and

discerning the tacit ‘‘core capacities’’ which are embedded within those stories but are not

actually spoken[3]. The interview process is deemed to be generative because it is focused

on identifying and weaving together the speakers’ tacit strengths and capacities; the

speaker’s stories act as ‘‘strips of experiences that bring a sense of energy and aliveness

[. . .] and also have the potential to produce more enduring expansive and transformative

consequences’’ (Carlsen and Dutton, 2011).

GKI also involves the verification and documentation of core capacities through the following

steps:

1. Intending and focusing. The interviewer helps the speaker(s) clarify the goals of the

interview: what they would like to learn and how they will use the knowledge gained.

2. Indwelling and storytelling. The interviewer seeks to get ‘‘inside’’ the speakers’

experiences by asking them to tell stories about key learning, work, and/or life

experiences, while paying attention to the speakers’ perceptions, actions and decisions

within the story.

3. Identifying and explicating. The interviewer prompts the speaker to ‘‘unpack’’ key words,

while he/she listens for themes, ideas, images or words that emerge in response to the

stories but are not actually spoken by the speaker.

4. Aligning and verifying. The interviewer shares the ideas, words, themes they discerned

from the speakers’ stories to see if they resonate with the speaker. As needed, the

interviewer repeats steps 2-4 prompting additional stories until the interviewee’s core

capacities are fully identified, verified and documented.

5. Anchoring and amplifying. The interviewer prompts the speaker to connect his/her core

capacities into an understanding of his/her roles and identities across various contexts

and imagine how knowledge of these core capacities can help him/her respond to the

world around him/her.

The application of these steps for the purpose of this study is described below.


4.1 Phase 1 – knowledge retrieval interviews and initial documentation of core capacities

This phase involved the three senior leaders participating together in 2 two-hour generative

knowledge interviews (GKIs) scheduled three weeks apart. A member of the talent

management teamalsoattended thesegroup interviews in order to learn theprocessand take

verbatimnotes.Duringeach interview, theretiring leaderwasaskedtodescribe indetail stories

about different areas of her work (e.g. with donors, deans, and other OUD staff), including the

context and sequenceof her experiences: things she noticed, decisions shemade (andwhy),

challenges she faced, ‘‘a-ha’’ moments she experienced, etc. The new leaders provided

additional insights that helped the retiring leader describe her experiences more fully.

Toward the end of these two interviews, the researcher shared some of the initial tacit

knowledge themes she had identified from the interview and asked for clarification and

feedback from the leaders. The leaders responded affirmatively, saying ‘‘yes, that’s right

[. . .] I never thought about it that way before, but that’s exactly what we do.’’ Immediately

following each interview, the researcher compared her detailed process notes with the

verbatim notes of the talent management teammember to resolve any discrepancies. Within

a week of each interview, the researcher wrote and/or revised the ‘‘core capacities’’

document in order to articulate the tacit knowledge themes (and an illustrative example of

each capacity) identified during the interviews. This document was then sent to the three

senior leaders for feedback.

4.2 Phase 2 – verification interviews and validation of core capacities

The two generative knowledge interviews in this phase focused on identifying, testing and

aligning the new leaders’ stories with those of the retiring leader. The first interview focused

on retrieving the stories of the two new leaders in order to see how their stories informed and

expanded upon the core capacities identified from the retiring leader’s stories. In this way,

generative knowledge interviewing was used as a method of constant comparison, a

validation strategy widely used in analyzing qualitative data (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The

leaders were asked to tell stories about their work and address topics not discussed

previously in order to see if the core capacities continued to be applicable to their new

stories. When disconnections emerged, an existing capacity was changed and/or a new one

was created with input from the leaders. Data saturation and analytic validation (Glaser and

Strauss, 1967) of the core capacities emerged by the end of the third interview when the

leaders agreed that they could not identify any additional stories that could change,

disprove and/or expand upon the core capacities document.

The fourth interview focusedoncompleting theverificationand transferprocessbyhelping the

new leaders ‘‘anchor’’ and ‘‘amplify’’ their new knowledge vis-a-vis their new roles and

identitiesassenior leaders.Theretiring leaderdidnotattendthis interview.Thetwonewleaders

were prompted to tell stories about how they expressed the core capacities in their previous

roles and in the work they were already doing in OUD. The interviewer used these stories to

validate the language and examples of each of the core capacities, making sure they

accurately reflected thewordsandexperiencesof thenew leaders.Next, the two leaderswere

prompted to tell stories of how they embodied the core capacities in their personal lives. After

telling these personal stories, the leaders decided that the knowledge transfer process was a

successandtheyno longerneededadditional interviews.Finally, the interviewerprompted the

amplification process even further by asking the leaders what they had learned from the GKI

processand if/howtheymightuse thecorecapacitiesdocumentand/orstorytellingmethods in

their work (e.g. for training managers, identifying potential donors, etc.).

5. Research methods

5.1 Participants

Although the initial knowledge transfer process involved only three senior leaders and one

member of the talent management team, the follow-up inquiry involved an additional six

members of the OUD talent management team who underwent training in generative

knowledge interviewing six months after the initial knowledge transfer process was


completed. Thus, the study included ten participants altogether, all of them women (nine

white and one African-American). Of these, the three senior leaders (ages 50-65) were

involved in various aspects of creating both long- and short-term organizational strategies

for OUD, working with major donors and building a robust fund-raising infrastructure at

MRPI. The seven talent Management team members (ages 27-47) were responsible for

developing a learning organization and creating the conditions needed for knowledge

creation and sharing among the more than 400 office of development staff.

5.2 Methods

Qualitative research utilizes different approaches and methods (Lincoln and Guba, 1994),

depending on the goals of the study. Since the purpose of this study was to understand how

a group of senior leaders and managers made sense of the tacit knowledge retrieval and

sharing processes, as well as the decisions, actions and steps they took as a result of that

process, the researcher used an interpretive approach. This approach is based on the

assumption that people generate their realities both ‘‘from within’’ (through their own tacit

and unconscious interpretive schemas and frames of reference) and ‘‘from without’’

(through the different cultural, social, economic and institutional forces that shape their lives)

(Holstein and Gubrium, 1994). This approach is ideal for exploring peoples’ accounts (their

stories) of how and what they perceive, think and feel in response to ‘‘the unfolding features

of social settings’’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 1994, p. 265). In this study, the GKI method was

used to explicate how the senior leaders responded to the ‘‘unfolding features’’ of their work

as leaders within OUD.

5.3 Data collection

Several different types of qualitative data were collected during both the initial knowledge

transfer process with the senior leaders and during the follow-up inquiry process two years

later. The data collection methods for both phases include the following:

1. Verbatim notes of four knowledge transfer generative knowledge interviews with the three

senior leaders.

2. Six iterations of the core capacities document.

3. Five follow-up interviews with four members of the talent management team and one of

the new senior leaders (the other leader was not available).

4. The researcher’s observation notes from both interviews with three senior leaders and the

follow-up interviews with the talent management team members.

5. Two-page reflection documents written by members of the talent management team

during a two-day GKI training held in Spring 2009.

6. Key documents created by the talent management team that applied core capacities

and/or steps of GKI to various human resource and talent management efforts (e.g.

creating interview questions and coaching guides).

7. Final ‘‘member-check’’ interviews with three members of the talent management team to

review and comment upon the research results (see Tables I and II in results section).

5.4 Analysis

Transcripts from interviews, detailed notes from GKIs, six iterations of the core capacities

document, and the researcher’s observation notes were entered into the qualitative software

NVIVO and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This approach allowed the

researcher to develop a series of queries that identified common patterns and themes

(Glaser and Strauss, 1967). These themes revealed how participants constructed meaning

about their roles as leaders and the ways in which the GKI process changed identities and/or

the ways in which they engaged in their professional practices. Throughout the process of

analysis, the researcher used various strategies to ensure validity of the findings:

1. Member checking. Having subjects verify the researcher’s notes, documentation and

conclusions at each phase.


2. Inter-rater reliability. The researcher worked with an assistant to achieve over 90 percent

agreement on all codes and themes.

3. The methods of constant comparison. Testing and refining initial themes by comparing

those themes to additional and progressively more complex data (Glaser and Strauss,

1967).

6. Results

Due to the confidentiality agreement with participants, it is not possible to share the core

capacities document. Rather, the results presented below focus on the impact of the GKI

process on leaders, managers and the Office of Development (OUD) during the two years

following the initial knowledge transfer process.

6.1 Decisions and actions that lead to knowledge creation

With regards to the impact of the leadership transition that prompted this study, the results in

Table I demonstrate how OUD leaders and managers created organizational change

through insights, decisions and actions that emerged as a result of the GKI process from

April 2008 until June 2010. During all follow-up interviews, participants reported that the

Table I Steps that fostered generative knowledge creation over time

April 2008-January 2009 February 2009-December 2009 January 2010-June 2010

Steps that enabled generativity Knowledge transfer w/leadersCapacity in talent managementteam Organizational transformations

Intending and focusing –identifying participants’ goalsfor the tacit knowledge retrievaland knowledge creationprocess

Decided to try GKI process withSr. leaders to identify andtransfer a retiring leader’s tacitknowledge to new leaders

Developed plan for TM team tobetter understand corecapacities and learn the basicsof GKI to improve hiring andmentoring practices

Continued to identify ways tointegrate core capacities,reflection and storytelling intoeverything; ‘‘spread what we’velearned as far as possible’’

Indwelling and retrieving–surfacing’ participants’ keystrengths, assumptions andlearning through GKI questions

Conducted four two-hr GKI’sfocusing on prompting andunpacking leaders’ storiesrelated to moments of success,challenge, insight and curiosity

Eight TM team members attend3 half-day training sessions re:using basic GKI techniques forselecting and mentoring newinterns as well as identifyingstrengths of new hires

Managers use basic storytellingmethods in mentoring,interviews with potential newhires, interns and meetings;hundreds of OUD staff engagedin storytelling bySpring/Summer 2010

Identifying and explicating –Naming participants’ purposeand core capacities throughstories related to work

Identified tacit themes andcapacities from stories of threeleaders and created draft ofcore capacities document

TM team realizes thatvalues-based self-reflection andexpressing curiosity are themost important capacities tolook for in new hires using GKI

TM team creates and seeksfeedback on organization-widecompetencies based on corecapacities and key values

Aligning and verifying – Insuringthat core capacities reflectindividual, team andorganizational goals; verifyingstories to make sure they ‘‘work’’

Established feedback loop forleaders to review corecapacities document, addingadditional stories or changingthe language as needed

TM team begins to identify moreways to use GKI in training andhiring; they begin teachingcurrent gift officers skills relatedto self-reflection and inquiry

TM team gets buy-in fromleaders, major gift officers anddirectors throughoutorganization re: making corecapacities central to vision forOUD

Anchoring and amplifying:establishing new norms;expanding insights andinnovations to other areas;creating sightlines of possibilityaction and agency

One new leader reads the corecapacities document everymorning during her travels withpotential donors. After oneweek, she proclaims ‘‘I got it!’’and then asks, ‘‘how can we useGKI in other places?’’

TM team acquires confidencethat core capacities and GKIprinciples could help set thevision for howOUD should moveforward as an organization; theteam recognizes how to usestory-telling methods for manydifferent HR activities

Integrated core capacities intonew Major Gift Officer’scurriculum and nearly alltraining, mentoring andcoaching efforts. Winsstate-wide non-profit of the YearAward; leader reports: ‘‘Wehave become a generativeorganization [. . .]’’

Notes: This table illustrates how talent management team and OUD leaders used GKI steps and core capacities to enhance knowledgecreation over time. The three columns reflect the types of insights, decisions, and actions (following the steps of generativity) whichproduced greater knowledge identification and sharing across the organization


Table II The impact of generative knowledge interviewing on conditions needed for knowledge creation

Knowledge creation dimensionsChanges to dimensions of knowledge creation as a result of the generativeknowledge interview processa

Social-behavioral: changes in norms and behaviorsthat facilitate high-quality connections: care, honesty,tolerance, etc.

Created norms for conflict and dialogue: ‘‘Although we talked before we weremuch more careful with each other [. . .] It [the GKI process] has given us a way totalk about anything [. . .] a way to have hard conversations with each other [. . .] todevelop a deeper level of trust [. . .] We’ve had several really hard conversationssince then and those wouldn’t have happened without it’’

Generated a sense of trust and risk-taking: ‘‘It was an incredible experience [. . .]to discover things about myself, all of these capacities that I’d never known before[. . .] As a team, I think it has given us a sense of confidence and trust in ourselvesand each other [. . .] It allows us to dream more now, to take greater risks [. . .] Weswirl things around together [. . .] We ask ourselves ‘‘Well, why can’t we?’’ That’swhy we are able to do more now – decisions are made quicker and so the impactof what we do gets accelerated’’

Cognitive epistemic: changes in shared purpose,ideas, insights, questions, and assumptions as wellas practical knowledge

Demystified the legend and the nature of the work: ‘‘I could see her [the retiringleader’s] outcomes before [. . .] but I couldn’t really see how she got there [. . .]How it happened was mysterious’’‘‘I was listening to [the retiring leader’s] stories and realized that I would havehandled the situation differently and it would have been just fine [. . .] Now that Ican see how she was doing it, I can see how I do it too – even if I do it differently’’‘‘This process [of doing the interviews] demystified her [. . .] It has helped me seewhat I am doing and where I’m heading [. . .] I could see myself in her stories andexamples [. . .] The process made this legend seem more real’’

Came to see stories and experience as legitimate forms of data:‘‘To be honest, at first, it [the GKI process] felt a bit ridiculous [. . .] I was thinking‘‘what good is going to come of this [. . .] How is telling our stories and listening toeach other going to help?’’ Then I saw what was coming from it’’‘‘I don’t think we ever knew the importance of our stories before [. . .] we had noway to see our own experiences as legitimate knowledge [. . .] but this gives a wayto validate what’s real and effective [. . .] It legitimizes our instincts and intuition’’

Clarified core capacities of successful:‘‘It [the core capacities document] gives us something we can point to [. . .] areference for everything we do [. . .] Because the we learned that reflection andsystems-based thinking are so key [. . .] we are now always looking foropportunities to bring them into everything’’‘‘Having these capacities and being able to focus on them has actually given usmore room to maneuver [with colleagues in OUD] because we know what we aredoing [. . .] We can plan trainings and events and we know what we want peopleto learn from them’’

Information systems management: changes in howleaders and managers understand and share keyinformation

Shifted emphasis from quantitative to qualitative information:‘‘We think about it [the information we need] differently now – the discovery ofthe core capacities helped us realize that it is not enough to just count thenumber of times we interact with a potential donor; we have to be much moreintentional about the quality of those interactions [. . .] We have to find ways totrack and capture the quality of interactions [. . .] to share key information aboutthem’’

Recognized information management as a way to enhance organizationalidentity, alignment and purpose:‘‘We hold information differently now [. . .] much more purposeful about it [. . .] Notjust ‘‘fact’’but what they all mean together’’‘‘The core capacities are not just another piece of ‘‘information’’; they are ourvision, values and direction [. . .] our compass [. . .] our way to get alignment witheverything we do [. . .] They are an intentional process of making sure everyoneknows where we are going’’

(Continued)


impact of the initial GKI process was continuing to grow and have a positive impact

throughout the organization, reporting numerous ways that awareness of the core capacities

and the use of basic GKI methods were becoming infused into many facets of the

organization. When asked to describe in more detail how this was happening, their

responses revealed that this progression was supported by leaders and talent management

team members learning to:

B identify and ‘‘map’’ their own knowledge to the principles and behaviors embodied in the

core capacities;

B facilitate the basic steps of storytelling and listening to one another, and

B implement the core capacities and use of GKI methods into many different types of

human resource and talent management processes and activities (e.g. recruitment,

mentoring, hiring, etc.).

For instance, during the initial GKI process, one senior leader reported how she began using

the core capacities in her work for the first time:

I took the document with me on a trip with donors [. . .] I spent time reading it every day [. . .]

imagining how I use those capacities too [. . .] It reminded me that even though I am new to this

role, I really do know this work [. . .] I know what I am doing.

Table II

Knowledge creation dimensionsChanges to dimensions of knowledge creation as a result of the generativeknowledge interview processa

Strategy/structure: changes in how leaders andmanagers provide direction and structure for talentmanagement, knowledge sharing and knowledgemanagement efforts

‘‘Suddenly we saw that because GKI is all about knowing what we know andaligning it with our purpose, we realized that we should use it everywhere [. . .] thesame thing with the core capacities [. . .] Since these are what we should all bestriving for, it just makes sense that we would embed them in everything we [talentmanagement team] do’’

Improved the selection and hiring process for major gift officers:‘‘We’ve infused the core capacities into several steps associated with therecruitment and hiring of gift officers; we useGKI techniques during the recruitmentprocess (to surface the potential candidates core interests and capacities)’’Improved mentoring for existing fund-raising professionals:‘‘We’ve integrated principles of GKI into training the coacheswho give feedback onour interns’ work’’‘‘Supervisors made hiring decisions based on core capacities, and the internsgave more positive feedback about the program overall’’‘‘A new MPRI Development community mentoring program will train mentors inGKI. The focus will be on strategic questioning and listening in order to encouragedeeper reflection in the mentees to help them better understand their owncapacities. Depending on their needs, menteesmay also be trained in GKI as well’’

Created a major gift officer curriculum for the university:‘‘The first curriculum focusing on Major Gift Officers was built on the corecapacities. Future curricula (for program managers, deans, and directors) willcontinue to build on these capacities’’

Helped donors identify why they give:I think this (GKI) would be a really great way to build better trust and connectionswith donors [. . .] We know they give for reasons that are deeply personal [. . .] butthey can’t always articulate the depth of those reasons‘‘When we did GKI’s with the donors, one of them said, I have been giving for manyyears to different places [. . .] but I had no idea howmuchmygivingwas a reflectionof me, of what I deeply love and value’’

Source: aChoo and Alvarenga Neto (2010)


Two years later, members of the talent management team talked about how they were using

these same core capacities to create a unified vision for the organization as a whole:

It [the core capacities document] gives us something we can point to [. . .] a reference for

everything we do [. . .] Because we learned that reflection and systems-based thinking are so key

[. . .] we are now always looking for opportunities to bring them into everything we do.

The types of changes that emerged (as demonstrated in Table I) have since generated

several positive outcomes for the organization as a whole. By early summer 2010 (26 months

after the GKI process with three senior leaders), OUD won several prestigious regional and

national awards, including a state-wide Non-Profit of the Year Award, which recognized its

success in creating a culture of excellence, learning and mentorship across the entire

organization. OUD leaders and talent management team members attributed much of their

success to the GKI process and the ‘‘discovery’’ of their core capacities: ‘‘we know what we

are doing now.’’

In addition to these awards, one senior leader estimated that the GKI process (both the initial

knowledge transfer process and the two-day GKI training for the talent management team)

and the changes generated from that process had saved the organization approximately

$500,000 in human resource and talent management costs within the first 20 or so months.

These estimated savings emerged from the fact that leaders, managers and others had

gained a thorough understanding of the types of values, knowledge, strengths and

capacities needed for success in their work. This allowed them to look for these qualities in

summer interns and new hires, and to find ways to reinforce and foster these capacities

through hiring, training, coaching and mentoring efforts.

6.2 The impact of GKI on the four dimensions of knowledge creation

In addition to creating organizational change, the GKI process also produced significant

alternations in leaders’ and managers’ understanding of their roles, their relationships to one

another, and the nature of knowledge and learning. The breadth of these changes is

demonstrated in Table II which is organized along the four dimensions of knowledge creation

identified by Choo and Alvarengo Neto (2010). For example, the results show that the

social-behavioral dimension of knowledge-sharing was enhanced by the creation of new

norms of trust and dialogue, which in turn allowed the leaders to speak more openly with one

another:

It has given us a way to talk about anything [. . .] a way to have hard conversations [. . .]’’ The talent

management team also reported gaining greater trust and risk-taking as result of the GKI

process: ‘‘It allows us to dream more now, to take greater risks [. . .] We ask ourselves, ‘Well, why

can’t we?’ [. . .].

On the cognitive-epistemic dimension, results show the GKI process demystified the retiring

leader’s work for the new leaders: ‘‘now that I can see how she was doing it, I can see how I

do it too [. . .] I just do it differently.’’ The talent management team also reported a similar

demystification with the ‘‘discovery’’ of the core capacities: ‘‘it [the core capacities] gives us

something we can point to now [. . .] a reference for everything we do [. . .].’’ It is clear that

these cognitive-epistemic shifts caused leaders and managers to gain a better

understanding of the processes that support learning and knowledge creation, and as a

result, they made significant changes to the types of structures, policies, norms and

resources that shape their work. These changes affected information sharing as well as

recruitment, hiring, and training practices (for details see the dimensions of the ‘‘information

systems’’ and ‘‘structure’’ in Table II, p. 20).

In general, the impact of GKI process overall far exceeded the participants’ initial

expectations; one OUD member noted:

Although we were hopeful about it, we could have never imagined all that we’ve gained.

The comment below (parts of which are also excerpted in the bottom right cell of Table I),

summarizes the impact of the changes across the organization:


We had no idea how much knowledge we had [. . .] the importance of our own insights and

experiences [. . .] We are much more focused now [. . .] We move much faster now [. . .] We are

less afraid [. . .] We have become a generative organization.

7. Discussion

The goals of this study were to test the efficacy of generative knowledge interviewing (GKI)

for the purpose of facilitating tacit knowledge identification and sharing among a group of

senior leaders, and then assess its potential impact on organizational functioning and

knowledge creation efforts two years later. The study met these goals. In addition to the

immediate cost-savings which resulted from the success of the initial knowledge transfer

process, leaders and managers are continuing to leverage the knowledge gained from that

process to produce lasting benefits across the organization through improved coaching and

mentoring of interns, more effective criteria for identifying leaders and managers, and the

development of interview methods that help surface the core capacities of all OUD staff.

Additionally, the results of this study clearly show the importance of professionals

developing the capacity for self-reflection and curiosity. This finding is further reinforced by

several decades of research which demonstrate the need to educate ‘‘reflective

practititioners’’ (Schon, 1983) – people who can reflect on what they are doing, solicit

feedback from others and the environment and consciously inquire into what and how they

are learning (Moon, 2004).

Finally, the comment ‘‘we have become a generative organization’’ captures how the

outcomes of this study both catalyzed and enabled significant improvements to talent

management and knowledge creation processes over time and in doing so, demonstrated

the hallmarks of organizational generativity, which is defined here as ‘‘the evolution of an

organization through the intentional creation of generative knowledge – a conscious

understanding of the underlying purpose, values, capacities and resources that facilitate

energy, aliveness, coherence and growth within individuals and groups over time.’’ As the

results of this study demonstrate, the process of becoming a generative organization

includes the following dimensions:

B The creation of an ‘‘organizational compass’’ which is developed by people working

together to find purposeful identities and enlivening capacities within individuals, groups

and the organization as a whole over time.

B The development of generative communication norms, policies and practices (both

formal and informal), that support people engaging in storytelling, generative listening,

dialogue and documentation processes that continually uncover, validate and circulate

the tacit capacities and strengths emerging through their individual and collective efforts.

B The enactment of a strategic plan focused on identifying, anchoring and amplifying the

core strengths and capacities of people through the development of norms, structures

and information systems that support the creation of generative knowledge over time.

Figure 1 illustrates how the steps of generativity (the far right column of Table I) supported

the development of generative knowledge among the three leaders, as well as the

processes by which this knowledge was amplified through the talent management group

and across the organization as a whole.

8. Implications

As the literature pointed out, critical knowledge gaps exist within the field of fund-raising,

which lacks a shared understanding of the types of knowledge and skills needed for the

profession, and the best ways to educate people for this work. This study demonstrated a

way to address these gaps. By using GKI methods to retrieve and document the

‘‘know-how’’ of leaders in this field, this study demonstrated how this methodology can be

used to identify key knowledge during brief periods of leadership transition and how that

knowledge can then be used to enhance recruitment, mentoring and training efforts within

the profession over time.


The use of generative knowledge interviewing and the concept of organizational generativity

are relevant to areas of research and practice beyond the field of fund-raising as well. The

fact that leaders and managers used GKI methods to enhance a wide range of human

resource and talent management processes common to other types of professions (e.g.

recruitment, hiring, training, mentoring and leadership transitions) is a promising indication

that the method can also be successfully adapted to other contexts. Given the high costs of

talent management and leadership transition in all sectors, the utility of GKI for identifying

and transferring expert knowledge in a short period of time appears to be quite promising.

Finally, this study also begins to shed light into the black box that exists with regards to the

processes by which tacit knowledge sharing can actually translate directly into

improvements to succession planning, talent management and/or knowledge creation

efforts over time. By explicating the specific insights, decisions, actions, and strategies of

the research participants over a two-year period (Table I), it is possible to see how the tacit

knowledge of senior leaders can be used to create an organizational compass which can be

used to direct human resource and talent management efforts more efficiently. Future

research will focus on conducting a comparative analysis of the use of generative

knowledge interviewing for talent management and knowledge creation purposes in a

number of private and non-profit contexts.

Notes

1. GKI was developed at MPRI from 2002-2006 as part of a large action research effort that was

focused on identifying the types of learning experiences students need in order to become leaders

and change agents (Peet, 2006a, b).

2. In 2010, the US Department of Education awarded MRPI a competitive three-year $650,000 grant to

disseminate GKI and related methods to a variety of schools, colleges and disciplines across US

higher education (FIPSE, 2010).

3. When the GKI method is practiced effectively, multiple observers will ‘‘hear’’ and identify the same

unspoken patterns/themes from an interviewee’s stories – regardless of how the observers may or

may not personally relate to the stories.

Figure 1 Tacit knowledge sharing and organizational generativity

Senior Leaders Talent Management Group The Organiza�on

2.5 YR PROCESS OF TACIT KNOWLEDGE RETRIEVAL, VALIDATION, & AMPLIFICATION

Step

s Th

at E

nabl

e G

ener

a�vi

ty •CONSIDERABLE COST SAVINGS

•NON PROFIT OF THE YEAR AWARD

•CORE CAPACITIES BECOME VISION FOR THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION


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About the author

Melissa Peet is the Academic Director for the Integrative Learning and MPortfolio Initiative atthe University of Michigan and an Assistant Research Scientist in Periodontics and OralMedicine. Her interdisciplinary research is focused on exploring knowledge and learningmethods that support people in becoming effective leaders, entrepreneurs and changeagents. Her work has led to the development of several methodologies that are now used ina variety of professions and disciplines: the integrative knowledge portfolio processsupports students in connecting, reflecting on and applying the different types ofknowledge, skills and capacities they have gained from all areas of life; and generativeknowledge interviewing is a method for retrieving, documenting and sharing the tacitknowledge (unconscious and informal ways of knowing that are key to leadership andcreativity) people possess. In 2010, Dr Peet received a three-year competitive FIPSE grantfrom the US Department of Education for the purpose of disseminating her work to otherinstitutions. Melissa Peet can be contacted at: [email protected]


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