Capturing What’s in People’s Heads to Learn from Successes and Failures and Provide Effective Ways Forward

Abstract

In industry, much can be gained by drawing from different people’s experiences and what they have learned or can collectively learn from successes as well as failures. However, capturing and utilizing this knowledge is often challenging in many areas such as product development, testing, and operations, particularly due to the following circumstances:  New information is continually being generated  Many employees are specialized  Much information is sought out for specific situations  There are many different circumstances and ways to utilize information and resources  Not all valuable information can be captured in employee/training programs This paper explains a process for capturing people’s knowledge and translating it into useful directions that can guide various business functions to move forward and increase their success. Using the process facilitates the spreading of valuable resources, information, solutions, and practices within and across business groups, functions, and organizations by drawing from workers’ experiences to piece them together so that they can be utilized most effectively. Benefits of this process include:  Gaining confidence and effective directions to move forward with solutions/technologies or new endeavors  Solidifying circumstances to get the most out of resources and minimize problems and wasted effort  Optimizing solutions  Reducing the time and effort seeking out information and resources; avoiding “reinventing the wheel”  Improving business choices This paper covers applications of this process to safety and loss prevention in product development, testing, and operations with examples from the oil and gas industry.