Central Connector

Knowledge-Loss Risks

• Technical expertise and organizational memory as well as a set of relationships that help many others get information or other resources to do their work.
• Experiential knowledge and reputation that enable rapid onboarding of new employees

Actions

• Use personal network profiles in career development and onboarding practices to create network redundancies systematically where departures might dramatically fragment a network.
• Reallocate information access and decision rights to ensure that one point does not become too vulnerable in the network.
• Have central connectors lead communities of practice as a means of creating connections around them.
• Require central connectors to help newcomers get acclimated through strategic introductions, “shadowing,” mentoring and joint projects.

Broker

Knowledge-Loss Risks

• Broad knowledge of how the organization operates and ability to reconize opportunities that require integration or disparate expertise.
• Ability to mobilize and coordinate efforts of disparate groups to pursue those opportunities.

Actions

• Identify and develop brokers through staffing and rotation across division, geographic and expertise groups.
• Assign brokers strategically where information gaps exist or where ideas can move from concept to action.
• Give brokers preauthorized decision limits to tap into network resources. Allow them to experiment to obtain real-time information.

Peripheral Player

Knowledge-Loss Risks

• Niche (and often marginalized) expertise or early-adopter ideas that have the potential to reshape offerings or operations.
• Set of external relationships built on trust and familiarity.

Actions

• Ensure relevant peripheral people agree visible and engaged, for example, by encouraging their hosting of “lunch-and-learns” and webcasts.
• Invite external partners to conduct workshops and attend meetings to broaden the network.
• Reward employees for bringing external ideas and connections into the organization.

Parise, Salvatore, Rob Cross, and Thomas H. Davenport. 2006. Strategies for Preventing a Knowledge-Loss Crisis. MIT Sloan Management Review 47 (4):31-38.