Innovative leaders understand that an innovative culture will document the experiments that are carried out so that staff can learn from one another. In an innovative culture, leaders create knowledge-transfer strategies and guidelines for staff to collect and analyze data so that they can build on new ideas together and innovation can flourish. It is one of many steps toward becoming a learning organization instead of a change-averse one. More information can be found in Chapter 8.

Develop a Knowledge-Transfer Database System

Innovative leaders

• Avoid experiential loss. Set up appropriate documentation processes so valuable organizational knowledge is not lost when turnover and attrition happen. Be mindful that an employee can take on a different role at the airport or take a new position elsewhere at any time. In either scenario, their knowledge and relational capital goes with them. Think about how many people are reaching retirement age. What if they all decide to hang up their badge at the same time? Younger generations may switch up their careers midstream. What kind of impact can this have? Documenting processes and organizational knowledge is the first step toward gaining organizational maturity and safeguarding it for the future. This will free up time that would have been spent trying to recover valuable information and understanding, so more time can be focused on optimization and transformational innovation initiatives. It can be shocking, if not mind-blowing, how many organizations do not document important daily activities. Knowledge loss can be devastating with the departure of just one person; do not let that happen on your watch.
• Rightsize knowledge capture. Maintain a system that fits the size and complexity of your organization. What is needed for a large hub airport is not what is needed for a small hub airport. Recognize the importance of capturing and maintaining the appropriate amount of knowledge for your organization. Manual methods can work well, but in this day and age, digital databases should also be considered. Whatever method is used, it should enable quick access to the data and be easy to understand so that the data can be communicated to others in the organization. Train staff on how to use and maintain the system so that any new information generated at the airport is not lost or forgotten. Remember, the point is to have a repository for critical process information about an airport.

One commercial real-estate services firm built its own cloud-based mobile tool to allow all 91,000 global employees to share ideas, best practices, and solutions. All entries are vetted by subject-matter experts, and they include feedback from employees and examples of client implementations.¹