— Free Research Report
Sixty-four pages of original research drawn from 1,200+ organisations across nine industries. The data behind the crisis — and the playbook for getting ahead of it. Free for leaders who'd rather act on evidence than instinct.
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What's Inside
Five chapters, eighteen charts, and a closing playbook. Each finding triangulated against three independent data sources. No press releases recycled as insight — every number sourced from primary research.
How much of your organisation's intelligence lives only in people's heads. A sector-by-sector quantification of tacit-knowledge dependency.
Why the headline replacement cost dramatically understates what your organisation actually loses when a senior expert walks out. Three case studies.
The gap between procedural artefacts and practical wisdom. How wikis, intranets, and SOPs systematically miss the knowledge that matters most.
Benchmarking four approaches to tacit-knowledge elicitation. What the highest-performing organisations are doing differently.
Twelve practical actions, sequenced by impact and effort. The exact roadmap mature organisations are following — and where to start tomorrow.
Key Findings · Preview
Tacit knowledge ratio
Across all organisations surveyed, 73% of critical operational knowledge exists only in employees' heads — not in any document, system, or process. Highest in professional services (84%). Lowest in regulated finance (51%).
Average departure cost (10k+ org)
The compound value lost when a senior subject-matter expert exits without knowledge transfer. Includes replacement cost, productivity gap, downstream errors, and client-relationship erosion over twelve months.
Have a formal capture programme
Only twenty-two percent of organisations report any systematic process for capturing knowledge before senior staff depart. The rest rely on ad-hoc handovers — a strategy that fails ninety percent of the time.
About the Author
"We didn't write this report to sell software. We wrote it because every conversation with a knowledge leader started the same way — 'I know we have a problem, I just can't size it.' This is the sizing. Take it, use it, share it with the executive who needs to see the numbers."