The knowledge your SOPs do not capture
SOPs are necessary. They give structure, support compliance, and create a baseline for how work should happen. They are a good place to store the official process.
Most operations also depend on another layer of knowledge: how the process is carried out here.
This includes:
- which step prevents the common quality issue
- how to spot when something is about to go wrong
- what to check before calling maintenance
- how to handle a customer-specific requirement
- how the day shift sets up the night shift for success
- which workaround is acceptable, and which one creates risk
This is operational knowledge. It is practical, local and based on experience. It changes as tools, layouts, customer requirements, systems and teams change.
Slick+ has written before about the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is the part that can be written down: policies, manuals, procedures, training records. Tacit knowledge is harder to capture because it is built through doing the work, watching others, making judgement calls, and learning from the exceptions.
Michael Polanyi’s line still says it best: “We can know more than we can tell.”
In many organisations, the formal layer is well managed. The tacit layer is still fragile.
The problem with relying on the person who knows
Every operation has these people.
The supervisor everyone asks.
The operator who knows why machine two behaves differently on Mondays.
The warehouse lead who knows which customer requirement catches new people out.
The driver who knows the route, the site rule, the loading bay issue, the exception to the exception.
These people are valuable. They also become bottlenecks.
When they are present, work moves. When they are off, busy, promoted, or gone, the knowledge gap becomes visible. Teams start asking around. Supervisors repeat the same explanations. New starters wait for help. Different shifts develop their own way of doing the same task.
That is where variation creeps in.
One shift follows the written process. Another follows the version that works better in practice. A third has adapted around a staffing issue or layout change.
No one is trying to create inconsistency. The knowledge just never travelled cleanly.
Why LMS completion does not always change the work
An LMS is useful for structured learning. It works well for content that can be assigned, completed and reported. Compliance training, policy updates, product knowledge and formal onboarding all have their place.
Operational knowledge behaves differently.
It is needed at the moment of work, often under time pressure. It is visual. It is contextual. It may involve a small movement, a judgement call, an exception, or a local adaptation that is hard to explain in a long document.
A person may have completed the module and still need to ask:
“How do we actually do this here?”
That question is not a failure of the person. It is a signal that the learning system and the working reality are not fully connected.
This is especially common in frontline, shift-based and distributed environments: manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, facilities, construction, healthcare, hospitality and field service. Work is spread across people, sites, time zones and shifts. The experienced person is not always beside the person who needs help.
The cost of the operational knowledge gap
The cost does not usually appear as a neat line in the accounts. It shows up in small frictions that repeat.
Supervisors lose time answering the same questions.
New starters take longer to become confident.
Teams search for the right answer across SharePoint, Teams chats, WhatsApp messages and old documents.
Quality issues repeat because the lesson from last time did not reach the next person.
Handover depends too much on memory.
Good practice stays inside one site or team.
In a Slick+ article on knowledge silos, we noted research suggesting that knowledge workers can spend almost 25% of their working day searching for information. Another Slick+ article referenced Harvard Business Review research suggesting workers spend only 24 minutes per week on formal learning.
For operations leaders, those two points sit awkwardly together. People do not have much time for formal learning, yet they still lose time trying to find the practical answers they need.
That is the space operational knowledge capture needs to address.
Why this is becoming more urgent
AI, automation and new systems are changing how frontline work gets done. That does not remove the need for operational knowledge. It raises the value of it.
At the Manufacturing and Supply Chain Summit in Dublin, Ken Finnegan of Skillnet Ireland put it clearly:
That applies directly to operations.
A system may recommend a new schedule. Someone still has to understand the impact on the floor. A tool may flag a quality risk. Someone still has to know whether that risk matches what is happening at the machine. A dashboard may show a labour gap. A supervisor still needs to know who can move safely, who needs support and who has done the task before.
If the practical knowledge behind the work is missing, technology has less to work with.
Start with the knowledge that affects performance
The answer is not to turn every process into a video or ask every experienced person to record everything they know. That will create noise.
Start with the work that already causes friction.
A good first list might include:
- the top five questions supervisors answer every week
- the handover points that regularly cause rework
- tasks where new starters need repeated help
- common quality mistakes
- customer-specific exceptions
- safety checks that rely on judgement
- processes that differ across shifts or sites
- knowledge held by one or two key people
This is where a small operational knowledge audit is useful. It gives managers a way to decide what to capture first.
The aim is not more content. The aim is better access to the knowledge that keeps work consistent.
What good operational knowledge capture looks like
Good operational knowledge is short, specific and close to the work.
- A supervisor records a two-minute explanation of how to prepare a handover properly.
- A technician shows the visual check that prevents a recurring fault.
- A team lead explains the customer requirement that is easy to miss.
- A driver records the depot-specific rule that new starters always ask about.
- A warehouse lead shows how to complete a task safely when the usual flow changes.
These are practical explanations from people who know the work.
To make this useful at scale, the content needs structure. It should be tagged by site, role, process, risk, customer, skill or task. It should sit where people can find it quickly. It should be easy to update when the process changes. Managers should be able to see what is being used, where questions keep coming up, and which areas need more support.
This is where short-form workplace video can do something SOPs and LMS modules struggle to do. It can show the detail, the context and the judgement behind the written process.
How this supports managers
In a recent Slick+ article on manager enablement, we made a simple point: capability improves when managers can turn everyday work into learning.
That is exactly what many operations managers are already trying to do. They coach, explain, correct, repeat and translate the process into practice. The problem is that much of this work disappears as soon as the conversation ends.
Operational knowledge capture gives managers a way to make that learning reusable.
Instead of answering the same question ten times, a manager can capture the answer once and send it to the next person who needs it. Instead of relying on one experienced operator to show every new starter the same task, that operator’s explanation can become part of the onboarding pathway. Instead of losing a good improvement idea at the end of a shift, the team can capture it and share it across sites.
That reduces dependence on memory and availability. It also gives experienced people a way to teach without becoming the permanent helpdesk.
A practical starting point
If the same question keeps coming up, treat it as data.
It may be telling you that the SOP is unclear. It may show that the LMS content is too far from the work. It may point to a process variation that has never been agreed. It may reveal a risk held together by one experienced person.
Start by asking:
- Which tasks create the most repeat questions?
- Which processes vary across shifts or sites?
- Which handovers are most likely to fail?
- Which people hold knowledge others depend on?
- Which knowledge would cause the biggest problem if it disappeared?
From there, choose one narrow area. Capture ten short explanations. Tag them properly. Put them where the team already works. Watch what questions reduce, what gaps remain, and what managers still need to explain.
That is enough to create a starting point.
Book an Operational Knowledge Gap Audit
Slick+ is offering a free, no-obligation 30-minute Operational Knowledge Gap Audit (book here) for operations leaders who want to identify where practical know-how is most exposed.
The session is designed to help you map where critical operational knowledge currently lives, where the biggest gaps are, and which processes, tasks or handovers should be captured first.
You will leave with a clear starting point for turning informal know-how into something your teams can use in the flow of work.
