Walk the Talk

Hanya Sekilas Pandangan - Agama Apa Yang Paling Baik

Seorang ahli agama dari kelompok "The Theology Of Freedom" (Brazil) yang bernama Leonardo Boff bertanya kepada Dalai Lama pemimpin umat Buddha dari Tibet.

"Yang Mulia, apakah agama terbaik?"

Leonardo Boof menduga bahwa Dalai Lama akan menjawab, Agama Buddha dari Tibet atau agama Oriental yang lebih tua dari agama lainnya dari Timur Tengah.

Ternyata sambil tersenyum, Dalai Lama menjawab, "Agama terbaik adalah agama yang lebih mendekatkan anda pada TUHAN, yaitu agama yang membuat anda menjadi orang yang lebih baik".

Sambil menutupi rasa malu karena punya dugaan yang kurang baik tentang Dalai Lama, Leonardo Boff bertanya lagi, "Apakah tanda agama yang membuat kita menjadi lebih baik?"

Jawaban Dalai Lama, "Agama apapun yang bisa membuat anda menjadi 

Lebih welas asih;

Lebih berpikiran sehat, 

Lebih objektif & adil;

Lebih menyayangi,

Lebih manusiawi,

Lebih punya rasa tanggung jawab,

Lebih ber-etika.

Maka agama yang memiliki kualitas seperti di atas adalah agama terbaik".

Leonardo Boff terdiam sejenak & terkagum-kagum atas jawaban Dalai Lama yang bijaksana & tidak dapat di bantah.

Selanjutnya, Dalai Lama berkata,

"Tida peduli bagiku kawan, apa agamamu, 

Tidak peduli anda beragama atau tidak.

Yang paling penting bagi saya adalah perilaku anda di depan kawan-kawan anda, di depan keluarga, lingkungan kerja & dunia".

Akhirnya Dalai Lama berkata:

"Jagalah pikiranmu karena akan menjadi perkataanmu.

Jagalah perkataanmu karena akan menjadi perbuatanmu.

Jagalah perbuatanmu, karena akan menjadi kebiasaanmu.

Jagalah kebiasaanmu, karena akan membentuk karaktermu.

Jagalah karaktermu, karena akan membentuk nasibmu.

Dan nasibmu... berawal dari pikiranmu".

Franz Magnis Suseno, Radikal dalam Iman, Toleran pada Sesama | Suara Pembaruan

Franz Magnis Suseno, Radikal dalam Iman, Toleran pada Sesama | Suara Pembaruan

Lost Knowledge, Lost Opportunities...

By Harissa Mardiana

Over the next ten years, millions of experienced professionals will retire as the "baby boomers" come to the end of their careers. With them will go years of accumulated knowledge and expertise with serious consequences for many industries including chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Capturing this potentially "lost knowledge" should therefore be a top priority for all companies.

Two recent developments motivated the writing of this article. Firstly, as noted elsewhere in this month’s newsletter, I am experiencing an upsurge in custom content development. Increasingly, clients are asking us to convert “old” training materials accumulated in formats such as hard-copy handouts, overheads, PowerPoint files, etc. to state-of-the-art custom e-Learning lessons.

The second development is the recent publication of an intriguing and timely new book called “Lost Knowledge - Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce” by leading MIT researcher David W DeLong.1 In Lost Knowledge, Dr. DeLong addresses the impending loss of critical knowledge due to the coming retirement of the “baby boomer” generation – the term given to those born between 1945 and 1964 who helped build the modern Western economy in the post-war boom years of massive growth and technological advancement.

Starting this year, when the first baby boomers turn 60, millions of experienced workers will retire and take their valuable expertise with them – unless companies act now to capture and retain this knowledge for the benefit of their existing and future workforce.

DeLong highlights the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors as being particularly vulnerable as large numbers of R&D, engineering, and manufacturing professionals retire over the next decade. For example, in a related study2, he describes how an investigation into an explosion at a US chemical plant revealed that the engineer in charge had only been out of college a year and that the operators all had less than a year of experience in the affected unit.

He also points out that even when errors are not caused by inexperience, “diagnosing and fixing them often takes longer when veteran employees are no longer around to help.”

We believe that the custom work in which we specialize will become increasingly important in preventing problems just like the one described. When a client approaches our company with an assortment of training materials on some important subject and requests that we put the material into an “e-Learning format”, the client, in effect, is using us to retain, in a modern easy-to-use medium, the knowledge and experience that a senior employee has accumulated over his/her years of work. By taking this 'Knowledge Conversion' approach the client company is ensuring that other employees will continue to benefit from the expertise of a senior employee but without the need for the senior employee to be present, i.e. similar to the situation after his/her retirement.

Currently, the main motivation for Knowledge Conversion is to save the senior employee’s time which may be better used elsewhere. The e-Learning approach also allows trainees to study whenever they wish using 24/7 availability on the Web, while obtaining the benefit of speed that e-Learning provides (30 – 40% faster than traditional methods for the same level of comprehension). In addition, the electronic format allows ease of updating and/or adding of information. Increasingly, however, we believe that the main driver of conversions will be a desire to permanently retain and utilize the accumulated knowledge that only years of experience can bring.

DeLong looks at many different methods of retaining the critical knowledge presently in the heads of “close-to-retirement” personnel. He points out that there are, broadly speaking, two different types of knowledge: explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge is easy to codify and can be shared independent of its human source or it can be embedded in processes or systems. Tacit knowledge “includes cognitive skills such as beliefs, images, intuition and mental models as well as technical skills such as craft and know-how.” According to DeLong, many of the old ways of passing-on knowledge, such as mentoring and coaching, are no longer possible due largely to the current pressures of workload as well as radical differences with younger employees’ level of education and approach to work.

The message from “Lost Knowledge” is clear: companies must decide what knowledge is critical and build knowledge retention into their strategic planning and do so NOW before the baby boomers retire.

We believe that Knowledge Conversion of “old” training materials to modern e-Lessons mentioned above is one excellent way a company could start TODAY to convert in-house knowledge, tacit and explicit, into a modern medium for ongoing training of younger and/or less experienced employees.

Our methodology includes examination of the old training material as well as discussing its background with the author, interpreting the intentions and knowledge-transfer expectations, then developing the content. Finally, the senior employee is given the opportunity to study the new e-Lesson and comment on its completeness.

Factors that would encourage a senior employee, and potential retiree, to participate in this knowledge-transfer would be:

Desire to help his or her employer if retirement is approaching.

Confirmation of the value of a senior employee’s accumulated expertise during his or her career at the company.

Acknowledgment of the senior employee’s contribution to the continued success of the company by including his or her name on the lesson screens.

Use of storytelling to describe particularly valuable lessons learned during the senior employee’s years of experience, to enhance and make the lesson interesting.

Using the senior employee’s voice as the voiceover or narration for the e-Lesson.

The main benefit to the company would be the preservation and protection of Intellectual Capital that had taken many years to acquire.

As DeLong points out, “companies that introduce initiatives that burden employees with additional tasks are doomed to fail”. Hence, the role of Skillpad in collating and analyzing “old” training material, interviewing key senior employees, visiting the company’s production facilities and converting the material to an electronic medium is more likely to produce success in retaining critical knowledge before it is lost.

References

Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce - David DeLong, August 2004, Oxford University Press. Web: www.lostknowledge.com

Uncovering the Hidden Cost of ‘Lost Knowledge’ in Global Chemical Companies - David DeLong, Accenture Institute for Strategic Change. Web: www.lostknowledge.com/pdfs/DeLong.TheHiddenCosts.1B8CC.pdf