P2P

64 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 I moved on to the relationships that I had developed, hundreds of faces and personal stories, people I've worked with, volunteered with, conferenced with, Zoomed with, Emailed with and on and on. It started to look like a big crowd in my head: What the heck would I do with those. Which were relationships that needed to be passed to someone else? It was a bit harder to prioritize and categorize the people. So that part of the plan got put off for awhile. Anyone who has developed a knowledge management function will tell you the biggest challenges are getting people to agree to share their knowledge (I was good there), then figuring out which knowledge is worth sharing (working on it), and the sharers and recipients need time to share and receive the knowledge. But everyone is busy. It is much easier to defer it, which I did for a number of months. I started to see some change management challenges coming into play. After "Awareness", "Desire" and "Knowledge" comes "Ability". So that was where I was stuck temporarily, working through the actual mechanisms of the knowledge transfer, probably a bit stuck in analysis paralysis (a common organizational problem with knowledge sharing). So now was the time to stop overanalyzing and just get started. Inspiration, Elders, Culture and ILTA I looked for a bit of inspiration to take the next steps. I naively thought that by saying "I am retiring after 40 + years, I have important knowledge to pass on, and I feel like an "Elder", that would instantly add credibility to all the knowledge I was planning to share. I realized that I needed know more about the concept of the "Elder" to see if it really fit. I started with something familiar, the First Nations approach… In our western paradigm, sharing by Elders is considered as "informal". By contrast, in First Nations Pedagogy, Elders are the carriers and emblems of communally generated and mediated knowledge, at the heart and soul of what is 'formal' to Indigenous knowledge. Elders are first and foremost teachers and role models, from infanthood to adulthood and beyond. In those cultures, the wisdom of age is celebrated and expected to be passed on. That fit with what I was aspiring to. And I do think we need to think of this concept of lifelong sharing so that we don't end up with the need to do "crisis sharing". All of this depends on the culture of the specific organization. The more open and learning-oriented the culture, and the more support there is for learning processes via training, mentoring and age-diverse teams, the more intergenerational learning and knowledge sharing is likely to take place. All that can address older workers' need for self-actualization and increase their motivation to share their knowledge and be a part of the successful people business continuity of the organization. This was definitely something I worked through on my journey. I looked for inspirational quotes about respect for elders, like "Listen to your elders advice, not because they are always right but because they have more experiences of being wrong". While looking at those positive quotes, I found some contrasting quotes, like "Elders don't deserve respect just for the fact that they're elders. Age is not a medal you can use to demand respect". We all know people who are just "old", too rigid, too set in their ways and can't keep up with change. While not all elders are created equal (some are more equal than others ☻), I think throwing the Elder out with the bathwater is also wasteful and clearly could be expensive to the organization. We should be thinking of how our organization can use their Elders to their advantage??? A nod to ILTA: ILTA has always celebrated its members and business partners, no matter what their age. I guess when the purpose of the organization is to share knowledge, then it makes sense to encourage M E M B E R R E S O U R C E S

• Cover