Why documenting know-how is an essential act of transmission

Every skill begins with a gesture. One that is repeated, refined, and sometimes passed on without even thinking about it. These gestures, this so-called "tacit" knowledge, are nonetheless fragile. They often rely on the body's memory and the experience of those who possess them. When they pass away, this invisible heritage, this "knowledge in action," gradually fades away.

Documenting know-how means giving concrete form to these actions. It means translating the invisible to make it transmissible: telling what is done, how it is done, and above all, why it is done.

Why this is crucial today

👉 Preserve the living memory of trades
Faced with departures and technological transformations, tacit knowledge is disappearing rapidly. Documentation becomes a form of safeguarding the intangible heritage of the company or profession, ensuring operational and cultural continuity.

👉 Facilitate transmission and training
Documented knowledge provides a structured learning environment. It allows for the breakdown of expert actions into simple steps (as suggested by numerous studies in pedagogy and workplace ergonomics), accelerating the integration of novices and reducing errors. It ensures that future generations will not only be able to perpetuate techniques but also update or adapt them, fostering collective competence.

👉 Valuing people and professions
Highlighting actions and knowledge means recognizing the expertise of those who do them. It means giving the expert recognition of their status as a "knowledgeable person" , reinforcing their commitment and their place in collective memory.

👉 Stimulate creativity and innovation
Shared knowledge becomes a source of inspiration and a driver of collective performance. By making it visible, we open the door to experimentation and transformation. Making tacit knowledge explicit is often the first step.

How to document effectively: beyond the written word

Documenting does not simply mean writing a fact sheet or a user manual. It is a work of knowledge engineering that translates lived knowledge into a transmissible narrative: text, photo, audio, video, notebook, capsule, etc.

The key to success is the involvement of those who possess the knowledge. It's essential to listen to them, film them, and support them so that their knowledge takes shape without becoming static. The documentation must be dynamic to reflect the reality of the work, where actions constantly adapt to changing conditions.

Our approach with Itinerary Guide

With Itinerary Guide, we help organizations to:

• identify their critical knowledge — the knowledge that absolutely must be preserved;

• co-constructing living materials (fact sheets, videos, stories, oral archives);

• to establish a transmission dynamic that values ​​experts while training newcomers.

Our conviction: to document is above all to pay tribute to the human intelligence of work.

Documenting know-how means bridging the gap between the past and the future.
It's about transforming silent knowledge into a shared resource.
And above all, it is about recognizing the value of those who do — and who know how to do.