With just one day to go before the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, I have just come up with a new Olympic Event.  I know - my timing sucks.

It’s a combination of the 4x100m relay, and the long jump. Stay with me...

Imagine the scene – the runner, baton-in-hand nears the end of the 400m lap, but rather than passing it on, she continues sprinting - as far as the long jump landing pit, throws herself into the sand and buries the baton, hurriedly raking over the sand afterwards. Once the sandpit judge is satisfied that it is thoroughly hidden, they raise a green flag. Next runner is free to go! She rushes to the long jump pit and launches into a frenetic search to find the baton, before running back to the track, completing a lap, and returning to the sand to bury the baton – and on we go.

What do you think? Could it catch on?

Strange then, how this kind of reflects the default approach to how we share and transfer knowledge. Carefully concealed in a SharePoint sandpit – when perhaps a more personal, relational approach would have been better and just more natural?  A Peer Assist or ‘baton-passing’ approach for project handover might be a more effective action.

In a real-life baton pass, think about the careful and deliberate matching of pace, the hand stretching backwards requesting the baton, the holder carefully placing it in the receiver’s hand - have they got it now? – have they *really* got it? - a critical split-second when both are holding the baton simultaneously - and they're off.  Now the giver can slow down knowing that nothing was dropped in the process.

Now of course sometimes, the next member of the knowledge relay team isn’t on the track yet – so putting the baton somewhere safe, discoverable and easy to grasp is the best we can do...  But let’s try not to rush too quickly to the sandpit though – knowledge management is a team sport after all.

And nobody really likes getting sand in their shoes.