What happened
eLearning Industry published Alex Tkachenko’s article on September 8, 2026, for instructional design and corporate L&D audiences. It says organizations can invest heavily in training while the expertise behind important decisions remains concentrated in a few experienced employees. Drawing on Argote and on Nonaka and Takeuchi, the article distinguishes explicit knowledge that can be documented from tacit knowledge built through experience and judgment.
Why it matters
For educators, instructional designers, and L&D leaders, the practical point is that a course library, onboarding path, or knowledge base may not capture how experts handle exceptions, weigh trade-offs, or recognize patterns. The article frames a bottleneck as a pattern in which employees rely on the same person for nonstandard decisions, work slows when that person is unavailable, and formal training explains the process but not the judgment. That shifts analysis from content coverage to decision capability.
What to do next
Tkachenko suggests locating decisions that repeatedly require the same expert, then making the expert’s reasoning visible through real decisions, conversations, and examples. Teams can ask what signals the expert noticed, which options were rejected, what trade-offs mattered, and when a case became an exception. Scenarios, coaching discussions, and decision exercises can then let others practice that reasoning. The article provides a conceptual framework and references, but the supplied evidence does not include implementation metrics or comparative outcomes.
About this briefing
Reviewed by TutorFlow Editorial. We link the primary source, preserve its publication date, and distinguish reported claims from TutorFlow analysis. Our commentary focuses on practical decisions for educators and training teams.
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