Built to Last: Safeguarding Organizational Knowledge

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Opinions expressed in this episode are personal. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this streaming platform. Good day, wonderful people, and welcome to another edition of let's Be diverse. I am your host, Andrew Stout. This episode is dedicated to all my loved ones who supported me through this journey. Those who have left us will always be in our hearts and will never be forgotten. Today, our topic is built to last. Safeguarding organizational knowledge. And my guest today is one awesome human. His name is Ben Bomar. Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us today. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Thank you. I am really excited to be here. This. Been looking forward to this. [00:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah, myself as well. How are things with you, Ben? What's going on? Give me the tea, give me the deets, give me it all. What's going on? [00:00:48] Speaker B: You were catching me. We're coming off a great couple of weeks, so both my kids are singers and performers and I've had the opportunity to see them on stage in the last four to six weeks. My, my son was the. He played Shrek in the High School Musical and my daughter was on a tour with her choir and I got to see her in Memphis. So, I mean, anytime you get to see your kids and be proud of what they do, it's. It's pretty amazing. [00:01:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's pretty cool that they're, that they're singers. I admire anybody that can sing. I try to do it at karaoke and try to have fun with it, but we all don't have the. We're not given the talent of voice. Not everybody has it, but when they do have it, it's great. [00:01:25] Speaker B: It is really wonderful. I got chills talking about it. That's awesome. [00:01:28] Speaker A: That's great. And that, that just tells me the human that you are and the vulnerability. So I really appreciate that and appreciate your story and I hope that the, the kids continue to. To enjoy it and to love it because I, I could see and hear it in your voice. The, the joy that it brings to. To see them perform. Thanks so much for letting us know how things are. Are going there with you. [00:01:50] Speaker B: We. [00:01:50] Speaker A: I want to get into the meat of this conversation here. I'm super excited about it. But before we do, I always have a fun, thought provoking question to ask my guest to get things going. Are you ready for yours today? [00:02:00] Speaker B: Bet I am. [00:02:01] Speaker A: So your question is, if your life had a theme song that played every time you entered a room, what would the vibe be and why? [00:02:09] Speaker B: Thank you for not asking for the specific song. That is. That is really helpful. You know, I think it's curious, right? I mean, I'm thinking about one of those scenes in, In. In movies where suddenly you. You face a problem that you have to figure out. And so the person walks into a room and are they walking into a high school and they're. They're wondering where does everybody sit at the cafeteria table or are they a scientist? So that, that vibe and that theme is going to be a little bit spooky, but a little bit expiring, and it's going to build to a swell as the person sort of finds their. Their balance. I mean, I think that that curiosity piece of what. How are we going to solve this puzzle? It's that. It's that swell. That's what I would say. [00:02:52] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. And knowing what I know of you, you were a very curious person as well. I think we all have a little bit of curiosity in us as far as figuring stuff out, some more than others. But I love that. I love that thought and I love the vibe and I love everything about it. [00:03:09] Speaker B: Thanks. That's. I mean, now I feel like. All right, good. The hard one is out of the way. I knew you threw one of these at us all the time, and I just. [00:03:15] Speaker A: Okay, well, you did. You did great. Thanks so much for having fun with us to get us started. Ben, who are you and what really drives you to do the work that you do? [00:03:23] Speaker B: Raised in North Carolina and. And now here in Minneapolis with my family, and I think what drives me to do what I do, and I don't want to get ahead of our plan here, but I understand and have appreciated how much the legacy employees within my teams have meant to me, and they deserve to be celebrated. I. I hope I did a good job celebrating them when I worked with them, but I. But I think people need to know that they matter to the organization and that their. Their impact will last beyond them leaving a legacy. What have you really. Helping people feel as though they are known and celebrated for what they add. That is just. It's an amazing feeling when someone is truly feel seen and known and understood. [00:04:05] Speaker A: What a great. What a great start to this conversation here. Ben. I love the fact that you love that and admire that and how important it is to you and I, and we will get into this conversation, I'm sure, as it goes on today, I. I look for leaders to. To do this a little bit more, to look at this a little bit more, and I think if they do, I think they will see a different view from the outside as far as their Teams looking at them and the way that they look at them rather than the way that a lot of them might look at their leaders nowadays. [00:04:43] Speaker B: That's right. And just to be put a finer point on it, I mean, the business that I've founded and the work that we do is about preserving and celebrating the institutional knowledge of longtime and linchpin employees. And you're exactly right. It is something where we go to bed at night as leaders and we think about those people on our team that we pray don't win the lottery. Right. We know that we need them and we thank them for the fact that they've been with us for day one. But it's a really vulnerable thing to go into work the next day and to let somebody know that they have that impact on us and that they have that emotional weight with us and importance to the business. But it's important and critical that we do that because it does make those employees feel seen and appreciated and understand their value. [00:05:28] Speaker A: And who doesn't want to be seen and appreciated? Right. I know some people will, will want it or maybe desire it a little bit more than others, but I think everybody likes a little bit of appreciation for the job that they do. And it, it, it makes them walk out of the office grinning ear to ear just knowing that they're the work, that the hard work that they put in or their creativity was recognized and they, and, and, and they'll continue to [00:05:56] Speaker B: go move forward percent and, and it's, you know, there's lots of ways to compensate people. There's lots of ways to give the, the kudos. But I came across a quote the other day and I'm not going to get, I'm not going to be able to attribute it, I might add it at some point in the comments, but the idea that when someone feels truly understood, that is indistinguishable from love. And so I really, I really am inspired by that quotation because I think it means a lot that we are, we are demonstrating by understanding. [00:06:24] Speaker A: I love that. So, Ben, when you hear organizational knowledge, what that, what does that actually mean to you in today's workplace? [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, one of the things, and I, I love that question. We have to unpack it. It has component parts and you might hear it called tribal knowledge or organizational knowledge. Institutional knowledge is the one that we use most often, but we define it as a combination of three factors that means there is a knowing, doing and being. So what does the employee know? What is their, their mastery of the domain in which you operate your Mission, your competition, your market. Then what is it that they can do? What do they execute? Well, what is, what are they lights out at? Performing. And then lastly, what is their being? What do they bring to the party in terms of being an inspiring leader or someone who is an outstanding individual contributor and everybody else feels better when they nod their head yes when the boss says something. Organizational knowledge, institutional knowledge that lives within side an individual is that combination of knowing, doing and being. And that can help people start to really articulate what it is that they appreciate about their team members. [00:07:33] Speaker A: Knowing, doing and being. Wow, that is so poignant. I've never heard those three words put together in that, in this vein. And it's so trying to find the right word here, but it's so inspiring to hear those words. And if I am someone that's on the other end of that and receiving that, or knowing that I'm in an organization that looks at that, I could just foresee the creativity and ingenuity and knowledge and, and the work ethic that I would put. Just knowing that again that the organization is going to look at me that way. [00:08:08] Speaker B: And I think, I think it breaks. In some ways it is that inspiring piece and in other ways I like to think of it, that it makes it somehow more tactical. One of the, one of the metaphors we use here is this idea of kintsugi, this Japanese art, you might have seen it where broken pottery is mended with gold, right? To create something of value and times that gold, that's the ineffable quality. Oh, I could never transfer it. I could never share it with someone. How would I ever teach that? This is just something that I've lived and been born with or what have you. But when you break it down now, not only can we hand it off one to one to our successor or an up and comer, but we can take a little bit of the knowing piece and give that to five members of the team. We can take the execution piece and give that to 10 other members of the team. We can give everybody that being coaching as a part of their onboarding. So we truly make what people know as organizational and institutional knowledge shareable. [00:09:00] Speaker A: So now that we know what it is, what role should leaders play in safeguarding organizational knowledge? [00:09:05] Speaker B: The first thing is to recognize that, that it is absolutely going to leave you if you do nothing. We call this the knowledge exodus. It is the guaranteed eventuality that one day every member of your team will log off and go home or clock out for the last time 100% and yet so many leaders just sweep it under the rug. It's not, you know, I don't know, maybe they'll retire one day, maybe something will happen. They just don't take action. And so leaders need to instead look at the wisdom and the knowledge of their team as an asset. If I told you that you were not going to have access to steel in two months and you're a manufacturer, you're going to start coming up with solutions and alternatives right now. But when we look at our team members and we're like, well we got a couple people within a few years of retirement, often the answer is, well, we'll deal with that when it comes to it. Right. And that's just short sighted. So leaders need to start looking at their institutional knowledge as an asset and starting to take action by cataloging it and sharing it in ways that are validated. [00:10:08] Speaker A: So it's almost like a form of succession planning is what you're saying. Instead of waiting for something to happen, looking to see what the possibility of certain things that could happen and making sure that you were putting something of succession in place so that you're keeping good people in your organization. [00:10:28] Speaker B: That's exactly right. And it fits. Our work fits alongside, and this work fits alongside succession planning really well. Lots of times I've seen succession planning that, you know, it's maybe there's a traditional nine box exercise, maybe there's a bench strength where suddenly we see the org chart and we're thinking okay, if X person left who would step up? But folks aren't taking that next action which is saying how do we get the information from our trusted key people into the heads and the hearts of the people below them in the org chart. And that's where we come in is how do we enable those people who know really and execute really well to become teachers at scale to the rest of the organization. [00:11:08] Speaker A: And I'm wondering if people are scared to come up with ideas because or not I shouldn't say scared. They have been putting in so many ideas or being creative of ideas and the organization is basically saying, well, we're not going to do that. And after a certain amount of time, I mean I'm good with hearing the word no, but after a certain amount of time of hearing a word no, sometimes you kind of like, you get it can be a little deflating. [00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there is that. I think, I think it can be. Well, it's a pretty rare thing unfortunately in organizations to be asked to train your successor. Right. Or the up and comers within the organization. And that can be, can be a scary thing because of how rare it is. And yet if we kind of look back on where apprenticeship used to be within manufacturing and within lots of different organizations and long tenures, this learning at the feet of the person who's the expert, that used to be the norm. And so I think there's a hesitancy in a lot of organizations at the start to ask someone to share what they know. But if you can get over that hurdle, it really starts to create a culture where teaching others is the objective. You know, there's a lot of talk about learning cultures and creating a learning culture. They often don't have curriculum. If you can work on a teaching culture, you're always going to have curriculum for that new person who joins. [00:12:24] Speaker A: So, Ben, what are some effective ways to turn individual expertise into shared organizational assets? [00:12:30] Speaker B: Well, the first thing I like to say is that we have so many tools now that a DIY approach is absolutely possible. Think about what was the last, what was the, what was the impact, the negative impact of your key person's last vacation, right. What did they have to explain to you over the phone as they were driving away, or what didn't happen while they were out? And could you get them to maybe do a screen share with you and record that screen share of how they do what they do just to create a simple lesson? That's one of the easiest ways, with audio and video and demonstrating practices that you can start to eat away at this very large task of preserving institutional knowledge. So that's a simple way. I think the other thing is planning within your time budget, if not your financial budget, for there to be some job shadowing virtually. So maybe it is specifically demonstrating a task online, as I talked about, but maybe it's also sitting and listening in on a call virtually, right? With a client, with a customer, with a colleague. You know, there's hybrid work and maybe just hopping into somebody's cube and sitting there and watching them all day is no longer possible. But being able to drop in and just, hey, let me see you work for an hour, is a tremendous way to transfer knowledge. [00:13:46] Speaker A: I agree with you 100% on that. Shadowing is. Everybody learns differently. Everyone understands tasks and stuff differently. When you're shadowing somebody, you're not going to get, you may not get the full picture of what they do. But like you said, in an hour of shadowing, let's say a call or hearing them calling, making sales calls or doing tasks, they're going to get a Good idea of what that job entails. Maybe after doing an hour, maybe they might be like, oh, I don't know if I like doing that. Maybe not something that interests me. Everyone kind of tries to find jobs, especially when they're looking for a new job. They try to find jobs that, where there's tasks that they like to do and, and the ones that they don't like to do, they probably try to stay away. It's impossible to stay away from every task I think that you don't like to do. There was. There's always going to be those tasks you don't like to do, unfortunately. But I think shadowing and listening on a call, I love that idea. [00:14:45] Speaker B: And it turns it from training. Like let me train you to do this because it is a foregone conclusion that you are going to have to into learning. Why don't you just learn what I do? You're exactly right. Maybe that creates opportunities and connects the dots for me in my mind whether I want this role as a part of my career path. It's just a, it's an easier and maybe less threatening approach. [00:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And then maybe by doing that their creativity is going to come out too. And then they're going to ask questions like, oh, this is how you do this, this process. Can I ask you why you do it this way? Can I make a suggestion to make things easier? You have a certain amount of calls, let's say per day to make. Maybe doing it a little bit differently will allow you to do more calls in a day. And I think if organizations are open to that, then it makes it even better because like you said, knowing, doing and being, that is a perfect example of that for sure. So are certain voices or perspectives more likely to be overlooked when it comes to knowledge retention? [00:15:45] Speaker B: Definitely. And I would say I had this bias and had to overcome it myself. You know, I started off working with organizations where I thought, okay, who's sitting? You know, are there five to 10 people sitting around the executive table and they're all experts in their areas. But in this small to mid sized business, you know, I've only got one person in charge of marketing and one person in charge of sales and one person in charge of operations. Operations. And if any of you people leave, your work's coming my way and I don't know how to do it. I thought that was where the value was. It's there. But deeper in the organization, your client and companies have started to build processes around people. Maybe there's a coordinator inside the engineering department and it's an hourly role, but they're the only person responsible for communicating, maybe with a government agency or a certification board or something that allows that organization to sell legally, nationally, internationally, around the world. That's a linchpin role buried deep inside of a process. And if you really take a moment to work, look at your organization and realize how many processes are running through these key people, these nodes, you will find that you need to be preserving the ways of working at that lower, quote, unquote level then perhaps even at a strategic level at the boardroom. Every part of your organization is relying on that person to show up every day, probably to check their email while they're on vacation to keep things flowing. [00:17:11] Speaker A: Ben, can you just go into a little bit more in depth when you talk? Because I love what you just said or you said, Preserving the ways of working. Can you go a little bit more in depth into that? [00:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah. First off, I think preserving rather than capture. Right. We want to memorialize the best practice practices. Right. And, and this work is really should be reserved, at least at the start, for those folks who are the demonstrated best practice within your organization. Right. We often say the only piece of reason I'm talking to you is because your boss thinks you're awesome. That's, that's the first part is celebrate and preserve that wisdom. But the ways of working are not just that I know to go to this website and click this button and enter this information. It's not just that I know our products. It's the ways that I process our. What is required to support this customer Persona, the ways that I reflect on my time at a trade show 10 years ago where I got lit up by a customer, and now I treat other customers better because of that fundamental understanding and experience that I have. So when you allow, you mentioned it earlier, you know, hey, are we going to allow time for questions? Are we going to allow people to have ideas? When knowledge is preserved and we allow people to speak freely about how they do their work, the context, the ways of working, the why starts to come to the fore. And so that is, that's, that's what I mean by ways of working. It's not just that I know what to click, but I know why I'm clicking it. And I, and I can tell the story of, of what's shaped the way that I work. [00:18:40] Speaker A: So I like that. And I was asking because. So a lot of people are transferring from being what we call an individual contributor and becoming a leader now. You just gave a perfect example of I know where to click. Those individual and contributors know how to click, know where to click. But a lot of them don't really know the reasons why those processes or tasks are done that way. Like if you were to ask them if I was working with somebody or being trained by someone and I would ask them, why do we do it this way? A lot of them probably wouldn't have the answer to that. They just say typical answer would probably be less is how we've always done it. But they don't really know like the knowledge of it. So when you say preserving it, I love that because you're understanding why I'm clicking on that or the reason for that or the reason why we do this process is because of da da da da da, not because we've always done it that way. [00:19:37] Speaker B: That's right. And, and I often find that by focusing on that why occasionally, sometimes focusing on capturing and preserving the clue clicks, but sometimes by focusing on preserving the why, we actually make it easier for our experts to share because we're not asking them to create an entire training program. We're asking them to explain the why of a particular function, a particular task. And so we've, we've sharing their knowledge. We made their knowledge, we made sharing their knowledge a modular activity. And that gives them the ability to be more confident and to work faster in sharing it it. So it's not spend the next three months downloading your entire brain. It's having a process for what matters most and then asking them to share those nuggets in really concrete ways that we find to be most successful. [00:20:24] Speaker A: Ben, before we wrap up today, what is one takeaway that you would like our listeners to remember from this episode? [00:20:30] Speaker B: For them to remember that it starts by truly celebrating that person within the organization and that also preserving institutional knowledge doesn't have to start out as a culture change within your group. There is benefit from having the first conversation with that longtime or linchpin employee and beginning the process of preserving just their wisdom. Your organization will benefit. Your people will think you have your head screwed on straight because they know how important that person person is to, we call her Gretchen. They know how important Gretchen is to the organization and they'll think you're a smarter boss for it and you will see immediate benefit. So I would, I would don't look at preserving institutional knowledge as this big hairy thing. It starts and is valuable very first [00:21:19] Speaker A: time you do it to anybody that's listening. My call to action today would be to like share and follow this episode. Ben I want to take the time to thank you for coming on today. What I admire about you is your, your diligence, your reliability, and your creativity. We connected a while back and I just enjoyed our conversation and I really enjoyed our conversation today. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on as a guest. So thank you so much for your time. [00:21:44] Speaker B: Andrew, thank you. It's been a pleasure. [00:21:46] Speaker A: Been a pleasure having you. And again, we will keep in touch and, and collaborate some more, I'm sure. On behalf of myself and my guest, Ben, I'd like to thank you all for listening today. Until next time, be safe. And remember, everyone, that if we all work together, we can accomplish anything you have been listening to. Let's be Diverse with Andrew Stout. To stay up to date with future content, hit Subscribe.