Digital Literacy and Other Helpful Bits with Nicki Usiondek

Nicki Usiondek has a robust background in leading strategic initiatives and optimizing information systems to enhance organizational efficiency, knowledge management and collaboration. Currently serving as Senior Knowledge Management Manager at Fragomen, Nicki excels in establishing communication channels that facilitate global knowledge exchange. She oversees Microsoft Search and SharePoint administration, guiding a team of digital employee experts to enhance information accessibility, embrace design thinking, and streamline processes using Lean Six Sigma methodologies. Nicki brings over a decade of experience in Knowledge Management. Nicki holds a Master of Library & Information Science and a Master of Arts in History from Wayne State University, complemented by a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification from Emory University and a Design Thinking and Innovation Certification from Harvard Business School Online. Her educational background and hands-on experience have equipped her with a unique blend of skills in managing complex information systems and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. https://youtu.be/cf4DZiw6r9E?si=o7urIcAhXudmIcGH

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
There is an old adage. 1 that you
might have heard from a grandparent or village
wise person. The one that says, you get
out what you put in. Meaning, your efforts
are matched to some degree by the results
or the output.
Now take our nonprofit, Pioneer Knowledge Services, who
delivers this cool program that you're listening to

(00:22):
right now takes a bunch of effort that
you don't even see. We hope that you
obtain value from our efforts to deliver it
to your powers of reason. Here is where
you come in. You. Yeah. The listeners.
Make our efforts rewarded.
Consider donating to keep us moving forward. Visit
pioneerdashks.org

(00:43):
and click on donate.
Pioneer Knowledge Services welcomes you to the next
because you need to know. I'm your host,
Edwin k Morris. I serve as president and

(01:03):
founder of this organization,
and we are thrilled to offer this educational
program. These design conversations
bring you people's experiences
from all over the globe in the field
of knowledge management,
nonprofit work, and innovation.

(01:31):
Hi. My name is Nikki Shandek, and I
live in the Metro Detroit area. I currently
work at Fragomen in knowledge management,
which is a global immigration firm,
and it mirrors up perfectly with one of
my passions, which is traveling and exploring the
world.
I would like to go to all 7
continents by the time I'm 50.

(01:51):
I plan to go on a cruise to
Antarctica
the year of my 50th birthday.
I create value
in quite a few ways. I feel like
what I'm able to do is meet people
where they're at in regards
to the knowledge that they have or understanding
knowledge management
and then help them organize it. Organization is

(02:12):
really important to knowledge because if people can't
sort through and find it, it's kind of
meaningless.
So that's kind of how I create value
is I take a look at what you
have, I help you organize it, and then
I help you surface it and make sure
it's findable. So then users are able to
locate it quickly, continue on with their their
day. Something I can talk about for hours

(02:33):
is history and genealogy.
I love history and genealogy.
It's kind of interesting, like, to see any
major historical events in American history
I have had family involved in. In fact,
I had 2 of my ancestors were on
the Lewis and Clark expedition.
So the world of libraries,
the intent is is to have knowledge at

(02:55):
the ready for anyone coming in. And if
they don't know how to find it,
you would ask a librarian, which the librarian
was like the emcee of the place, the
concierge,
the the person
that got you to what you were searching
for. So how does
a library person

(03:16):
help an organization?
A librarian does do all of that, but
they also do more. So Dewey Decimal actually
still exists. You'll find it in public libraries
at your local library, but there's also Library
of Congress, which is more applicable in, I
think, the corporate world. Right? So the big
difference for the most part, Dewey
nonfiction

(03:36):
is organized topical. Otherwise, it's by author. Whereas,
Library of Congress has large buckets, and then
items are mapped to it. It's it's essentially
like saying, okay. We're gonna talk Oh, wait
a minute. Alright. Alright.
Now please walk me through, like, I didn't
know that.
Walk me through and explain that to me
how that all works. And I think you

(03:56):
were getting there, but I just wanna hear
it from the top. Like, a large bucket
is if you think of the term science,
you can't just have a science
the category. I mean, you can, but you
have to have subsections of it because
science is a very large topic. But in
the corporate setting, you can just do it
by corporate group,

(04:16):
client group, whatever the product line might be.
However, there's always going to be another thing
to consider, and that is the taxonomy. How
do you call it? Are you a global
company? Do you have offices located all around
the world where perhaps either they might use
British English,
US English? It's digital. Right? So how which
spelling are you using? I use this example

(04:39):
a lot when you talk about filing an
application.
In UK, they lodge an application. In the
US, you file it. So is your user
going to actually be finding what yeah. So
part of this is, like, understanding
how your company and this is always gonna
be unique to your company, how they refer
to items, and then you have to go
further.

(04:59):
What about the individual groups within that company?
Are they referring to it at the same
way? And if they aren't, can you capture
it and link it? Taxonomy is just basically
controlled language. Right? So you're taking a term
and you're linking terms that are similar. That
way, the user is gonna find what they're
looking for no matter what term they start.
You brought up an interesting point. It's language
based,
and it's gotta have a definitive

(05:21):
glossary of what this is. Right? This means
this. But you brought up an interesting perspective
that it depends on the culture. Yeah. Words
are not universal,
and meanings are not universal.
So how does a system or a standardization
ever happen
between or around the globe, or does that

(05:42):
not even happen? Is everything in its own
bucket by nationality?
Maybe. So I'm a huge believer in meeting
people where they're at. You cannot go to
a group and say, no. You have to
conform to this because it's not gonna be
successful.
You meet them where they're at, and you
create a a solution that will work for
them. And it doesn't have to be a

(06:03):
large scale for the whole company. Where I
work, there's over 5,000 employees. There's no way
we're gonna get 5,000 people to agree on
anything. I can't even get 6 girls to
agree on a location for our 30th high
school reunion right now. Okay? So there's no
way
no way I'm gonna be able to wrangle
5,000 people to do everything one way. Now

(06:24):
let's get the perspective here. That's 5,000 people
in how many different countries?
Oh, gosh. I should know this. We have
about just under 60 offices.
I wanna say maybe around 20 or 25
countries. Okay. I'm not sure. The specifics is
not really the thing. The thing is is
that it's tough enough with 5,000 people,
but you're talking about across multiple cultures.

(06:46):
In trying to have a consensus, I would
guess, is that, you know, if corporate says
x, then all the subsidiaries have to say,
yep. That's x
to a degree. So it sounds like there's
a little modification
depending on where they're at. Is that is
that a true statement?
Yeah. Absolutely. And then even the other thing
is is if you look at an IT

(07:06):
group versus a finance group, what works for
IT is not gonna work for finance. So
it's not even necessarily a language or location.
It's also the function. Oh. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Alright. So
explain that a different way. What do you
mean by its function?
People look at things differently depending on their
skill set or, like, with their strengths. Right?

(07:28):
I'm not a numbers person. I'm not a
finance person, so I don't I don't know.
I just don't know how to word this.
I just feel like they aren't necessarily gonna
be interested in the ins and out of
technology.
And I know I'm generalizing, so finance people,
please don't come at me.
Well, I mean, I I I get what
you're saying. You know? I'm a communicator. I'm

(07:49):
a communications person. Yeah. The fastest way you
can put me to sleep is put me
in front of a stack of paperwork or
talk about taxes or some
mundane stuff that I don't wanna care about
or wanna know how to do. Yeah. I
Gotcha. I once worked for a company
who created dictionaries and textbooks for universities and

(08:09):
libraries, and my job was to read the
items and then tag it with not the
proper metadata.
And I once had to read a 14
volume textbook on taxes. So I I can
assure you
I'm very familiar with that because in the
worst, it was an annual thing because tax
change every year. So I really did enjoy

(08:30):
reading about other things, though. So it was
a it was a a trail. Yeah. Right?
You you you got something out of that.
Yeah. Yeah. What you're talking about
in a lot of ways
is gaining literacy,
understanding, and
comprehension
of the written or recorded words somehow.
And that skill set, you're not probably gonna

(08:53):
finesse
very well from a college level until you
jump in, you know, with these experiences,
then you start honing your craft.
Yeah. But it's really easy to get myopic
in your work life. Right? I think the
average person goes to work, and they are
very, very knowledgeable in that one area. But
But whenever they have to work with another

(09:13):
group or there's a problem that comes up,
they're not necessarily sure who to ask or
how to find who they should ask. Right?
So it's easy to become myopic, and, honestly,
most employers want you to because that's how
you become an expert in your field. So
that's why when I say that the value
I bring is, like, understanding that there is
no one size fits all option and nor
do we want there to be. Because I

(09:35):
am a firm believer in the variety of
the spice of life, and you can actually
come with so many interesting and exciting solutions
just from having kind of, like, the like,
with the Wild Wild West type of mentality,
but control. So it's like organized chaos. Right?
One thing that's nice is with SharePoint is
especially SharePoint online. I'm only gonna when I

(09:55):
say SharePoint, I only mean SharePoint
online. Specifically, that you can actually create a
SharePoint site for each of your offices or
groups or corporate offices or even, like, I
am working on a project and there's 5
different people from different departments, so we're gonna
create a site for this. There's and then
you can actually take the document libraries and
Microsoft list and leverage them all in a

(10:17):
way that makes sense for that particular project.
You can also even map it further, and
this is what I did previously for a
solution using PMP search because you can have
the best data, but if people can't find
it or you like, if it's really hard
to use, they're they're gonna avoid it. You
can then take these, which they call managed
property in Microsoft world or SharePoint world, connect

(10:38):
it to a refinance string in the admin
center,
and that's what makes it the search engines
it gets you can query it, basically. It's
not default. Certain
columns in SharePoint,
always you can always query them, but not
all. But then the beauty of that too
is you can then take those definable strings
and map it to AI. So your chatbot,

(10:59):
someone's asking about x, y, z. Well, we
know you have to look in this anything
that's attached to this definable string. And that's
how you also do taxonomy and metadata
in SharePoint. The column is the taxonomy. Let's
stress that point because I I'm not sure
if just average people know all the things
under the hood, so to speak. Because what

(11:19):
you get at the user interface, the user
experience
is one aspect
of the technology.
And we're gonna get into this further when
we talk about digital literacy, which is building
new skills to interact
with these types of resources,
to build
better
currency, and I mean currency and relevancy

(11:41):
of data, of information
to a consumer,
to someone that is searching for
content and answer,
help.
If the back end and I refer to
back end as all that taxonomy stuff, right,
the the metadata, all the stuff that goes
into
a refined system.
If that is not part of the build,

(12:04):
then the user is never gonna get the
full potential of what the software could have
been. Who is responsible
for building
all of that under the hood
type of material in an organization?
That, I think, is the area where
I
I I don't know if there's necessarily, like,
a common approach. I would assume most people

(12:26):
would commonly think, oh, it's the IT folks.
They should be
doing all that. But it's not. Yeah. Exactly.
Why? Why is that not? Why? Why not?
Why?
If I want IT to help well, so
they're they're they're more technical. For the for
the longest time, it was writing scripts,
doing patches for the server when it was
server based. You know, making sure that the

(12:48):
health of the whole cloud environment is great,
that there's good security around it, that you
have dual authentication.
Like, that's like IT is more kind of
the mechanic, if you will. The mechanics. Right.
Exactly. Right. Yeah. I'm gonna stick with your
car analogy. Okay. But the mechanic isn't necessarily
the designer of the car. They know how
the car works. Or the driver. Right? They

(13:09):
don't they're not behind the wheel. They're not
the skilled driver most of the time. They're
the ones that don't know the engine, the
transmission, the rear end, all that mechanical stuff.
So you're right. I think you're right. The
IT folks are
the car mechanics in this example.
So who does the metadata? I would love
to say, oh, obviously, this person. But I

(13:30):
don't think I don't think any company has
that answer. I need to know. Like, who
does this? Right? Does it naturally fall to
Kilometers to do the metadata?
Or is it just simply
somebody on the c suite says we need
a policy on this and everybody's responsible?
So first of all, I don't think every

(13:52):
company
knows about Kilometers or actually has Kilometers implemented
at their company.
And, also, the c suite, if they all
knew about Kilometers, oh my god. That would
be amazing as well. Right? Yeah. You're talking
about my dream scenario right there. I'm fortunate
because that's my current situation with work. But,
like, that would be, like, the best case
scenario. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that is one

(14:13):
of those gaps. I think a lot of
times, I'll see that's the creeps. Right? Like,
they know how to start and build that.
Like, I can spin up SharePoint real quick.
But then you go to the page or
the the site because they started using it
and now they're, like, getting confused and lost.
They want some help with it and it
is literally out of the box SharePoint, not
really actually gonna help them achieve what they're
trying to achieve.

(14:34):
Folder within folder within folder. Don't get me
started on that. It's like something that it's
nails on a chalkboard to me, And then
that's where the problem comes. Let let me
refresh the listener in case they never had
this experience
that just because an organization
bought some technology
Yeah. Does not mean they operate it or

(14:54):
rolled it out in a correct manner. So
what she's talking about right there, I've seen
done Mhmm. Multiple places
where we got the SharePoint,
and it became a shared drive. Yep. People
just loaded stuff up and dumped stuff there.
Didn't do the back end. Did not do
the mechanical work to make it operable, optimally
operable for the user. Yeah. It is so

(15:17):
important to understand how to actually leverage it.
There's two sides of of SharePoint. There's the
backstage area. If If you're like, I'm gonna
switch to the theater analogy. I apologize. But
if you're at the theater, the backstage where
the actors are changing costumes, there's the stagehands
moving sets all around and we're making it
all organized. And then there's the audience who's

(15:38):
seeing the front stage and it's like, oh
my gosh. It's so amazing. Look at this.
Look at that. And they have no clue
about the, like, ugly backstage.
I think it's sad because people don't ever
really get the full functionality of SharePoint. They're
losing out on an incredibly powerful tool. I
don't know how many times I see people
use Excel
when a SharePoint list would have been the

(16:00):
actual better place to have that data. Now
granted, you don't get the lovely pretty charts
and and pie charts and things like that,
but you can export it to Excel and
then still get those things. There's always a
better way.
Right? I wanna bring this back into because
everything you've talked about,
to me,
is like learning a language.

(16:21):
If you are not fluent in a language,
you're not gonna get it. You won't get
all of it. You may get a little
bit. Let's use that analogy as
where we're gonna go, which is literacy.
I like this because
it's easy to get. Right? So if you
know a little bit of Spanish, I can
order beer, hamburgerza.
You know, I can order about 10 things

(16:43):
that really kinda and but I just take
a Spanish word that I know and put
it in an English sentence and it they
get it. Am I fluent? Oh gosh. No.
Once they start talking real fast, I don't
hear anything. This is a similar skill set.
And if an organization
is not smart and does not operate full
potential of what they bought, they are not

(17:03):
fluent. So let's flip that coin over to
literacy.
Digital literacy,
I wanna pull up a definition here, and
this is from the official website of the
Institute of Museum and Library Services. It's
from, usa.gov.
This is information literacy dot gov.
Their definition of digital literacy is pretty simple.

(17:24):
Digital literacy
is the ability to use the Internet
and other digital tools to find accurate information
and apply that information
to their own lives.
Really, it's just knowing the language,
having an
efficiency,
and proficiency
in that skill set of not just the

(17:44):
user interface. Yep. I, you know, I I
can use Excel, but I was blown away
for the first time when somebody taught me
what a pivot table was. And I'm like
Yeah. Are you kidding me? I could have
been and I'm populating slides manually and, oh,
it was I was like, oh my gosh.
The lights went on. Right?
But the point is is that

(18:06):
how does an organization
become proficient
in its own digital literacy, let alone its
people? It has to start from the top
down. It has to be part of the
culture. It really does. I manage people. I'm
a manager. So how I approach it is
my job as their manager
is to make sure I give them the
tools to support and the opportunities to grow

(18:26):
their career and get better.
And sometimes that means if I don't know
a program or something, like, getting them training
outside of the firm, so that way they're
able to fill up. So part of it,
it has to be a culture. I also
think it's super important to create a culture
Yeah. Where it's okay to fail.
And what I mean by that is not
that you're the weather person who always gets

(18:47):
the weather wrong,
that it is okay to try something knowing
that there is a pretty good chance it
might not work because you're gonna learn lessons
about what will work out of that. And
let's say the first time you go take
a chance on it, it doesn't really work,
but you can see potential.
It can be an iterative process. Like, keep
trying and fine tuning fine tuning until you

(19:09):
get it to a point where you can
have some really great tools. Like, PMP search
to me is one of those things. When
I first learned about PMP search, I was
like, I'm never gonna be able to figure
this out. What is that acronym? I don't
know what PMP stands for.
Oh my gosh. We are gonna learn.
EMP search. Yeah. It's a it's a website

(19:29):
for surefire.
So it's okay. Got it. You're not project
management. Right? Is that a project management thing?
PMP project management professional. No. Introduction to PMP
modern search. GitHub.
Yeah.
I
know. This is the hard part. Yes. Okay.
Ah, okay. According to ShareIt

(19:50):
solution,
p n SharePoint PMP is pattern and processes.
It's best described as an initiative that includes
samples and guidance on how to transform
your full trust code solutions for an add
in model. It's not just search. There's other
things you can leverage PMP with and and
do stuff with it. So if you have
really structured list with a ton of content

(20:12):
and you and documents anything that you want
people to be able to surface quickly, you
can use PMP search. You have to learn
query language, so KQL and SQL.
Then the queries are basically embedded into the
web part, so the backstage area. And on
the front page, it's a lovely, like, vertical.
If you click on the column, you select

(20:32):
which country you want or whatever, like, the
topic and all the information displays nicely. And
when I first saw that, I was like,
I'm never gonna learn that. And then not
only did I learn it, like, I taught
my team to use it, like, regularly.
We create a policy center, like, you can
just quickly find things, and you can surface
from more than one SharePoint site. Everything around
the enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. This sounds like a

(20:53):
lot of work. Yeah. It's great.
Yeah. It's great.
Yeah. I've been around Kilometers for a couple
of weeks, and I had never even you
know, I worked around SharePoint
because this is just that heavy lift part
of a well designed
rollout of a software system
that, apparently, most people don't ever get to.

(21:15):
Too busy putting out fires. Right? Yeah. They're
like, okay. We got SharePoint. Let's roll. Okay.
What would be your advice to an organization
that doesn't know
what they know?
Send your people
to oh, what do they call it now?
Oh, god. They've chain it used to be
SharePoint. So But professional development is what you're
saying. Send them to a conference. Yeah. Right.
Send them to a conference. Mhmm. That's an

(21:36):
investment in their personnel that doesn't really show
an immediate
or a displayed
return on investment. Would you agree? No. Because
what ends up happening is you come back
from these conferences, and you have you've seen
things. And you've actually they you can sit
in these little sessions where they teach you
how to actually execute some of the items.
In April, my team and I went to,
the GoodNorth American Cloud Club and, just outside

(21:58):
of Dallas. And we came back and I
learned about Clarity, Microsoft Clarity, that you can
have it sit on your SharePoint, basically, your
tenant. And then you're able to get really,
really good analytics. And, like, to the point
where there is you can see where people
are missing the gaps. Right? So how do
they get there from here and then you
can actually see it? So we were able
to get that implemented, and we have results,

(22:19):
like, that even been too much. I I
hear what you're saying, but most of the
organizations
out there that control purse strings Yeah.
As soon as you say, hey. I'd like
to send my team to a conference. They're
like, oh, brother. How much is that gonna
cost? You know? Yeah. Oh, that's a lot
of money. But that's only the half of
it. The other half is what you explained
is when you got back Yeah. You had

(22:41):
time and space and resources to add in
whatever was learned.
Most organizations will send you a conference,
and then you come back and everything's as
normal as it was before you left because
nobody wants to do anything. Or you're fighting
the system, or you're fighting an attitude,
or, you know, or or or Yeah. I
get what you're saying. If you got the

(23:02):
resources, send your people, get that professional development.
But how do you let them come back
and experiment
to see if they can make it better?
We create a culture where it's okay to
fail. You're able to play
Right back at the beginning. We're right back
at the start. So my team and I,
we each walked away from that conference with
a few things we're gonna play with, all
of them different, luckily. And so we're figuring

(23:23):
out ways to run with it and see
the growth from it. This is what's gonna
happen if you have SharePoint and you don't
have the proper people leveraging it or the
with the training. You're gonna end up going
to consultants. Yeah. Right? Right. Oh, we want
to have an intranet. We don't have SharePoint
out of or we we have SharePoint on
the box, so we don't know how to
make templates or or user design. So we're
gonna go to a template company. We're gonna

(23:44):
spend, on average, it'll be about a $150,000
to get it up and running and then
$40,000
here for maintenance. You could actually just send
a couple of people
to SharePoint, like, to a conference
For a lot less money. So the person
who controls the purse string, like, what would
you rather do? Yeah.
I'm with you, sister. Hey. I I am
with you because we are simpatico here. I

(24:07):
I get what you're saying, but I already
drank the Kool Aid.
I am trying to get you to pierce
the ears of the listener out there to
say,
maybe we should be thinking of this different.
Yeah. If you got an organization that's got
10 to 15% of their gross is spent
on consultancies,
you gotta wonder, if you'd flipped it and
said, you we could we could invest

(24:29):
half that money in our own people to
build the skill sets
versus giving it away because it is a
one way street. Once you've given that power
away
and the iterations change, we're now on version
11, and now, oh, we gotta have that
whole thing up. Guess who's gonna get the
phone call again? You know, that's Yeah. That's
not smart money spends right there. Or that's

(24:50):
where it goes to IT, and then IT
has to try to figure out what in
the heck happened 10 years ago
rather than being, less than 10 minute fix
because you have experts on-site.
It's a 2 to 3 week where they're,
like, digging through things. Additionally,
this is another part of knowledge management is
knowledge capture. So you have your people with
these skill sets and it's getting captured and

(25:12):
shared within the team. So that person can
lead. Guess what? It doesn't matter. The skills
are being, like, retained. It's still a resource.
Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna bring you the
term because it's one of my favorite terms.
And this everything you've laid out is what
this is. And you may not use the
word, but it's called future proof. Right? Future
proofing. Yeah. So Cambridge

(25:32):
defines future proof, and it's hyphenated in their
spelling.
Future proof to design software, a computer, etcetera,
so that it can still be used in
the future even when technology changes. Yeah. Now
if we were to future proof the personnel
of the organization, and that's what I'm hearing
you say, you're constantly cultivating your own people.

(25:53):
Why give away the farm? Let's build the
expertise
within us. Yeah. And then we don't have
to rely on anybody.
Send them the conferences. Send them the trainings.
Get all this brainy stuff going,
and we can do it ourselves.
Well, you can still work with consultants. Like,
I've I work with consultants, especially, like, in
regards to, like, user design.

(26:15):
I don't want to pretend, like, we're experts
in everything. Yeah. We aren't. But I think
it's important to know that it's okay to
go when you have a very targeted need
to have someone who is a subject matter
expert and work with them. But I also
think it's important to know that you can
probably do more than you think you can.
I know right now there's probably someone saying,
oh, okay. So how big is her staff?

(26:36):
She said she manages people. So the company
I work for is between 56,000
people.
I am a team, including myself, of 3.
Yeah. So in this digital literacy concept,
it sounds like the Kilometers role
is a bit technical
and a bit around the the soft No.

(26:57):
We have different groups within Kilometers. There are
the subject matter experts who are helping capture
data and make sure that, you know, they
have the trained eye for it, writing it,
right, making sure that it's cohesive, consistent, written
in a way that lay people can also
understand it. It's not so, not a lot
of jargon, things like that. I do work

(27:17):
on the tech side of knowledge, and I
think it's important to understand that knowledge management
isn't just one thing. There's several aspects of
it. Right?
So without the content, the test part's meaningless.
Also, you have to do knowledge capture. You
have to also understand when to rewrite something,
when to revisit something, get feedback.
You're never gonna get it right the first

(27:39):
time. You're never gonna know everything, and that's
okay.
Also training. Training is a huge part of
knowledge management and even change management as a
part of knowledge management because people do get
stressed from change. I personally love change. I
thrive on it. I think it's exciting
and interesting,
but not everyone feels that way. I'm also

(27:59):
the person who I get to the point
where my job is just status quo and
it's perfect and I can just show up
and go home. I am so bored. And
a lot of people spend their whole career
waiting to get to that point. I want
to have challenges.
I wanna, like, be in the weeds. It's
important to know that knowledge management is a
multifaceted
area, and it's really interesting.

(28:21):
You just shined a light on yourself. I'm
gonna jump on that.
When did you become inquisitive?
Because everything you just talked about is an
inquisitive person. You have an appetite to learn.
And if you're not learning, you're not doing.
Yeah. Did you just come out like that?
My mother would say yes.
My mom would say I was born that

(28:42):
way.
Then no one knows what my first word
was, and my mom and dad, like, were
worried. They thought I had delayed speech because
I wouldn't talk in front of them, but
I would tell my I'm the youngest. So
my, my sister would be like, oh, Nikki
wants a glass of water, and Nikki wants
a cookie. And my mom was like, sure
she does. And then when my sister went
to preschool, I had to go into the

(29:04):
kitchen
and be like, mom, can I have a
glass of water? And she's like, yeah. You
you can speak, like, sentences. Oh, my goodness.
You talk? Yeah.
But then she wished that I had not
started talking because my favorite word
was always why. Why? Why is that? Why?
Yeah. I was the kid where if you
gave me a toy,

(29:25):
that was like a mechanical
type of toy, I would take it apart
and then put it back together. To understand
it. Right? You wanted to you you wanted
to understand.
Yeah. So that's an interesting
perspective.
Would you say that you can represent that
in a job interview or on your CV
or on your resume?
What are the skill sets or not even

(29:47):
skill sets? What are the personality traits you
wanna have in a Kilometers'er? Yeah. I'm good
at building relationships and then finding ways to
make things work for everyone. Because I don't
know how you capture that. And this is
something my boss and I talk a lot
about, like, how do you actually figure out
if that's the right role? So what we
tend to do is
show all the ugly part because if they

(30:09):
are excited about the ugly parts, they're gonna
be fine.
But then it scares away people.
You know? It's fighting that a different way,
please. Obviously,
part of having good data or knowledge is
making sure that you have proper policies and
procedures in place that capture things, and you

(30:29):
kinda do have to be somewhat rigid
with it because it's consistent.
We're also the good data management practices. So
there's a little bit of rigid, like, being
rigid and also flexible too. So here's
too. So here's the workflow.
These are the things that happen. What you're
saying is you gotta have solid governance and
policy
and
predictability

(30:50):
baked in, and people just gonna have to
suck that up. That's not a waverable thing.
We don't get a choice in that. That's
how we do things, and that's the operating
system. No. Absolutely not. This is why I
say you also have to be a little
bit flexible. Because what if AI happens and
now you have new options? You can't just
say stop. Stop. Like, I tell everyone it
should be a living thing. It it it

(31:12):
shouldn't be something
that, okay.
Internet's done. Then we're done. It has to
be Governance is set. That's the way we're
gonna do it from now on. Yeah. It's
just not how life works. And we live
in the gray. No one lives in a
black and white area. So, you you know
I'm in a gray world myself. So Mhmm.
I get you. So I'm gonna ask you,

(31:32):
Nikki, how do you define knowledge management? The
process by making the right knowledge available to
the right person at the right time, so
they can get the right advice or have
the right solution available to them. Is knowledge
management
an art or a science? It's both.
I don't know. I can't. If you're like,
what's your favorite thing? I don't have favorites.
You've been through my mood.

(31:54):
But it is both. It's both. There is
an art to it, and there's a science
to it. Agreed.
That I hear that often. You know, the
right right data, right right answer, right at
the right moment, in the right way. Yeah.
You have to capture it. You have to
curate it. You have to make it accessible.
What I like about knowledge management is it's
always something new, always something different. Like, I

(32:14):
feel like I never stop learning. It goes
back, I guess, to being inquisitive.
I remember one of my first times I
was in library school and I was volunteering
at a public library,
And I helped a gentleman.
He was trying to figure out how he
could find out information about applying for social
security. So I went and helped him find
it online, and we printed it off. And
he was just so thankful. And that's, like,

(32:36):
what I like about what I do. That's
a good feeling thing. Right? Helping somebody,
and they are appreciative.
But if he came back for the next
10 days,
well, I need to find a cat. I
need to do this. I need to and
then you're like, woah. Woah. Woah. There's gotta
be a point where
I'm gonna show you so you can do
it, so I don't have to do it

(32:58):
for you. Right? And that's where training comes
in. This is the fun thing that I
have learned in life. Some people just aren't
going to get it, and that's okay. Right.
And number 1, it's job security for all
of us that you get it. And number
2, there are some things I just don't
get.
I can't hold someone else at fault when
I myself am just as guilty but with

(33:19):
a different topic. So is there a way
to make it, like, the perfect world where
you show someone something once and they get
it? No. Yeah. Done. Yep. You know? And
honestly, I think what it really does is
also make all of us remember that we're
human.
AI is not gonna take your job, guys.
Not yet. Maybe talk talk to me in
10 years. The other side of being inquisitive

(33:39):
in a long life learner
is that you like to teach people. Share.
Now it's sharing. You like to Yeah. Help
them to understand.
But there's there's a bit of the teaching
piece because you want them to become Yeah.
Digital
literate people. Yeah. Right? You want them to
build the skill. It's it's all those things,

(34:00):
and I thank you very much for being
here, Nikki. You're a very enthused individual.
Thanks. Yeah. I love my job, and I
feel like not everyone gets to say that.
And then also, like, the fun part of
my job and probably why I love it
is there's a good chunk of my day
where I often feel like I'm just goofing
off, but it's a learning process. You know

(34:23):
what I mean?
So why wouldn't I be excited about it?
Well, that's the perfect
perfect position for what I see in front
of me, and that is a very
inquisitive and gifted individual. Alright. Thank you. Thank
you.
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey, and
we hope the experiences gained

(34:45):
add value to you and yours.
See you next time at because you need
to know. If you'd like to contact us,
please email
byntk@pioneerdash
ks.org
or find us on LinkedIn.

(35:07):
Thank you for listening to Because You Need
to Know, the reference podcast and knowledge management.
My name is Soni Tonebi. As an art
administrator,
Because You Need to Know has been my
go to podcast and has helped me hone
my management skills. Please consider sponsoring the podcast
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