December 11, 2024 • 30 mins
Dr. Rachel Teague is a collaborator, TEDx speaker, engaging facilitator, writer, and emerging authority in KM. Her primary focus lies in the human dimension of KM, focusing on culture, knowledge transfer, and retention where she's known to ‘translate nerd to human’. Dr. Teague extends her influence as a consultant and educator specializing in areas such as Prosci Change Management, Process Improvement, and DEI making her a driving force in the realms of knowledge, education, and organizational enhancement.
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Hi. My name is doctor Rachel Teague. I
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live just outside of Manchester, New Hampshire, about
an hour north of Boston in the heart
of New England.
Most interesting thing near me location wise, I
think, would be the fact that I sit
about 45 minutes from the ocean, 45 minutes
from the lake region, and about an hour
from Boston, Vermont, and Maine. So I can
make it to pretty much anywhere in about
(01:10):
an hour, which is fantastic to be smack
dab in the middle. I work currently at
Southern New Hampshire University as the senior knowledge
management and training specialist.
My wife and I also own a consulting
company called Disruption Learning and Technology
where we work to collaborate with businesses to
help solve their problems.
And I've worked in the education,
(01:31):
training, Kilometers space for the better part of
the last 18 years in one way or
the other,
but I've done more of a specific Kilometers
focus for the last 5 years. I stay
connected with people through conversation,
my ridiculous desire to continuously learn about stuff,
and through knowledge management. You know, there's a
big misconception about what knowledge management is unless
(01:53):
you work in it. So the fact that
I'm able to kinda pull it into different
areas into my life, whether it's professional or
personal or, you know, anything else I find
myself in, that's where I really like to
thrive.
Where did you find
your first
inspiration
around learning?
I heard you say that you're a perpetual
(02:15):
learner.
Where did it come from? You know, I
have always been involved in education in one
capacity or another. Right out of high school,
I was supposed to go to college like
most people of my generation were supposed to,
and
I had some stuff happen where my direction
changed a little bit, and I did a
year of AmeriCorps in a program called City
Year. I did it right here in New
Hampshire, though it's a national and international organization.
(02:38):
And that really gave me some hands on
experience in classrooms working with kids that were
at risk who needed some help.
When I was going into college prior to
that, when I thought I was going to
college, I didn't really know what I wanted
to do. I was going to be a
music teacher because it seemed like the most
logical way to make some money and play
music.
(02:59):
I didn't really have that passion for teaching.
City Year changed that that for me, and
education has been a constant thread in the
tapestry that, you know, is my life. So
you bring up opportunity
that came out of, what you didn't think
was gonna be an opportunity, but this opportunity
to be at AmeriCorps and really
set a new perspective for you. Is that
(03:20):
a safe estimation? Yeah. I would say that's,
looking back on it now, hindsight is always
2020. It was a Alright. So let's go
back before that. Who was a somebody who
cared about somebody learning something? Who was that
first imprint
for you? My parents were super influential in
wanting me to get the most out of
whatever I did educationally or personally or whatever.
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So my dad was always quoted with saying,
I'd rather have a hard c than an
easy a.
So even though things, you know, they came
to me pretty naturally, but there were definitely
some things I had to work really hard
on. And they could tell if, like, it
was an a that I earned or an
a that I coasted through. Yes. And my
dad and my mom would actually tease at
dinner. They'd be like, oh, you you get
a 93. Where are these other 7 points?
(04:01):
You know?
Not in, like, that typical hard nosed, like,
way. But, you know, the more so the
Being funny about it. Like, oh, you'd you
really slacked on that one. Come on. Right.
Yeah. So that has always instilled a huge
drive in my my learning. And, actually,
one cool thing that I got to do
was by the time I finally got to
go to college just with the way that
(04:22):
the financial aid system works, I was 24
when I started going for my bachelor's.
And it took me a while to get
it, but the 10 years out of high
school is when I finished my bachelor's degree,
when I did it through a competency based
program. And my dad was so inspired when
I graduated with my bachelor's.
He said, you know, you go for your
master's, I'll go through the bachelor's at the
same school, and next year, we'll graduate together.
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Woah. Yeah. Sure enough.
Because of the way the program was set
up being competency based where you prove your
mastery of the material through, like, projects as
opposed to tests and quizzes and length of
time in your seat, He was actually able
to finish the remaining portion of his bachelor's
in the year that it took me to
finish my master's degree, and then we got
to walk across the stage together, which was
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That's the defining moment. That's pretty phenomenal.
Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It was
really it was incredible because he had retired
from his job, his career of, like, 37
years at that point. And he didn't have
to go back to school, but he went
back just because it was one of those
things he always wanted to do. So I
would say that both of my parents, but
especially my dad, really kinda drove the education
bug. Did you have a formal or informal
(05:29):
mentor in the same framework,
this perspective of a continual learning? Yeah. I
mean,
there have been different mentors that have come
and gone over the years through different projects
and different employers. Okay. I would say that
one of the most impactful activities that I
did in AmeriCorps
was talking about my hypothetical board of directors.
(05:50):
And my hypothetical board of directors could include,
who do you
lean on? Who would you ask for support
if you could pick anybody and just bounce
ideas off of? There have been 2 people
that have remained on my hypothetical board of
directors since I did AmeriCorps, like, 18 years
ago. Other than that, sometimes, you know, it'll
I'll channel a musician where I pull it
in. That's
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a passion or somebody I would like to
channel,
or I'll pull in a leader or something.
So my my board of directors is, you
know, my mental board of directors is changing
over the years. I would say that John
Hoville has been
really instrumental
in my Kilometers journeys. I'm really lucky to
have a fantastic manager that I work for
at the university who has been instrumental in
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really encouraging that as well. He actually introduced
me to John, and John and I have
been able to do a lot since then
and just took off running. And I wanna
point out to everybody that
I pulled this out because
it, one, gives reflection to you
about the sources of continuity or the sources
of inspiration that continue you along your path.
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Not everybody has that, and I wanna make
a stress point here that if you don't,
change your perspective
and find a relationship
that adds value to your
aspiration. It doesn't have to be formal. I
I like this whole model that you just
explained from AmeriCorps.
This was just an exercise. It was a
(07:14):
mental model kind of exercise. Yeah. It was
just, like, a professional development day. They had
some, like,
activities to fill time. And it was it's
really funny because I actually volunteer with City
of New Hampshire now where I'm doing some
consulting with their core and their staff to
kind of actually help with some knowledge management,
but help with some team building. And I
was talking to the chief of staff for
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City of New Hampshire. Her name is Jen.
And she served alongside me as a senior
core member when I was a core member.
And I asked her, I was like, do
you remember this activity? This happened forever ago.
And she's like, I think we've done it
on and off over the years. She's like,
why? And I I told her just how
impactful it was and how I've been able
to pull that into different conversations throughout the
years. And it's funny because, like I said,
it's it's that it's almost like that dinner
(07:56):
party question where who would you have dinner
with and why? Yeah. It's, you know, who
do you want to ask these questions to?
Well, it's a practice, and it sets up
a mental practice
to consult outside of yourself.
And I think that's where the key ingredient
is that everything you're talking about is that
you can only keep your perspective
tuned
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if you have this back and forth
outside of yourself
in order to keep some kind of equilibrium,
I'll call it, of your own
abilities. Right? Because there's there's certain aspects of
the human framework that it can either push
you or pull you. And as long as
you're
in earnest,
trying to become something
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other than what you presently are,
the this ability
gives a really growth potential
that is unlimited. A 100%. Yeah. It's, kinda
falls into
knowledge sharing, and
that's something where I've really started settling settling
into with my work over the last couple
of years. I've done a lot of research
on knowledge transfer and have been coined a
a rising expert in the field,
but I also am really huge into the
(09:01):
knowledge sharing aspect and
learning from people and, you know, sharing different
ideas. And that really falls into that as
well, being able to kinda look at different
perspectives, but also,
you know, leverage the people around you, leverage
information and learning. In some of the classes
that I teach, both university and, you know,
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outside in workshops,
one of the biggest things that I bring
up is, you know, I love teaching and
I am
somebody who is an expert in these areas,
a subject matter expert. But I still learn
something from everybody in this class
whenever I'm teaching. And that's if I'm not
learning while I'm teaching, then I'm not in
my opinion, I'm not doing it right. That
just triggered something in my mind as an
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old army guy that is used to training.
Yes. If you were ever weak in a
skill set, you volunteered to be the trainer.
Because by doing the training, it really cemented
what I've kept missing
and became more fluent in through practice.
But what you're talking about is that the
knowledge sharing
in the same framework
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is a perspective
and a personal trait. So how do you
get people to identify it at that root
level? This is a personal trait. This is
not just something that's gonna be a systems
or a technology fix.
It's a people issue. Yeah. Right? Yeah. My
brand of Kilometers is really people based. There's
a lot to be said about
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systems and process and AI and all of
the fun aspects. I mean, it's a holistic
practice if you look at it, but for
me, I thrive in the people side of
things. It's funny I sit on an IT
team in my role where most of my
guys have worked in help desk scenarios
or things like that and I'm the only
one who hasn't to the point where my
colleagues are like, can you help me with
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this thing you sit in IT? And I'm
like, the only thing I can tell you
about IT is have you rebooted your computer.
Right? Like, I was hired to do the
people side where I can connect with other
people and help translate that nerd to human
to make it accessible for other people. An
example of that is a couple of years
ago, I took what I lovingly call my
gap year from the university and I went
out and I consulted for a bit on
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family consulting business. The product that they worked
on specifically was payroll. I don't know payroll.
I am somebody who enjoys getting paid properly,
but I don't know anything otherwise about it.
My co consultant,
he was the type of guy who, if
I gave him a manual on a system,
he could read it in the weekend for
fun and come back and be an expert
on Monday, but he could not people
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to the point where they hired me and
they joked that I was his translator because
I could do the people side of things.
I could ask, well, why do you do
this specific process this way
and not come off as a robot or
not come off or, like, just have that
genuine concern, that genuine curiosity behind it as
opposed to the, well, that's not what the
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manual says. Well, how can we do it
this way? It's not what you say. It's
how you say it, and I've always been
that people person. So is there an analysis?
Is there
a attribute
table or questionnaire or something that shows who's
in the knowledge sharing environment,
naturally versus those that are gonna need a
little training? Is there any way you can
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discern who's in or out? You know, that's
an interesting question. I I'm starting to kinda
gather some informal research on that. I I
don't have a specific place I could point
people to,
but it is something that I'm starting to
do that research on and trying to figure
out, like, if if you use different personality
Yeah. And EQ assessments, you know, like, where
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do people fall? And what I'm noticing is
a trend is that
the people who can kind of balance both
the systems aspect but also understand the relational
human side
is where the sharing is taking place. It's
almost that sweet spot where the gap is
filled because you can have somebody who's on
the people side but have no idea how
to organize things. Then you can have somebody
who organizes
super hardcore, but they're not so much of
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a people person. When you have people who
can balance between the 2 seamlessly
or support other colleagues who, you you know,
be that bridge, that system convener, if you
will, being able to kinda help connect the
dots. That's what I've been finding. So the
people who are either strong in one way
or the other,
they can share. Yeah. Right? Knowledge sharing does
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happen with those people, but how it's shared
might be a little bit different.
One thing we haven't talked about, which you
everything you just said queued me up to
is that
the element I think that is missing is
the cultural piece in which Yes. People have
a vested interest in the community.
Yes. So everything you're talking about with these
skill sets, I get that. But where the
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magic happens is somebody that cares enough to
share something with you that's going to help
you or shortcut an issue or or your
ass. So you're like, sure. Yeah. It's like
this. That helpful
personality being straight.
What's an exercise a small organization could do
similar to your model of the board of
directors?
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Is there something that's a tool that can
help organizations
start to sharpen that pencil? Culture, I think,
plays a huge part in it too. Like,
the the culture of a learning organization
or trying to, you know, you can't
effectively implement anything really without having the buy
in of your people, like, from the top
all the way down. So something that an
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organization could do, and this is going to
sound really silly, but most of the stuff
that I recommend can be out of the
box anyway. Are you familiar with the peanut
butter jelly exercise? Tell me, please. Okay. If
I were to say, you know, Edwin, how
do you make a peanut butter sandwich?
You might say, I I'll take the bread,
take some peanut butter, put the peanut butter
on the bread, and there you go. But
(14:36):
if you were to literally do the step
by step, you say take the bread, and
I was, well, where do you get the
bread? Where is the bread? Oh. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. The drawer. What kind of bread?
Being able to actually practice that activity
and do it in pairs, and that just
that helps with communication, that helps with I
like that very much. You you took me
back to when I was trained to be
an instructor at the Intelligence Center at Fort
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Huachuca, Arizona.
As an instructor, we had to go through
a training that we had to do that.
Exactly what you're saying because it's over you
know, it's it's simplistic Mhmm. To say, oh,
you just skip all this because everybody knows
this. Right? You assume there's a baseline of
knowledge already versus somebody that's fresh in the
block that doesn't have a clue what you're
(15:20):
talking about that you have to think of
these iterative steps
that build up to something bigger. And until
you go through that process, it's amazing
how little thought you give to all the
parts that aren't on the surface. For sure.
Yeah. I just did a, knowledge transfer with
a pilot that I had built at the
university. When I do these retentions, I'll sit
with the employee and I'll kinda shadow what
(15:41):
they're doing, but I'll have a specific topic
for an hour at a time, and I'll
talk me through this process.
And then when he when he's like, you
know what? When you have this role and
you're doing this piece, the next step is
this. And I was like, okay. But how
do I get to that role in the
first place?
You know, I didn't actually know there, and
that's the beauty of my role. I'm not
a subject matter expert in the areas in
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which I'm being taught, but I am an
expert in how I can translate
that into, like, a document or where it's
stored. As silly as your people might feel
literally talking about a peanut butter sandwich,
that is a huge activity that you could
do to really map out, you know, those
little steps 1 by 1 and just getting
people in the common practice of no step
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is too small, or you could combine 2
steps. What I like about that is that
you could create a multimedia
shell for this exercise
because as we all know, not all learners
learn in the same mode as other learners.
Right. So if you had your folks
build that step by step, whatever the sequence,
in audio,
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in video, in text, just slice it up
and and make different formats,
gets them also to change their perspective
because it's gonna sound different than you read
it. It's just gonna have a different flavor
to the consumer. For sure. And I think
that's another key ingredient.
Going back to your knowledge sharing concept of
having a care, you care to share,
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and there's more to it than that. But,
I mean, that's the element. You could say
knowledge sharing is SharePoint or a portal or
distro email, a a listserv. You know? It's
like,
no. No. Not really. It it is kind
of, but it's not as you and I
are seeing knowledge sharing as human centric
that it's more contextual.
(17:27):
When you're translating contextual,
you need definition,
and that's what you're getting to. Yeah. Absolutely.
And being able to do it in that
multimodality,
then you have like, when I make a
video or something at work, I will always
have, obviously, the the transcript that goes along
with it so people can read it. But
I've started seeing people doing bottom line up
first and what they'll do is they'll take
(17:49):
the conclusion, put it up at the top
just so you can fly through it real
quick. And then if you are interested, you
can read the rest of the context that
goes with it or click the link to
the video that would talk through it as
well. I'm somebody depending on what the situation
is. I I'm flexible in my learning.
But there are times where I prefer to
work by myself, but then there are times
where I would love to just contribute with
(18:09):
a larger group. Even if I am doing
a solo project, I'm still not discounting other
viewpoints
or perspectives that I'm seeking, whether it's through
research or what have you. So here we
go back to human traits. Everything you just
said about having that ability, and I'm calling
it an ability to flex or flux or
be agile.
How does a culture,
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like, here again, going back to the big
org, how does the culture
become that?
How do you get a culture to get
there? The pandemic changed it a lot. You
know, a majority in person, I know when
I was walking to the lunch room to
get my lunchbox out of their refrigerator,
I would bump into people, you know, that
water cooler talk or the, hey, do you
know where I can find this folder? Or,
(18:52):
you know, all those little pieces are are
knowledge sharing, and I think people discount that.
They don't necessarily
consider the, oh, I just asked a question.
That's actually at its core knowledge sharing.
When we all pivoted from, you know, primarily
in person to 100% remote, how we had
to communicate
had to be more intentional,
and how we shared knowledge had to be
(19:12):
more intentional, but also transparent.
But it's just as easy to call them
and have that 2 second conversation because even
at the beginning of the conversation or the
end of the conversation,
it can wind. And next thing you know,
you might be talking about a different project
or connecting with a different colleague that you
haven't met before or anything like that. I
think that the culture piece
is that more people are doing knowledge sharing
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than they think they do. Mhmm. And even
though
silos might be formed most of the time
in my experience as a consultant and as
just a practitioner,
I haven't
seen silos being formed for negative purposes. I've
seen silos formed because
you grew very quickly. Things were changing so
rapidly that departments were put into play without
(19:56):
even the realization that 2 departments might be
doing similar work or have similar processes.
So just when you can open those conversations,
you can do the networking within. It takes
somebody to say, hey. Can we meet for
for coffee for 20 minutes? You know, it
takes a little bit of that initiative. But
if you have enough people who are interested
in being those connectors, those operators or connector
(20:17):
of dots, however you wanna put it,
I think that it can be a lot
easier. I mean, you can have a formal
system. You can have a repository of, like,
I went to a conference, and this is
what I learned and came back with.
But you can also have the, I learned
this one thing this weekend, thought it was
really neat, and read this article. Yeah. You
know, just conversation. I keep hearing that if
you don't care about your coworkers,
(20:38):
it's easy not to share. Yeah. So if
there's if we go back to that community
basis,
I think the key element is you have
to have a communal understanding and perspective
of that we're working together.
I see this in some colleges, universities
where schools get built, and then it's like,
they don't talk to anybody else. Right. Same
(21:00):
in the military. You got different command structures.
They separate. They don't talk to each other,
and they don't want to.
The idea of
purposely
giving intent
for character building, and I'm calling it character
building because it is a personal
attribute. Sure. And it goes back to your
exercise
that you have to have some practicum. You
(21:20):
have to have some workshops. So you have
to have something
in which starts building
this relationship and relational
contextual knowledge. Sure. And I think in some
ways, that's how the pandemic has helped.
You know, academia is just weird anyway speaking
as somebody who works in academia. But I
know for me, the way our university is
structured, we have a global campus which is
(21:42):
largely online, and that's where a bulk of
our students come from. We do have a
physical campus, which is something that surprises people
where we have a lot of the, you
know, the kids out of high school that
go right to college and have that traditional
college experience with sports teams and dorms. Right?
It's a very much a thing here. So
we have those students,
and then we have all of the faculty
and staff and administrators and all of those
(22:03):
who support everybody. So we have this one
university model.
It's interesting. There's a little bit of a
push pull because
people forget that
even though you're a student on campus, you're
also part of that global community that we
have as well. And the same goes with
the staff. You all know I only work
on campus. Well, actually, you work at this
global institution, so why not have these conversations
and share a little bit broadly?
(22:25):
And people have been largely
positive with that. And like I said, the
pandemic, I think, has helped because we've had
to be intentional, but different working groups and
communities have been formed because it kind of
almost, like, reset the playing field where everybody
was remote. So now that everybody's remote, like,
let's have these conversations,
see where we're at, and start sharing. And
it's been slow and steady, but it I've
(22:46):
definitely seen
more openness, not just at the university, elsewhere
too. So with this background
of being in an academic framework,
do you see a certain
type of people, class of people, a region
of people, a
color of people, do you see anything in
a general sense that says, oh, these folks
(23:07):
over here, they get this whole Sharon thing.
Is there folks that are more able to
do this naturally? Thinking from where I am
sitting, our university doesn't have a tried and
true knowledge strategy. We don't have a chief
knowledge officer. We don't have the formalized strategy
game plan.
Our movement was founded grassroots.
We have a knowledge team that works in
(23:28):
IT, and then we have a knowledge team
that works supporting the folks who support the
students. They're called student
experience. And and we've we bridge together and
we work well, but we have these 2
separate teams
where, actually, the student experience team falls under
learning and development, technically. Right? So you have
the learning and development team and the IT
team, and we we cross paths and we
help.
But I think that watching
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the natural
progression
in the planting the seeds, we've we held
a community of practice where anybody who was
interested in just knowledge sharing in general could
come. And our number our numbers have slowly
built over the years.
This year, we've been a little
been kind of in this revision remission state
where we've been kind of, like, trying to
figure out where we're gonna go, how are
we gonna move forward with this.
(24:11):
It was truly grassroots to the point where
now if knowledge management or knowledge sharing have
been brought up, my team has been seen
as the experts.
And then we're getting outreach from different departments
of, like, hey. Have you met Rachel? She
does knowledge management, and I'm all over the
place throughout the university helping out
(24:32):
because we've built this reputation from a grassroots
movement moving upward.
Well, congratulations.
Oh, thank you. There's nothing better than having
success follow you after an effort has been
put forth. And what you're talking about is
kind of a covert way to get an
organization to find value for sure in knowledge
management or knowledge sharing. And that's a brilliant
(24:52):
concept. And so can you give us the
first thing you would do different
now that you've done this and now you've
started to pick up some interest and success?
What would you have done different starting this
if you had to start it all over
again? I I have to give props to
my director, Tim Bilborough. He was the one
who really started this from just a basic
conversation at lunch in a conference room one
(25:13):
day
to bringing it to be, like, a full
fledged governance because now we have a governance
that comes along with it. So, Tim Alright.
I think too if you were to ask
him, he would say that well, he wouldn't
say this, but this is the analogy I'll
use. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Right?
If you think about the long game of
where you're going and knowing that, you know,
the the seeds you plant are going to
pay off in the long run, that's the
(25:34):
way to look at it in one perspective.
Now
if we could do it differently,
obviously, we had a business case drawn up.
We were able to present it to certain
members and get stakeholder buy in before we
brought it up to the higher levels of
the university. And
I think that I wish that we could
have really pushed forth the idea of knowledge
(25:55):
management
sooner,
but I think it kind of ran the
way it needed to in our case here.
For me, if I were to go to
a an organization
who wants to start knowledge management,
and kinda go from there, I would probably
start with talking to the people to figure
out what do you wanna know, how do
you wanna know it Yes. And then figuring
it out from there. The very first piece
(26:15):
is just, you know, working with the people,
and that's one thing that we did incredibly
well.
Our community of practice, whenever we have meetings,
and I know the tried and true community
of practice, there's no one facilitator. But, unfortunately,
how it works in our organization is we
have to have the facilitators and nothing gets
done. Somebody has to schedule a meeting.
We have always thrown it back to the
community. What do you want to learn, and
(26:36):
how can we help support your interests
with knowledge management context? You don't come with
a prescription. You come with questions. Right? You
try to get the pulse of what the
people are hungry for even before you serve
dinner. I think that's the big key thing
to take away from all of this is
that if you don't go to the people
first and understand
(26:56):
their pain points and perceptions
and all those things
to really clearly understand what's gonna stick, You
gotta go with what's gonna stick first. So
you can't just come in with a enterprise
level, boom, boom, boom,
and then it's like, you guys never even
talked to us. You know? Right. So yeah.
Worse than having,
(27:17):
leadership or whoever play chess with you. Right?
Like, if you're the one who's
if you're the one who's actually doing the
work Yeah. Not to say that you can't
have
some ideas, but I would rather from a
change management perspective alone, you need to incorporate
the people
to get the buy in. But, also, if
you're going to have this massive change happen,
you're gonna work against yourself if you don't
(27:38):
incorporate the folks who are doing the work.
Oh, yes. It's much easier for somebody to
it it's that attraction
to want to be there
in conjunction with whatever the solution is being
rolled out. But if you have a vacuum,
doesn't matter what the solution is. If the
vacuum doesn't want it, it results in a
vapor lock. Right. Complete stoppage. That's that's so
(28:00):
true. That's where the people side comes in
incredibly well because, you know, if I were
to start by saying, well, I hear this
is what the leadership wants, but Yeah. How
does that fit into what you want? Or
or how do you trickle up to that?
And when people are honest and you can
build that
rapport, it's amazing what you can get accomplished
on both sides. Well, in that, let me
hear what Rachel's definition of Kilometers is. Oh,
(28:22):
my definition of Kilometers is fairly fluid.
You know, it it involves knowledge sharing. It
involves
being able to see things from a different
vantage point and being able to document in
whatever way makes sense for the system at
hand or the issue at hand. Having it
be a people focused approach where you can
(28:42):
access the information
that you want or need at the right
time in a way that is organized
and being able to share it out. No
knowledge management strategy is going to be exactly
the same for every organization that you touch
or every knowledge manager.
You're gonna have some people that are more
systems focused. You're gonna have some people process,
like, specific. But at the crux of it,
(29:04):
you need to have the people buying in.
It comes down to how people get information
in a way that makes sense for them.
Really, it sums up for me as a
synthesis ability. It is a synthesis of organizational
knowledge. And so I gotta ask this next
question, which I didn't think I was gonna
do, but is knowledge an asset or a
resource? Oh, no. That's a great question too.
(29:25):
It depends on how you look at it.
Right? Every whatever perspective you pull. So I
think in many ways, knowledge is a resource,
but having the right knowledge can make it
an asset or make you an asset. So,
again, it's it's not to give you a
non answer, but that balance is an incredible
chicken or the egg. I love that answer
because what I heard was is that, an
(29:45):
asset is critical knowledge that can make or
break something. Right? That's that's an asset. Sure.
A resource, and I've always, in my mind,
as an old timber guy stewardship of the
land,
I've always looked at knowledge as a natural
occurring resource. But when I use natural resource,
I throw everybody off because that's Earth. So
(30:06):
Right. You're right. I think there is a
fine line difference between
the criticality
to where if it's a resource, it's just
available here. Have some if you want to
this is gonna explode. Yeah. You know what
I mean? That that No. That's great. I
I I would agree with that too. Alright,
Rachel. Well, thank you, my friend. It was
a blast having you on the show. Yeah.
Thank you. Appreciate you.
(30:34):
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey, and
we hope the experiences gained add value to
you and yours.
See you next time at because you need
to know. If you'd like to contact us,
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byntk@pioneerdashks.org,
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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
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bring you people's experiences from all over the
globe, in the field of knowledge management, non
(00:27):
profit work, and innovation.
If your company or organization would like to
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email byntk@pioneerdashks.org.
Hi. My name is doctor Rachel Teague. I
(00:49):
live just outside of Manchester, New Hampshire, about
an hour north of Boston in the heart
of New England.
Most interesting thing near me location wise, I
think, would be the fact that I sit
about 45 minutes from the ocean, 45 minutes
from the lake region, and about an hour
from Boston, Vermont, and Maine. So I can
make it to pretty much anywhere in about
(01:10):
an hour, which is fantastic to be smack
dab in the middle. I work currently at
Southern New Hampshire University as the senior knowledge
management and training specialist.
My wife and I also own a consulting
company called Disruption Learning and Technology
where we work to collaborate with businesses to
help solve their problems.
And I've worked in the education,
(01:31):
training, Kilometers space for the better part of
the last 18 years in one way or
the other,
but I've done more of a specific Kilometers
focus for the last 5 years. I stay
connected with people through conversation,
my ridiculous desire to continuously learn about stuff,
and through knowledge management. You know, there's a
big misconception about what knowledge management is unless
(01:53):
you work in it. So the fact that
I'm able to kinda pull it into different
areas into my life, whether it's professional or
personal or, you know, anything else I find
myself in, that's where I really like to
thrive.
Where did you find
your first
inspiration
around learning?
I heard you say that you're a perpetual
(02:15):
learner.
Where did it come from? You know, I
have always been involved in education in one
capacity or another. Right out of high school,
I was supposed to go to college like
most people of my generation were supposed to,
and
I had some stuff happen where my direction
changed a little bit, and I did a
year of AmeriCorps in a program called City
Year. I did it right here in New
Hampshire, though it's a national and international organization.
(02:38):
And that really gave me some hands on
experience in classrooms working with kids that were
at risk who needed some help.
When I was going into college prior to
that, when I thought I was going to
college, I didn't really know what I wanted
to do. I was going to be a
music teacher because it seemed like the most
logical way to make some money and play
music.
(02:59):
I didn't really have that passion for teaching.
City Year changed that that for me, and
education has been a constant thread in the
tapestry that, you know, is my life. So
you bring up opportunity
that came out of, what you didn't think
was gonna be an opportunity, but this opportunity
to be at AmeriCorps and really
set a new perspective for you. Is that
(03:20):
a safe estimation? Yeah. I would say that's,
looking back on it now, hindsight is always
2020. It was a Alright. So let's go
back before that. Who was a somebody who
cared about somebody learning something? Who was that
first imprint
for you? My parents were super influential in
wanting me to get the most out of
whatever I did educationally or personally or whatever.
(03:40):
So my dad was always quoted with saying,
I'd rather have a hard c than an
easy a.
So even though things, you know, they came
to me pretty naturally, but there were definitely
some things I had to work really hard
on. And they could tell if, like, it
was an a that I earned or an
a that I coasted through. Yes. And my
dad and my mom would actually tease at
dinner. They'd be like, oh, you you get
a 93. Where are these other 7 points?
(04:01):
You know?
Not in, like, that typical hard nosed, like,
way. But, you know, the more so the
Being funny about it. Like, oh, you'd you
really slacked on that one. Come on. Right.
Yeah. So that has always instilled a huge
drive in my my learning. And, actually,
one cool thing that I got to do
was by the time I finally got to
go to college just with the way that
(04:22):
the financial aid system works, I was 24
when I started going for my bachelor's.
And it took me a while to get
it, but the 10 years out of high
school is when I finished my bachelor's degree,
when I did it through a competency based
program. And my dad was so inspired when
I graduated with my bachelor's.
He said, you know, you go for your
master's, I'll go through the bachelor's at the
same school, and next year, we'll graduate together.
(04:45):
Woah. Yeah. Sure enough.
Because of the way the program was set
up being competency based where you prove your
mastery of the material through, like, projects as
opposed to tests and quizzes and length of
time in your seat, He was actually able
to finish the remaining portion of his bachelor's
in the year that it took me to
finish my master's degree, and then we got
to walk across the stage together, which was
(05:06):
That's the defining moment. That's pretty phenomenal.
Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It was
really it was incredible because he had retired
from his job, his career of, like, 37
years at that point. And he didn't have
to go back to school, but he went
back just because it was one of those
things he always wanted to do. So I
would say that both of my parents, but
especially my dad, really kinda drove the education
bug. Did you have a formal or informal
(05:29):
mentor in the same framework,
this perspective of a continual learning? Yeah. I
mean,
there have been different mentors that have come
and gone over the years through different projects
and different employers. Okay. I would say that
one of the most impactful activities that I
did in AmeriCorps
was talking about my hypothetical board of directors.
(05:50):
And my hypothetical board of directors could include,
who do you
lean on? Who would you ask for support
if you could pick anybody and just bounce
ideas off of? There have been 2 people
that have remained on my hypothetical board of
directors since I did AmeriCorps, like, 18 years
ago. Other than that, sometimes, you know, it'll
I'll channel a musician where I pull it
in. That's
(06:11):
a passion or somebody I would like to
channel,
or I'll pull in a leader or something.
So my my board of directors is, you
know, my mental board of directors is changing
over the years. I would say that John
Hoville has been
really instrumental
in my Kilometers journeys. I'm really lucky to
have a fantastic manager that I work for
at the university who has been instrumental in
(06:31):
really encouraging that as well. He actually introduced
me to John, and John and I have
been able to do a lot since then
and just took off running. And I wanna
point out to everybody that
I pulled this out because
it, one, gives reflection to you
about the sources of continuity or the sources
of inspiration that continue you along your path.
(06:53):
Not everybody has that, and I wanna make
a stress point here that if you don't,
change your perspective
and find a relationship
that adds value to your
aspiration. It doesn't have to be formal. I
I like this whole model that you just
explained from AmeriCorps.
This was just an exercise. It was a
(07:14):
mental model kind of exercise. Yeah. It was
just, like, a professional development day. They had
some, like,
activities to fill time. And it was it's
really funny because I actually volunteer with City
of New Hampshire now where I'm doing some
consulting with their core and their staff to
kind of actually help with some knowledge management,
but help with some team building. And I
was talking to the chief of staff for
(07:35):
City of New Hampshire. Her name is Jen.
And she served alongside me as a senior
core member when I was a core member.
And I asked her, I was like, do
you remember this activity? This happened forever ago.
And she's like, I think we've done it
on and off over the years. She's like,
why? And I I told her just how
impactful it was and how I've been able
to pull that into different conversations throughout the
years. And it's funny because, like I said,
it's it's that it's almost like that dinner
(07:56):
party question where who would you have dinner
with and why? Yeah. It's, you know, who
do you want to ask these questions to?
Well, it's a practice, and it sets up
a mental practice
to consult outside of yourself.
And I think that's where the key ingredient
is that everything you're talking about is that
you can only keep your perspective
tuned
(08:17):
if you have this back and forth
outside of yourself
in order to keep some kind of equilibrium,
I'll call it, of your own
abilities. Right? Because there's there's certain aspects of
the human framework that it can either push
you or pull you. And as long as
you're
in earnest,
trying to become something
(08:39):
other than what you presently are,
the this ability
gives a really growth potential
that is unlimited. A 100%. Yeah. It's, kinda
falls into
knowledge sharing, and
that's something where I've really started settling settling
into with my work over the last couple
of years. I've done a lot of research
on knowledge transfer and have been coined a
a rising expert in the field,
but I also am really huge into the
(09:01):
knowledge sharing aspect and
learning from people and, you know, sharing different
ideas. And that really falls into that as
well, being able to kinda look at different
perspectives, but also,
you know, leverage the people around you, leverage
information and learning. In some of the classes
that I teach, both university and, you know,
(09:23):
outside in workshops,
one of the biggest things that I bring
up is, you know, I love teaching and
I am
somebody who is an expert in these areas,
a subject matter expert. But I still learn
something from everybody in this class
whenever I'm teaching. And that's if I'm not
learning while I'm teaching, then I'm not in
my opinion, I'm not doing it right. That
just triggered something in my mind as an
(09:44):
old army guy that is used to training.
Yes. If you were ever weak in a
skill set, you volunteered to be the trainer.
Because by doing the training, it really cemented
what I've kept missing
and became more fluent in through practice.
But what you're talking about is that the
knowledge sharing
in the same framework
(10:05):
is a perspective
and a personal trait. So how do you
get people to identify it at that root
level? This is a personal trait. This is
not just something that's gonna be a systems
or a technology fix.
It's a people issue. Yeah. Right? Yeah. My
brand of Kilometers is really people based. There's
a lot to be said about
(10:25):
systems and process and AI and all of
the fun aspects. I mean, it's a holistic
practice if you look at it, but for
me, I thrive in the people side of
things. It's funny I sit on an IT
team in my role where most of my
guys have worked in help desk scenarios
or things like that and I'm the only
one who hasn't to the point where my
colleagues are like, can you help me with
(10:46):
this thing you sit in IT? And I'm
like, the only thing I can tell you
about IT is have you rebooted your computer.
Right? Like, I was hired to do the
people side where I can connect with other
people and help translate that nerd to human
to make it accessible for other people. An
example of that is a couple of years
ago, I took what I lovingly call my
gap year from the university and I went
out and I consulted for a bit on
(11:08):
family consulting business. The product that they worked
on specifically was payroll. I don't know payroll.
I am somebody who enjoys getting paid properly,
but I don't know anything otherwise about it.
My co consultant,
he was the type of guy who, if
I gave him a manual on a system,
he could read it in the weekend for
fun and come back and be an expert
on Monday, but he could not people
(11:30):
to the point where they hired me and
they joked that I was his translator because
I could do the people side of things.
I could ask, well, why do you do
this specific process this way
and not come off as a robot or
not come off or, like, just have that
genuine concern, that genuine curiosity behind it as
opposed to the, well, that's not what the
(11:51):
manual says. Well, how can we do it
this way? It's not what you say. It's
how you say it, and I've always been
that people person. So is there an analysis?
Is there
a attribute
table or questionnaire or something that shows who's
in the knowledge sharing environment,
naturally versus those that are gonna need a
little training? Is there any way you can
(12:12):
discern who's in or out? You know, that's
an interesting question. I I'm starting to kinda
gather some informal research on that. I I
don't have a specific place I could point
people to,
but it is something that I'm starting to
do that research on and trying to figure
out, like, if if you use different personality
Yeah. And EQ assessments, you know, like, where
(12:32):
do people fall? And what I'm noticing is
a trend is that
the people who can kind of balance both
the systems aspect but also understand the relational
human side
is where the sharing is taking place. It's
almost that sweet spot where the gap is
filled because you can have somebody who's on
the people side but have no idea how
to organize things. Then you can have somebody
who organizes
super hardcore, but they're not so much of
(12:54):
a people person. When you have people who
can balance between the 2 seamlessly
or support other colleagues who, you you know,
be that bridge, that system convener, if you
will, being able to kinda help connect the
dots. That's what I've been finding. So the
people who are either strong in one way
or the other,
they can share. Yeah. Right? Knowledge sharing does
(13:14):
happen with those people, but how it's shared
might be a little bit different.
One thing we haven't talked about, which you
everything you just said queued me up to
is that
the element I think that is missing is
the cultural piece in which Yes. People have
a vested interest in the community.
Yes. So everything you're talking about with these
skill sets, I get that. But where the
(13:35):
magic happens is somebody that cares enough to
share something with you that's going to help
you or shortcut an issue or or your
ass. So you're like, sure. Yeah. It's like
this. That helpful
personality being straight.
What's an exercise a small organization could do
similar to your model of the board of
directors?
(13:55):
Is there something that's a tool that can
help organizations
start to sharpen that pencil? Culture, I think,
plays a huge part in it too. Like,
the the culture of a learning organization
or trying to, you know, you can't
effectively implement anything really without having the buy
in of your people, like, from the top
all the way down. So something that an
(14:16):
organization could do, and this is going to
sound really silly, but most of the stuff
that I recommend can be out of the
box anyway. Are you familiar with the peanut
butter jelly exercise? Tell me, please. Okay. If
I were to say, you know, Edwin, how
do you make a peanut butter sandwich?
You might say, I I'll take the bread,
take some peanut butter, put the peanut butter
on the bread, and there you go. But
(14:36):
if you were to literally do the step
by step, you say take the bread, and
I was, well, where do you get the
bread? Where is the bread? Oh. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. The drawer. What kind of bread?
Being able to actually practice that activity
and do it in pairs, and that just
that helps with communication, that helps with I
like that very much. You you took me
back to when I was trained to be
an instructor at the Intelligence Center at Fort
(14:58):
Huachuca, Arizona.
As an instructor, we had to go through
a training that we had to do that.
Exactly what you're saying because it's over you
know, it's it's simplistic Mhmm. To say, oh,
you just skip all this because everybody knows
this. Right? You assume there's a baseline of
knowledge already versus somebody that's fresh in the
block that doesn't have a clue what you're
(15:20):
talking about that you have to think of
these iterative steps
that build up to something bigger. And until
you go through that process, it's amazing
how little thought you give to all the
parts that aren't on the surface. For sure.
Yeah. I just did a, knowledge transfer with
a pilot that I had built at the
university. When I do these retentions, I'll sit
with the employee and I'll kinda shadow what
(15:41):
they're doing, but I'll have a specific topic
for an hour at a time, and I'll
talk me through this process.
And then when he when he's like, you
know what? When you have this role and
you're doing this piece, the next step is
this. And I was like, okay. But how
do I get to that role in the
first place?
You know, I didn't actually know there, and
that's the beauty of my role. I'm not
a subject matter expert in the areas in
(16:03):
which I'm being taught, but I am an
expert in how I can translate
that into, like, a document or where it's
stored. As silly as your people might feel
literally talking about a peanut butter sandwich,
that is a huge activity that you could
do to really map out, you know, those
little steps 1 by 1 and just getting
people in the common practice of no step
(16:23):
is too small, or you could combine 2
steps. What I like about that is that
you could create a multimedia
shell for this exercise
because as we all know, not all learners
learn in the same mode as other learners.
Right. So if you had your folks
build that step by step, whatever the sequence,
in audio,
(16:45):
in video, in text, just slice it up
and and make different formats,
gets them also to change their perspective
because it's gonna sound different than you read
it. It's just gonna have a different flavor
to the consumer. For sure. And I think
that's another key ingredient.
Going back to your knowledge sharing concept of
having a care, you care to share,
(17:07):
and there's more to it than that. But,
I mean, that's the element. You could say
knowledge sharing is SharePoint or a portal or
distro email, a a listserv. You know? It's
like,
no. No. Not really. It it is kind
of, but it's not as you and I
are seeing knowledge sharing as human centric
that it's more contextual.
(17:27):
When you're translating contextual,
you need definition,
and that's what you're getting to. Yeah. Absolutely.
And being able to do it in that
multimodality,
then you have like, when I make a
video or something at work, I will always
have, obviously, the the transcript that goes along
with it so people can read it. But
I've started seeing people doing bottom line up
first and what they'll do is they'll take
(17:49):
the conclusion, put it up at the top
just so you can fly through it real
quick. And then if you are interested, you
can read the rest of the context that
goes with it or click the link to
the video that would talk through it as
well. I'm somebody depending on what the situation
is. I I'm flexible in my learning.
But there are times where I prefer to
work by myself, but then there are times
where I would love to just contribute with
(18:09):
a larger group. Even if I am doing
a solo project, I'm still not discounting other
viewpoints
or perspectives that I'm seeking, whether it's through
research or what have you. So here we
go back to human traits. Everything you just
said about having that ability, and I'm calling
it an ability to flex or flux or
be agile.
How does a culture,
(18:30):
like, here again, going back to the big
org, how does the culture
become that?
How do you get a culture to get
there? The pandemic changed it a lot. You
know, a majority in person, I know when
I was walking to the lunch room to
get my lunchbox out of their refrigerator,
I would bump into people, you know, that
water cooler talk or the, hey, do you
know where I can find this folder? Or,
(18:52):
you know, all those little pieces are are
knowledge sharing, and I think people discount that.
They don't necessarily
consider the, oh, I just asked a question.
That's actually at its core knowledge sharing.
When we all pivoted from, you know, primarily
in person to 100% remote, how we had
to communicate
had to be more intentional,
and how we shared knowledge had to be
(19:12):
more intentional, but also transparent.
But it's just as easy to call them
and have that 2 second conversation because even
at the beginning of the conversation or the
end of the conversation,
it can wind. And next thing you know,
you might be talking about a different project
or connecting with a different colleague that you
haven't met before or anything like that. I
think that the culture piece
is that more people are doing knowledge sharing
(19:34):
than they think they do. Mhmm. And even
though
silos might be formed most of the time
in my experience as a consultant and as
just a practitioner,
I haven't
seen silos being formed for negative purposes. I've
seen silos formed because
you grew very quickly. Things were changing so
rapidly that departments were put into play without
(19:56):
even the realization that 2 departments might be
doing similar work or have similar processes.
So just when you can open those conversations,
you can do the networking within. It takes
somebody to say, hey. Can we meet for
for coffee for 20 minutes? You know, it
takes a little bit of that initiative. But
if you have enough people who are interested
in being those connectors, those operators or connector
(20:17):
of dots, however you wanna put it,
I think that it can be a lot
easier. I mean, you can have a formal
system. You can have a repository of, like,
I went to a conference, and this is
what I learned and came back with.
But you can also have the, I learned
this one thing this weekend, thought it was
really neat, and read this article. Yeah. You
know, just conversation. I keep hearing that if
you don't care about your coworkers,
(20:38):
it's easy not to share. Yeah. So if
there's if we go back to that community
basis,
I think the key element is you have
to have a communal understanding and perspective
of that we're working together.
I see this in some colleges, universities
where schools get built, and then it's like,
they don't talk to anybody else. Right. Same
(21:00):
in the military. You got different command structures.
They separate. They don't talk to each other,
and they don't want to.
The idea of
purposely
giving intent
for character building, and I'm calling it character
building because it is a personal
attribute. Sure. And it goes back to your
exercise
that you have to have some practicum. You
(21:20):
have to have some workshops. So you have
to have something
in which starts building
this relationship and relational
contextual knowledge. Sure. And I think in some
ways, that's how the pandemic has helped.
You know, academia is just weird anyway speaking
as somebody who works in academia. But I
know for me, the way our university is
structured, we have a global campus which is
(21:42):
largely online, and that's where a bulk of
our students come from. We do have a
physical campus, which is something that surprises people
where we have a lot of the, you
know, the kids out of high school that
go right to college and have that traditional
college experience with sports teams and dorms. Right?
It's a very much a thing here. So
we have those students,
and then we have all of the faculty
and staff and administrators and all of those
(22:03):
who support everybody. So we have this one
university model.
It's interesting. There's a little bit of a
push pull because
people forget that
even though you're a student on campus, you're
also part of that global community that we
have as well. And the same goes with
the staff. You all know I only work
on campus. Well, actually, you work at this
global institution, so why not have these conversations
and share a little bit broadly?
(22:25):
And people have been largely
positive with that. And like I said, the
pandemic, I think, has helped because we've had
to be intentional, but different working groups and
communities have been formed because it kind of
almost, like, reset the playing field where everybody
was remote. So now that everybody's remote, like,
let's have these conversations,
see where we're at, and start sharing. And
it's been slow and steady, but it I've
(22:46):
definitely seen
more openness, not just at the university, elsewhere
too. So with this background
of being in an academic framework,
do you see a certain
type of people, class of people, a region
of people, a
color of people, do you see anything in
a general sense that says, oh, these folks
(23:07):
over here, they get this whole Sharon thing.
Is there folks that are more able to
do this naturally? Thinking from where I am
sitting, our university doesn't have a tried and
true knowledge strategy. We don't have a chief
knowledge officer. We don't have the formalized strategy
game plan.
Our movement was founded grassroots.
We have a knowledge team that works in
(23:28):
IT, and then we have a knowledge team
that works supporting the folks who support the
students. They're called student
experience. And and we've we bridge together and
we work well, but we have these 2
separate teams
where, actually, the student experience team falls under
learning and development, technically. Right? So you have
the learning and development team and the IT
team, and we we cross paths and we
help.
But I think that watching
(23:51):
the natural
progression
in the planting the seeds, we've we held
a community of practice where anybody who was
interested in just knowledge sharing in general could
come. And our number our numbers have slowly
built over the years.
This year, we've been a little
been kind of in this revision remission state
where we've been kind of, like, trying to
figure out where we're gonna go, how are
we gonna move forward with this.
(24:11):
It was truly grassroots to the point where
now if knowledge management or knowledge sharing have
been brought up, my team has been seen
as the experts.
And then we're getting outreach from different departments
of, like, hey. Have you met Rachel? She
does knowledge management, and I'm all over the
place throughout the university helping out
(24:32):
because we've built this reputation from a grassroots
movement moving upward.
Well, congratulations.
Oh, thank you. There's nothing better than having
success follow you after an effort has been
put forth. And what you're talking about is
kind of a covert way to get an
organization to find value for sure in knowledge
management or knowledge sharing. And that's a brilliant
(24:52):
concept. And so can you give us the
first thing you would do different
now that you've done this and now you've
started to pick up some interest and success?
What would you have done different starting this
if you had to start it all over
again? I I have to give props to
my director, Tim Bilborough. He was the one
who really started this from just a basic
conversation at lunch in a conference room one
(25:13):
day
to bringing it to be, like, a full
fledged governance because now we have a governance
that comes along with it. So, Tim Alright.
I think too if you were to ask
him, he would say that well, he wouldn't
say this, but this is the analogy I'll
use. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Right?
If you think about the long game of
where you're going and knowing that, you know,
the the seeds you plant are going to
pay off in the long run, that's the
(25:34):
way to look at it in one perspective.
Now
if we could do it differently,
obviously, we had a business case drawn up.
We were able to present it to certain
members and get stakeholder buy in before we
brought it up to the higher levels of
the university. And
I think that I wish that we could
have really pushed forth the idea of knowledge
(25:55):
management
sooner,
but I think it kind of ran the
way it needed to in our case here.
For me, if I were to go to
a an organization
who wants to start knowledge management,
and kinda go from there, I would probably
start with talking to the people to figure
out what do you wanna know, how do
you wanna know it Yes. And then figuring
it out from there. The very first piece
(26:15):
is just, you know, working with the people,
and that's one thing that we did incredibly
well.
Our community of practice, whenever we have meetings,
and I know the tried and true community
of practice, there's no one facilitator. But, unfortunately,
how it works in our organization is we
have to have the facilitators and nothing gets
done. Somebody has to schedule a meeting.
We have always thrown it back to the
community. What do you want to learn, and
(26:36):
how can we help support your interests
with knowledge management context? You don't come with
a prescription. You come with questions. Right? You
try to get the pulse of what the
people are hungry for even before you serve
dinner. I think that's the big key thing
to take away from all of this is
that if you don't go to the people
first and understand
(26:56):
their pain points and perceptions
and all those things
to really clearly understand what's gonna stick, You
gotta go with what's gonna stick first. So
you can't just come in with a enterprise
level, boom, boom, boom,
and then it's like, you guys never even
talked to us. You know? Right. So yeah.
Worse than having,
(27:17):
leadership or whoever play chess with you. Right?
Like, if you're the one who's
if you're the one who's actually doing the
work Yeah. Not to say that you can't
have
some ideas, but I would rather from a
change management perspective alone, you need to incorporate
the people
to get the buy in. But, also, if
you're going to have this massive change happen,
you're gonna work against yourself if you don't
(27:38):
incorporate the folks who are doing the work.
Oh, yes. It's much easier for somebody to
it it's that attraction
to want to be there
in conjunction with whatever the solution is being
rolled out. But if you have a vacuum,
doesn't matter what the solution is. If the
vacuum doesn't want it, it results in a
vapor lock. Right. Complete stoppage. That's that's so
(28:00):
true. That's where the people side comes in
incredibly well because, you know, if I were
to start by saying, well, I hear this
is what the leadership wants, but Yeah. How
does that fit into what you want? Or
or how do you trickle up to that?
And when people are honest and you can
build that
rapport, it's amazing what you can get accomplished
on both sides. Well, in that, let me
hear what Rachel's definition of Kilometers is. Oh,
(28:22):
my definition of Kilometers is fairly fluid.
You know, it it involves knowledge sharing. It
involves
being able to see things from a different
vantage point and being able to document in
whatever way makes sense for the system at
hand or the issue at hand. Having it
be a people focused approach where you can
(28:42):
access the information
that you want or need at the right
time in a way that is organized
and being able to share it out. No
knowledge management strategy is going to be exactly
the same for every organization that you touch
or every knowledge manager.
You're gonna have some people that are more
systems focused. You're gonna have some people process,
like, specific. But at the crux of it,
(29:04):
you need to have the people buying in.
It comes down to how people get information
in a way that makes sense for them.
Really, it sums up for me as a
synthesis ability. It is a synthesis of organizational
knowledge. And so I gotta ask this next
question, which I didn't think I was gonna
do, but is knowledge an asset or a
resource? Oh, no. That's a great question too.
(29:25):
It depends on how you look at it.
Right? Every whatever perspective you pull. So I
think in many ways, knowledge is a resource,
but having the right knowledge can make it
an asset or make you an asset. So,
again, it's it's not to give you a
non answer, but that balance is an incredible
chicken or the egg. I love that answer
because what I heard was is that, an
(29:45):
asset is critical knowledge that can make or
break something. Right? That's that's an asset. Sure.
A resource, and I've always, in my mind,
as an old timber guy stewardship of the
land,
I've always looked at knowledge as a natural
occurring resource. But when I use natural resource,
I throw everybody off because that's Earth. So
(30:06):
Right. You're right. I think there is a
fine line difference between
the criticality
to where if it's a resource, it's just
available here. Have some if you want to
this is gonna explode. Yeah. You know what
I mean? That that No. That's great. I
I I would agree with that too. Alright,
Rachel. Well, thank you, my friend. It was
a blast having you on the show. Yeah.
Thank you. Appreciate you.
(30:34):
Thank you for joining this extraordinary journey, and
we hope the experiences gained 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@pioneerdashks.org,
or find us on LinkedIn.
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