Hi, everyone. Kumar and Data Tran here with Ashley Meridian. Welcome to another episode of the Agile shorts. We're up to episode 47. Wow. And we're gonna be talking about how knowledge debt is disrupting your business. And you might be wondering what knowledge debt is. So I'm gonna turn this over to 1 of our partners at Azure Meridian, Michael Cheber. What is knowledge debt, Mike? So, uh, use the analogy of the of NASA and the, uh, going to Mars. And, you know, NASA right now is on this program, 1 of the programs is to go to Mars. Well, in order to do that, they thought, well, let's make sure we can make a shorter jump because a 2 and a half year trip. Right? There's a lot of complexity in that. So let's uh let's practice by going to the moon. Well, they were going to the moon, you know, 40 plus years ago, 50 years ago. And, um, all of those folks that went to the moon, they had a lot of expertise and knowledge in going there. They made a lot trips. But then they stopped going. And, uh, over time, those people left and they retired and and moved on. And They've lost the knowledge on how to go. So 1 thing they're having to do in order to go and do something new and innovative, even even greater than what they did before, They're having to relearn how to do something they used to know how to do. Uh, actually rebuild a capability that they had and then lost over time. So that's a really good example of what knowledge debt is. Kind of it's something we can all understand. Um, it's very similar to financial debt. Uh, it's similar to technical debt, technology debt. And just the fact that you can lose that knowledge, uh, if you're not careful. Yeah. And and I would say that you probably are creating knowledge that if you don't, uh, within your company, within your organization, if you don't have easy ways for information to flow from people to other people in the company. Right? Right. In the case of the space, uh, program, they could have built a a way to try to maintain and educate future generations of of NASA scientists and NASA employees on how to continue to maintain how that goes in even apply it to new technologies, even if they weren't going so that at some point if they did, they could move forward, but they didn't do that. Right? So, um, maybe it's a broader question for for anyone. You know, how does it manifest mean, how have you seen it manifest in in your, um, experience, you know, coaching organizations? Maybe we start with Chris. Yeah. I've seen it a lot. Um, and it's it it's kinda strange because it's intentional. Right? A lot of organizations would go out and they will say we're gonna out source software development. But we're gonna keep the product management, product strategy, product owners even in house. And what ends up happening is that when they outsource it, that team is like a black box. Right? They don't know We we may know at a high level what they're doing, but we don't know in detail what they're doing, how they're doing it. It's all we typically have a lead involved with a team. And so what happens is then you don't understand what's going on. Right? And you do as an organization, you've now have a gap. And if that vendor doesn't work out well, you know, you what do you do? You've gotta transition to somebody else. If you've got if you decide you wanna have somebody with specific skills work with that team, what are you what are you forced to do? You're forced to go into company and use that company's resources. Right? And it's just a it's a model that where a lot of organizations are doing to themselves. And a different approach would be to shift from a black box outsourcing model to 1 of you know, staff augmentation, where if I'm gonna have, uh, 20 TCS developers on my team, then those then there is a team of 20 individual developers, not just a group of developers that we never see that we don't interact with. And and, you know, in my experience, that's intentional. I've seen it in marketing companies where they will have a website information, and 1 company will do the actual technical work. And then they'll have another, uh, agency will come in and actually deliver or launch the new websites. And, you know, vendors are are motivated not to work with each other, but to to bring in as much as they can. And so when you get when you when 1 vendor's not working out, now again, you've got that transition cost, right, where you're gonna say, okay, we're gonna switch vendors. You're gonna lose momentum. You're gonna lose the, you know, you're gonna pay additional costs because you're gonna pay 2 vendors at the same time. 1, on board and the other 1 to off board. And it can get very, very expensive. Oh, it's like the space, uh, program all over again. Right? So the new vendor kind of rediscover things that the -- Right. -- act like original vendor, uh, figured out, you know, and over the course of time that they were there. Yep. Yeah. Just to add to that, I mean, when Chris mentioned gap, uh, it it kind of sparked a thought in my head, which is like, uh, there is obviously that physical gap that Chris just mentioned, right, uh, where the the vendor could be at a different location, different country, even. But then there are organizational You could be in the same physical location, but you are siloed into different organizational structures that doesn't allow information to flow or knowledge to flow between those organizations. There could be a skill gap. Somebody knows Java and somebody knows c plus plus And the that doesn't let some information go because, uh, they don't talk to each other. Uh, I am in the Java group and I'm in the c plus plus group. Uh, there could be a leadership gap. Uh, there are all of these gaps that kind of impact. Uh, there could be a skewed, um, seniority gap or I am I'm a really senior level person. I'm not gonna talk to that new graduate or the fresh hire. Uh, there are all these gap that impact the knowledge across organization, and it has very degrees of impact within within the company. Yeah. You know, when you talk about gaps in the organization and and, you know, gaps in leadership and and things like that. You know, leadership is so critical, of course, to creating a culture of, of, uh, of safety, of, uh, of, you know, to create the, uh, conduits by which people can share information with each other How do you see this playing out, you know, in the companies that you all, um, coach at in terms of Is it good? Is it bad? You know, Mike, what what are your thoughts? You know, I think it's interesting. Uh, 1 of the things that that Jolly was mentioning just recently was around the that that idea around some of those seniority things. You see a lot of these structures where, um, you know, we we talk with a lot of clients that And this goes back to what Chris was talking about too. It's it's it's in in a way. It's it almost feels intentional. Right? They they they build these structures that allow for these things to happen. They may not want the outcomes that they're producing. That may not be the goal. But the things that they're doing are intentionally generating those out comes, whether they know it or not, whether they can see it or touch it or not. And you 1 of those examples is like some of the hero mentalities that you have. And you talk about the senior versus the junior. Right? Um, that that concept around, hey, I I'm gonna hold on to this. And that could be it could manifest itself in many different ways. Hey, maybe I'm maybe I'm in secure. I I've been in this job for a while, and I haven't done a good job of informing myself where the company hasn't done a good job of keeping my skill set up. So now I've gotta kind of hold on to this. I feel like I need to in order to do this because I've got younger people coming in with new skills, new knowledge and new technologies, and And that's a threat to me. I feel like it's a threat. And this this that's a cultural thing. If if people don't feel like they have a psychological, safe environment that the company's not in doing things in their best interest to help them come along to grow them to make to keep them relevant inside of this. They may be motivated to do that, but they may become even unknowingly defensive in the and the way that they interact and they can hold on to things A lot of it is personality. Some people enjoy being the hero. They wanna be in an environment where they can come in and be the champion. Some people, uh, Chris was talking about this earlier today. So people are are have a hard time, uh, interacting with people or or sharing with things with people. It's just a natural, it's part of their persona, part of who they are. So building environments has a lot to do with, uh, as Chris said, doing things intentionally that that are creating those results intentionally, even if you're not intending for those results to happen. You know, Jolly, your comment too about, um, leadership prompted me to think that you know, when I've been around, especially the old, you know, the the tried and true organizations that have been around for a hundred and 50 years and, you know, they make a staple product, a pharmaceutical or food or whatever. Whenever those rifts come, the ones that they typically go, they don't necessarily always use create those knowledge gaps gaps with rifts. But they may they may do it through a retirement program. Right? Where they're gonna give you they're gonna take you and up you so that you can get retirement at 60. Right? And what happens is they those people leave without having that knowledge transferred. And, you know, that that that's another example of how they do it intentionally to themselves. It's just amazing. But but but wouldn't you say that, you know, knowledge transfer is sort of a an outcome of the culture that uh, intentionally or not promotes this hero complex? Like, why would you need knowledge transfer towards the end of someone's career or end of someone's tenure at a company, if it was something that was continuously done. Correct. If it was happening organically and those things happen, organically. The things that do happen organically in a company are, let's call it sponsored by culture. Right? Whatever your structure is, whatever that leadership, whatever the ideology or the mindset around this thing is, that's the sponsor for the way people act inside a company. It's a it's it's a way for e even new folks that come in may not think that, but in order to integrate with the culture, they've become that. Um, and you see that in companies uh, Chris, that you mentioned, some of these companies that have been around for a long time, that folks come in with all the best intention of of sharing and being a great participant collaborator and all the stuff And then they find out they're year 2 years in. The only way they can operate is to find a silo or a niche that they can become a specialist at, and now they become that specialist. And now they're propagating and continuing forward, this whole challenge that ends up becoming a contributor to knowledge debt. So it's it's incumbent upon leaders. If you wanna be successful, if you wanna be a disruptor in your space, if you wanna prevent from being disrupted in your space, to to tune and and move your culture and your structures around that that that the environments that create the culture towards having these types of interactions happen organically, the ones that we want to see, the ones that generate the positive outcomes that we're looking for, and and minimize these other outcomes that we've seen through historical patterns of leadership in the past. Yeah. And and part of that is making sure the the leadership part of it is to make sure that there is a rewarding model that awards people for sharing, uh, rather than being that solo hero or or the success factor in the company. Uh, III worked for a company before where beyond a certain extent promotions are possible early if you bring people up to your level. Uh, or you can go forward only if you bring people up to your level, which is the right rewarding model. Right? Otherwise, you have you are highly incentivized to hold on to all the knowledge yourself and not let other people encroach into your territory. And we have heard about many big companies that are doing exactly that. Um, well, kind of in in the process, um, messing up their future and not individual, but the company's future in that process. So, uh, the rewarding models, uh, and and we come back to rewarding models for many, many things as a reason. But the rewarding models can help move people away from that, uh, mindset. Yeah. You know, in this day and age, you know, seeing lots of, uh, layoffs in the, especially in the tech industry. You know, you take a look at, uh, Twitter, and they're getting rid of, uh, significant portion of the workforce. You know, how does how does knowledge sharing relate to, would you say, relate to, um, or or knowledge debt relate to reducing headcount. I mean, we we talk about, um, knowledge debt as disrupting to your business and knowledge sharing as something that could be disrupting for your competition if you were doing it in a meaningful way. And yet we see these big huge these huge, uh, layoffs in in the industry lately. What do you think the correlation or the relationship is between the 2? Well, it can have a severe impact. There's actually 2 things that can happen, uh, and probably do happen in most of these cases. Instead of taking and finding ways to to re and help the folks generate more revenue top line. Uh, now again, economic situations are what they are, but I've seen a lot of companies actually be very successful at instead of trying to be the short term, uh, drop the cost to increase the bottom line effect. The long term effective that when you do that is 2 fold. A, you're probably losing knowledge, tribal knowledge that is key and component to your secret sauce, to what you do. Not just in the everyday operations, but core to what your specialty is. The second thing is is you're handing that specialty tribal knowledge to someone else. You're actually giving it away and and and giving it to someone else. So you're actually you you could be 2 prong hurting your own organization long term by trying to make a short term adjustment to a financial sheet. Instead of saying, hey, I've got a culture where every time you run into a bump, we've got the ability to repurpose. We've got the ability to repoint people How can we find another revenue source? How can we find another top line solution that generates more revenue to counteract the increases in the cost or the decrease in something else? The really innovative companies disrupt themselves all the time by saying, hey, this part of my market is dropping. I'm gonna go create this new part of this new market because I have that capability, and I'm gonna become the just the the owner of that new space instead of losing all of this incredibly valuable long term asset that I have in terms of my people and their tribal knowledge around my secret sauce. Yeah. Okay. I love that. Just to add to that, I mean, III had to hear from, you know, many of these companies going through, uh, layoffs and in this market, saying that their business is not going to be impacted, right? Uh, we are going to be able to sustain the level of competence and and performance that we have done with this new restructured workforce that we have in our company. We hear that very often. In which case, you you it begs the question. Uh how did we get to this size anyway? Right? How do we get uh-uh to this size of the work force. If you had the the the knowledge sharing mechanisms mechanisms in place, Maybe you didn't have to get to the bloated size that you had right now because then you would have a more empowered distributed knowledgeable workforce that could contribute much more than what they are doing right now in the with the silos in place. So if you had thought about this upfront, and had the right strategy, you might have been, uh, data use the word rightsized to begin with and not have to go through the layoffs and, um, and and, uh, disruption in the workforce that you are experiencing now. A couple of things to add there. Jolly, if you're gonna get rid. If if you're too big, right, then the then the the leadership has a problem because they let him get too big. Right? Um, and it it's it's kinda interesting because we hear about layoffs and we hear about all that, but yet it's mostly at the worker level. And then the other thing I would just add to it would be 1 thing you could do that I've seen a company do is they move people about every 2 to 3 years. Right? So they move them to a new job. So they force that transition to happen. Right? And so what so you're sharing, you have to share how to do the job with somebody else. And by the same token, you're acquiring more knowledge about another area. And then third, you know, you're not bored. Right? You don't get people that are are sitting there. You know, they've they've quit, but they haven't left the building yet. Yeah. Did you're constantly move, you know, because you're you have some move and some migration. And there's some folks you couldn't take a, um, you couldn't take a a software developer and have them be a project manager in a construction company. Right? But you can have people move people from 1 team to the other within the software organization or if you're talking about, you know, uh, marketing, you could have 1 person working on digital and maybe 1 person is working with media. Right? And you can have them move back and forth so that they understand. So when if you have to do that that huge layoff or you know, the economic circumstances or such, you have to do that. You're gonna minimize those gaps. Yeah. This is really critical, a really critical point. And it does point back to the leadership strategy and the way they think about it. We talk about it in the agile world and the software way around being t shaped. Right? The more an employee can be t shaped. The more things they can do, the fewer heads you need So if you're a if you're a specialist type culture, you're going to physically require more heads in your building and it's gonna cost you more to do the same work. And it does with a company who has a better t shaped organization where the people are become more generalist around this and where they are able to do more things. I've got a client right now We just talked about it this week where they've got folks with their their production. It's it's a manufacturing organization. Their production cycles generally slow down right now. Towards the end of the year and they are slowing down. This year for the first time because they have a different structure in place because they have a different they're taking a different approach towards their people and around their business. They're not looking at their people is how can we get them? How can we keep them employed in a very valuable way during our normal cyclical down? Forget about the economy. This is our cyclical downturn. So they are turning around. There's another job, another thing that happens that's higher demand in this part of the country or this part of the this part of the uh the year, the calendar. That are always they're always short on. So those folks are actually excited. They're going out and doing this other job during this time because it's very it's very It's very closely related to what they do, and they're learning about a different part of the company, and they're providing value, and they're happy, they're excited they're gonna come back with all this knowledge, and then they're taking knowledge share from their job to the other to the new position that they're assisting. And those things are tied together in their value stream very closely. And all of a sudden, there's gonna be better communication come next year and better interaction between those 2 groups just because they found a way to help their talents be more valuable and useful. And it's all because over the last 2 years, they have changed their mindset around the way that they look at their company, the way they look at their people and the way that they operate. I think it's really critical. You have better engagement. As well. Absolutely. There's there's a, um, uh, last thought because we're, um, heading into agile long's, um, territory here. So if an agile short, Um, uh, the last thought is, you know, something that, uh, uh, Chris, you sparked, uh, sort of moving people every 2 to 4 years or so. And that's about the the the half life, if you will, if someone new to a company, new to a role, uh, about 2 to 4 years, by that point, they're starting to get really comfortable in their roles and their jobs, learning all there is to know, and they and the the level of engagement starts to go down, the level of motivation starts to go down. So that 2 to 4 year time frame, uh, is is ideal to move people to another role, another another area of a company and and something that, uh, uh, a book, uh, by Whitney Johnson or, you know, Whitney Johnson think it's called disrupt yourself. So it it sort of looks at this topic from more of an individual per perspective. And how do the people that are inside of a company continue to grow, advocating for themselves, you know, for moving to learning different parts of the organization. And that's a it's a great book. And maybe something we can dig into more in our next agile short. It's like, what what is the individual responsibility to reducing knowledge debt, not only for themselves, but, you know, uh, how do they become more integral in sharing their information, their knowledge with others in in an organization? Anything to close with, gentlemen? Okay. Well, thank you all for watching. Uh, see you next time. Thank you very much. Bye.
