Hello everybody, and welcome to our next agile short. We're happy to have you here today. Today, this is short number 35. We are getting a lot of shorts out there. Over the last couple of years. And we wanna talk to you today about, knowledge debt. This is something that you may or may not have heard about. Obviously most folks here are familiar with some sort of financial debt. We've all had to deal with that in our lives at 1 point or another. Last 10:12, 15 years. We've talked a lot about technical debt, and using that kind of debt analogy in terms of trying to describe how things in a technology way, can you can get behind or you can get kind of under underwater and have to try to dig yourself out similarly to how you would have to do that with financial debt. Now we wanna talk a little bit about knowledge debt. And what that means, at least what that means to us and what we've seen I'm joined here today by my esteemed colleagues and partners at Ajam Meridian, with Kumar and Jali. So welcome guys. So let's let's talk quickly about the definition of technical debt, as we see it. A technical or I'm sorry around knowledge debt as we see it. Sorry about that. So in in the in the knowledge debt space, we're really looking at that same type of a concept. Right? We're Where have you gotten behind in terms of, the the ability of the organization and the individuals of the organization to really be able to do what they need to do from a knowledge standpoint. And what are the contributing factors to those, knowledge debt aspects? What are the things that are keeping the ability of the the humans at the organization from being able to contribute fully and wholly all of their skills and techniques towards the mission, towards the vision of an organization and towards what their own personal goals and objectives are as well. That's where really knowledge that plays into this similar to the same thing if you didn't have enough money because you had too much debt. You were paying off the interest on that. Same thing with technology. We have the same problem with the with the knowledge space. And since we are mostly knowledge workers in this day and age, it's a really, really big topic. However, it's 1 that we see, as consultants and coaches, we don't see this being addressed as much, as the other 2 types of debt that we described. So what I wanted to do was hand this off over to, to Kumar real quick and kind of give you, give you some background on some of these elements around what a learning organization is, which kind of gives us a nice background, background or backdrop to be able to talk about knowledge debt itself. Alright. Let me change the format so that we're all equally sized. Oh, wow. It's like we're okay. Now we're a little step back a little bit. Right? Yeah. Maybe maybe I'll go to a different format here. How's this 1? There we go. Okay. Alright. So a learning organization. So, you know, Peter Senge, the author, he, of a book called the fifth discipline, great book. It's actually, 1 we cover in our leadership course, which is coming up next month, Cheng's plug, but he talks about the 5, components of a learning organization. And what he talks about are are, you know, the most important 1 being, a shared vision that the the employees, everyone in the company understands what the vision is, what the mission is, what the company's purpose is, and what their role is in achieving that that vision. Right? He talks about systems thinking that where people are are aware of where they sit in the organization and the work that they do, how it impacts others in the company, their team members, their teammates, and and maybe other teams, up upstream or downstream of of what they're doing. So they have an awareness of this, and they know that what they're doing has meaning and purpose. And it's it's it's contributing to some greater good. Right? He talks about mental models. And how mental models are important for not only, a sharing of the vision, but also the adaptability of an organization and the people in it to adopt new models to compete, effectively in in the business environment. He talks about, personal mastery. So that's, you know, what we go to work to do. Right? What we're hired to go to work to do if we're a developer or or an analyst or a accountant or a, a marketing person, whatever our skill is, whatever our knowledge is, is being really good at what we do and continuing to develop the skills that make us valuable to the company and and, give us satisfaction, right, in our in our lot professional lives. So it's a pursuit of of personal mastery and the things that we do and maybe learning new things because people can't obviously can't be stuck in 1 thing. Right? So being able to learn new things and becoming multiskilled and multidisciplinary. And finally, being able to share your personal mastery with your colleagues not as rivals, but as teammates, as team members. So this idea of team learning, becomes really critically key to, reducing knowledge debt so that the learning that I have, the knowledge I have is shared with my teammates. So that those are the 5 disciplines. I don't know that we'll have a chance to cover all of them. Where do you wanna start, Jolly? I think I think the the shared vision is a good place to start. And especially another shameless plug, we we talk about, the why in our product owner class quite a bit. Right? And that why is the core reason people come together to make things happen. And it kind of leads on to everything else that we do. Simon Senock talks about the why leads to the how and then what that leads to the what, what we really do and produce. Right? So if you don't have that connection, which is the why of a shared vision, all of that becomes very, very difficult. And in this time and age, when everyone is pretty much distributed. Some people are going back to work. Right? But most people are distributed still, especially the knowledge workers communicating that why that shared vision is getting more and more difficult. I I talked to a to a friend and colleague, a while ago, and and he was talking about before before all this happened, right, before the pandemic and the distributed nature of this character cohort, the the big reason even if the even if your boss was not great, even if the company was not great. I mean, even if your environment was not that awesome. The real the big reason why you were at the job and you worked really hard were your teammates. Right? I mean, you wanted to be wanted to work with them and you wanted to be in that environment and and and as Kumar, as you said, the shared learning and the team learning. Right? Your the the ability to improve your craft with your team members. That was there, and you develop friendships, and you stayed at the job, even if you, or environment was not perfect, but that doesn't exist anymore. So these other factors that we just talked about today becomes even more and more important. And if you if the companies fail at that, Look, the your workforce will become like the Uber or the Lyft where you just hire people for that tactical thing, and you exasperate, your knowledge debt as you put the mic. And and that problem gets worse and worse and worse. So shared shared vision is a good place to start. I'd like. I I would agree with you. And and I think that there are a lot. We we've seen evidence that 3 of us have talked about this before where companies are really trying to go after. A couple of these things. Really, when you think about some of the team learning and the and the personal mastery, it kinda fits in with what you were saying there, Jolly, around the the tactical aspects, right, of of trying to to uh-uh at a small scale, a localized scale, kind of going after and trying to help those those groups of people really be successful and give them what they need in terms of the ability to learn and knowledge and skill sets and and opportunities to continuously improve their craft and things like that. Where that where that kind of doesn't get its full impact is when it starts to go into those other 3 areas and I think that that shared vision is where you start because by having that shared vision, The likelihood is you're you're attacking several problems that you probably have as an organization as a leader around retention and an acquisition of good talent. Have people wanna know why what you what you exist for, what what what's your purpose? What what are you out there doing? Not just what you deliver. But why do you deliver it to your point, earlier around the some of the things we talk about in terms of product development. It's the same thing with cultural development. Right? Why do we exist who who are we serving? What are the outcomes we're looking for? That those are all relevant things, but doing that at the macro scale. A lot of folks don't invest the time in it. They don't get enough time with individuals, to do that or make enough time to do that with individuals. And we don't inherently, to your point, Jolly, we don't inherently stay at companies for 20 years in careers. So what we see is there is activity going on, which is great to kinda combat this at the at the localized level. But I think that things even even systems thinking type activity. If you don't have that shared vision, and and the mental models themselves, They don't have a ton of time to incubate and to really set in to allow folks to understand the why and the who and the outcomes, which if they have that, you're gonna be amazed at how much more innovation, how much higher quality with velocity you're going to have, with your outcomes, and how many new visions you'll be able to attack with the same head count. In an environment where it's really hard to find and retain talent. Yeah. Yeah. And more and more, we are seeing that when this problem exists, the teams, let's assume agile teams for a second, turn into, like, story factories. Right? They get a list of stories. They're just cranking out the stories day in and day out, and and that's all they really know. They are not able to connect that stories to the bigger why that vision for the company. And, it just becomes very monotonous and they lose that bigger purpose. And it just is not a very conducive environment for all the other things that Kumar mentioned, like the team learning and the individual learning and the mastery. All of that kind of fade by fall by the wayside when that shared vision doesn't exist. So, I wanna ask you more How what do what do leaders do? To try to help improve this situation, to try to really go after and tackle some of these some of these knowledge that areas that are more macro in nature around the organization and less about the localized stuff, which people are really trying to go after, I think. Yeah. Thanks for the question because I I wanted to clarify the difference between company vision and a shared vision. And there is a distinction. Alright. Company may have a vision. We wanna be you know, if if I'm if I'm if I'm we are our mission, our vision is to deliver amazing. Right? And we all share in that. We we all talk about it, and we came up with that moniker because because it's something that we have passion about. It's it's it's it's we wanna deliver impact impactful outcomes to our clients. We wanna help them deliver amazing results for their customers, for their employees. We share that mission, that vision. And and and it's different from having a vision that isn't shared. You know, it doesn't mean that leaders just go in, hey, this is our vision. Go execute. No. It's about leaders listening. It's about creating a space where people, individuals, can bring their own interpretation of the company mission and vision to the fore. It's about companies maybe compromising a little bit. And moving their vision, their mission around to encompass the larger whole, the the body of the people that are actually gonna make this thing to actualize the vision. Right? If people don't believe in the vision, you're not gonna create an opportunity for learning. For knowledge to flourish and and and be shared. And so there's a really subtle distinction in my view of where leaders need to listen and be curious and, share the vision with their people and be willing to compromise on the vision to to to, to shift the mental models, if you will. Right? That govern how the company, operates. What do you what do you think about that? Jolly or Mike? Yeah. And and part of that but pretty overstated and understood at the same time is communicating it. Right? And and And most of the time, it is communicated by a a under communicated by a factor of 10. And, everyone assumes that this is very clear. But as it's not, I mean, for people working in teams, especially when they are the story factories that you see, they don't know. That shared vision, and it's on the leaders at every level. And III have a big fan of leadership at all levels following from the Kanban principles. It's on the leaders at every levels to communicate that vision so that, the teams have a higher purpose. Yeah. I think maybe just as as easy, not easy, but the advice that I would give managers and leaders is is to continually ask the teams, you know, why are we here? What are we doing? What's our mission? What's our vision for the sprint? For the release? For the product? Making sure that people, are articulating what they think the vision is and not correcting them necessarily, but asking questions, genuinely cur curiosity and empathy based questions to understand where people are. Right? And and and figure out a space where people can share their own, desires goals for the products that they're building. I think there's 2 great components that you both mentioned there. The idea that, you have to be able to communicate and and get this vision to be able to be consumed. Seen, consumed, understood by everyone. But I think there's you almost mentioned like a design thinking or a user centered design element approach to this as well by saying, hey, we have we have an idea of this is why we exist. This is where we want to be, but allowing that to be influenced by the folks and the people inside your organization cause they're a part of that journey and they're gonna help you. They're the ones gonna help you reach it, but having them be there, there's a reason they're there. There's a reason they're there other than just the money. Or just the industry and matching up with their skill set. And more so than ever these days, people can go to where they want to be not just where they fit from a from a technical standpoint or from a capability standpoint. And and so being able to being able to our articulate that really well and so that it can be understood as good. Having them see that you are willing to have them engage and then be involved in that and that it's not just to your point Kumar handed down to say, here is who we are. Go execute us. Right? That I think is really, really critical. You wanna talk about talent retention. Somebody comes into your organization and they see things that they like about it, and then they see they get to participate in that and help help to make that a reality, not just from tactical activity, but from where it ends up. You would be amazed at how much how how how how much more value and how much more outcome you will get than what you ever imagined if you allow that organization to be a part of crafting that as you go in a very adaptable way in a very design thinking kind of iterative approach and emergent approach manner that will hold people at your organization. They will stay because they wanna see that through because they are really invested at that point. We talked a little earlier Kumar around psychological safety. It's not just about psychological safety as well, but it's about now I'm now I'm into it. I'm passionate about it. I've got drive and desire. Not just making a paycheck. Right? So I think that all of those elements are really, really critical and key. Yeah. I I, you know, from this talk, I I used to, and I used to think about these 5 disciplines as all equally important. They are equally important. But I think that the catalyst that allows the other 4 to really work is the shared vision. If you do that well, it sort of greases the skids for people to start thinking in a more system, about the system that they're in. Right? The the leaders, the managers, the people that are doing the work, the knowledge workers are more aware of, the overall system that they're part of because they're sharing in the vision. They're sharing their mental models, how they think about the vision, And that meant those mental models influence the overall vision, the overall shared vision. And because of that, they have more because they have the ability to influence the shared vision, they probably have more psychological safety within their teams. And are more willing to take risks and learn from failures. Right? Because, again, the organization is in couraging them to share in, in, in their vision and sharing the overall vision for the company. So III think that maybe of these 5, the shared vision is probably the the the I I know this is most important. I think it's the 1 that you start with. I think we started our our segment here in this video with what do you start with? You gotta start with something. And I think it's the shared vision. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and that kind of, takes us away from the local optimization that you normally tend to see in organizations. Right? Oh, let's look at that team. Why is their velocity bad? Let's try to improve that velocity. And you're so focused on that local optimization. You lose, side of the big picture and how everything will together, which is 1 of the other, principle that we talked about about systems thinking, but maybe we can get that in the future. In a follow-up mark. We are already at the 20 minute mark. Yes. Yeah. Well, definitely, I mean, this this is a this is a pretty well. It's it's part of our course and we spend you know, a half a day talking about how to how to support and create a learning organization. So there's a lot more to this. And and I think the next time we will we will pick up the next, discipline, which is systems thinking and think about from a leadership standpoint, from a knowledge worker standpoint, are the key elements of that and how you can develop that discipline. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your time. This is been great. We hope you all found this to be interesting and maybe piques your curiosity into looking into more and learning more on your own or with us around learning organizations and how valuable they can be. So thanks once again, and have a great day.
