Latest / Daily Influence / 810. The Knowledge Walking Out Your Door: Turning Individual Expertise Into Organizational Strength

Transcript

810. The Knowledge Walking Out Your Door: Turning Individual Expertise Into Organizational Strength · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:38
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• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, Brian Smith here with the I&T series and your daily influence.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And today, I want you to think about one person in your organization.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they've been there for 10 years, maybe 20, maybe less.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they're the person everyone calls when they can't figure something out.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They know why a customer gets handled a certain way.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They remember what happened five years ago.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They know which vendor to call, how that spreadsheet works, why that process has an exception.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: or where to find something nobody else can seem to locate.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now imagine that person doesn't come to work tomorrow.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: How much knowledge just disappeared?
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: We often talk about people as our greatest asset, but there's another asset organizations frequently overlook.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are people know?
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if that knowledge only exists inside one person's head,
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, let's talk about institutional knowledge and why responsible leaders have an obligation to make knowledge transferable.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look, experience belongs to the individual.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Institutional knowledge should be long to the organization.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's an important distinction.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't expect you to somehow document someone's 20 years of experience, their judgment, relationships, instincts, personality, and individual influence are uniquely theirs.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's all valuable, but how we perform a critical process, why we made an important business decision, who the important contacts are, how we service an account, where critical information resides, these things cannot exist exclusively in someone's memory.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen organizations discover this problem after someone resides,
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: or it simply isn't available when someone needs an answer.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, something everyone thought the company knew turns out to be something only one person knew.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's key person dependency.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a business risk.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's an interesting connection here to the Iron Team series.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes people associate value with being indispensable.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the only person who knows how to do this, that might feel valuable.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I would argue that the highest form of positive influence is not making people dependent upon you.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's making other people better because of you.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Teach someone what you know.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Document the process, explain why not just how, cross-trained someone, let another employee participate in the customer relationship, create enough clarity that someone else can carry the responsibility when you're unavailable.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your value doesn't diminish because somebody else knows what you know, your influence expands.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's an important mindset for both employees and leaders.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: This doesn't mean documenting every single thing everybody does.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen companies take documentation so far that nobody uses any of it.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not helpful either.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Start with the critical knowledge.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ask, what could stop our business if only one person knows it?
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: What customer relationships depend entirely on one individual?
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: What processes have no backup?
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: What decisions do we repeatedly have to revisit because nobody remembers why we made them?
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where do we hear you'll have to ask Susan or only John knows how that works?
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those sentences are clues.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then capture that knowledge.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Use SOPs where they're appropriate.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cross-train, create position guides, maintain accessible customer and vendor information.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: document the reasoning behind important decisions, and acknowledge sharing part of how you operate.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not something you suddenly think about two weeks before somebody retires.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now that is smart management.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're not trying to remove the importance of the individual.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to make their individual influence part of something bigger.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So here's your daily influence challenge.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ask yourself one question.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does my organization know only because one person knows it and start transferring that knowledge?
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because your people are incredibly valuable.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Their experience is valuable, their relationships are valuable, their knowledge is valuable, but responsible leadership means creating an organization where the influence and knowledge of great people continue to create value even when they're not in the room.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's how individual influence becomes organizational strength.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Remember, influence is a choice.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Make yours a positive one today.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining me today on Daily Influence, and remember sign up for our newsletter, and listen to us every day, Monday through Friday.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have a great day.