Why we knowledge share
At the start of the year, we implemented a new process within the product + design team at door2door: knowledge sharing. It’s about creating a culture of interdisciplinary sharing to improve the way we work, both as individuals and within a team. We’ve compiled a few notes below, as well as some tips and tricks for getting your own knowledge share off the ground.
Let’s sort this out right away... what exactly is a knowledge share?
Knowledge sharing is the transfer of learnings amongst colleagues. Through interdisciplinary sharing, we cover a lot of ground and are able to bring skills from different fields into our own. We’re all a bit (read: a lot) nerdy, and very proud of it, so it only feels natural to share our passions within the larger team. Plus, it improves our work processes and output… so really, what more could you want?
What does it look like in practice?
The door2door product + design team comes together once a month to have a conversation around new learnings, and in-between we add short notes and summaries to our company wiki. Take note, this monthly meeting is anything but dry. It’s casual yet informative; we eat lunch and enjoy each others company while learning across a range of fields.
There are a variety of information sources you can share, but we choose to narrow in on a few: online courses, articles and books, meet-ups, conferences and masterclasses. Having these areas of focus helps to guide our sharing process, and keeps things structured. Below are some of our knowledge share examples to inspire you to start sharing within your own team.
Online Courses: The Course for Human-Centred Design
For the past few weeks, my colleague Penny and I have been partaking in a Human-Centred Design course from IDEO.org and +Acumen. Our team has supported us taking time for weekly workshops, and in return, we’ve relayed our learnings back to them. Our challenge is to reduce the stigma of mental health in the workplace, and we’re hoping to have something to implement in our office by the end of April.
Throughout the course, we’ve been provided with lots of useful tips and resources for guiding design research. The skills and process we’ve learned in the course are already finding their way into our daily work, and we’re hoping the team can adopt some of the techniques too.
It’s been a great opportunity to explain design thinking processes to our product team, and has helped us communicate the larger role design can, and should, play within an organisation.
Books and Articles: the door2door lending library
One of the kick-offs for our knowledge share was ordering a bunch of books we’d had on our wish-lists. With books on visual design and research, to UX and product thinking, we’ve developed our own lending library for the whole company to enjoy. Once we read a book or article, we add notes to our company wiki and give a short summary at our monthly knowledge share. So, what’s currently on our reading list?
- Change by Design by Tim Brown
- Designing Products People Love by Scott Hurff
- Sprint by Jake Knapp
- This is Service Design Thinking by Marc Stickdorn
- Type on Screen by Ellen Lupton
- Hooked by Nir Eyal
- Creative Research by Hilary Collins
- … and more!
Masterclasses and Workshops: Transportation Sciences
Each month, we hold a knowledge share session to go over what we’ve learned in the past weeks. We share notes from meet-ups and tidbits from articles we found interesting.
In addition to new knowledge, we share old knowledge too. We each bring a wealth of experience from previous studies or jobs, and take the time to transfer some of that experience to our team. Arne, one of our product managers, has a degree in Transportation Sciences and was kind enough to give a masterclass on the topic. Our whole team was invited to a workshop, hosted by Arne & the business development team, to put our learnings into practice with a few case studies. It was a great afternoon, and we’re already seeing workshop outcomes creeping into our products.
Why is this important?
We take time to share our knowledge because we truly believe that if we combine our skills and interests, we’ll be a stronger team. And we’re seeing this belief coming true after just a few months of its implementation. While we’ve always been reading and going to meet-ups, this is the first time we’ve had a defined structure in place to relay new knowledge to the larger team, and it’s paying off quickly.
The How-To: set up your own team knowledge share!
You really don’t need a ton of things to get this initiative in motion. It’s as simple as getting everyone excited to learn and share, and ensuring they know this is supported by the company.
- Have a dedicated space (whether it’s on your company wiki or a google doc) to share notes and summaries.
- Create divisions or themes in which to share. Ours are: articles and books, meet-ups, courses and conferences. It helps to have some structure for your team to know what to share.
- Host a monthly knowledge share session, and make it fun! Get team members to sign-up for a 10 minute presentation slot so you have a clearly defined structure.
- Book a room, bring your lunch along and be ready to share and learn.
- Most importantly, support your team and their desire to learn.
Knowledge sharing has had a very positive impact on our team, and we hope that our process has inspired you to set it up within your environment. If you already do something similar, we’d love to hear about it!
By the way, door2door is hiring in Berlin! If you’d like to join our culture of learning and sharing, we’d love to hear from you!
