How to Create a Culture of Knowledge Transfer at Your Company
Recently, Quartz published an article about the number of employees a company can have before it becomes difficult to maintain culture. The article is based on research conducted by Robin Dunbar, a professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University, who finds that the ‘magic’ number of relationships an average human can maintain is 150. This, Robin postulated, was the carrying capacity of a troop of monkeys. As with troops, his research found that companies face sudden cultural changes and new challenges once they grow more than 150 staff.
Part of the reason companies of less than 150 people have such strong culture is because every person knows all their colleagues, so communication is excellent. In an environment where everybody knows each other’s roles and responsibilities and has the chance to build relationships with almost all their colleagues, knowledge transfer occurs naturally. These organizations benefit from flat hierarchies, consensus-based decision making and assumptions around ownership of strategies and tasks. However, once the number of staff surpasses 150, relying on people alone to communicate important company information is a risky business. These challenges of enabling effective knowledge transfer exacerbate as companies become larger, where divisions become complete silos.
At modern, technology-oriented companies, employees have more knowledge about their jobs than their managers. Successful managers today are not omniscient top performers, but the coaches of top performers.
To support knowledge transfer at scale, companies introduce new processes to standardize the flow of knowledge, information and skills for staff. These knowledge transfer processes are generally ‘directed’ by senior management. Whilst ‘trickle-down’ knowledge transfer may work for some traditional businesses, “Teal” companies are setting a new standard for the modern innovation economy.
At modern, technology-oriented companies, employees have more knowledge about their jobs than their managers. Successful managers today are not omniscient top performers, but effective coaches and facilitators. Further, more and more businesses realize that their front-line employees drive the greatest impact on customer experience, whilst managers at mid to upper levels of a company will be relatively removed from the everyday needs and experiences of their customers. Consider Zappos, which saved costs and experienced massive growth by putting decision making in the hands of their employees. For these types of companies, traditional learning and development models break down because managers are often unable to accurately assess the strengths and weaknesses of employees. What these employees need is access to company information, a channel to share their thoughts and experiences and the resources to direct their own learning.
We’ve created a list of considerations for companies seeking to strengthen knowledge transfer at scale.
1. Be a facilitator, not a director
Recognize that as manager, your responsibilities are akin to facilitator or resource provider rather than enforcing a curriculum or directing learning. In the traditional approach, the company knows best what you need to know. In modern companies, staff want support and help from companies, but they need autonomy to increase the speed of execution. For many young workers, traditional knowledge transfer processes are inhibitive and patronizing. To encourage staff to continuously learn and share knowledge, give them the responsibility for self-directing their learning.
2. Create opportunities for spontaneous knowledge sharing
One of the most important ways that staff learn is by impromptu experience and knowledge sharing. This so called ‘unstructured’ learning is critical to the skills and knowledge health of staff. One simple way that Startups use to share knowledge is the ‘standup meeting’. This is where once or twice a day, teams gather together to share successes and failures, discuss new initiatives, problems, remind each of their values and culture and Q&A with anyone in the company. Not only do these meeting provide an opportunity for employees to hear and therefore, learn from each other, it creates an environment that favours open and spontaneous communication, strong relationships and candid questioning. Implementing daily standup meetings can be difficult at large companies, so instead you can group teams to a max of 20 people.
3. Break down the walls between your departments
Open offices may have their problems, but symbolically they make it easy from anyone in the company to reach out to their colleagues, so that someone in engineering might be discussing the marketing plan with someone in the accounting department. However, it simply isn’t possible for large companies to take on an open-office structure. Slack is an example of a software tool that can at least make it simpler to communicate with staff across different departments. Many companies would ask themselves why they need an instant messaging platform like Slack when they have email. However, email is not how people spontaneously communicate (the famous water cooler effect). Email also leaves little room for discussion and takes a heinous amount of time to read and write emails. Implementing Slack changes the way employees communicate from measured and formal, to more spontaneous and informal and can help breakdown the invisible walls that separate departments.
4. Build community and trust between employees
Knowledge transfer requires knowing who might have the knowledge you need, or who stands to benefit from knowledge you can share i.e. it requires creating a community. Being in a position where you feel comfortable sharing what you know and secure that your colleagues will share their skills and knowledge with you if it helps you do your job better relies on having a community. There is no perfect way to build a community in your company, but I have found that the most effective way to build these cultures is with radical transparency. For companies to create communities, people need to trust each other. Trust requires security, so people need to feel they can bring up criticisms, are treated with respect and their opinions are valued. As a company, making it clear that people come first, then product, then revenues will create a culture where people trust each other and help to build a strong sense of community.
For particularly large companies, consider surfacing 150 or so ‘key’ employees, who tend to represent thought leadership in their respective fields. Make sure that your staff know who these people are and have frequent opportunities to interact with them.
5. Make self-directed learning the core of your knowledge transfer culture
For years, corporate learning has been a race to the bottom where companies have focused on standardization and scalability to reduce costs. As a result, most companies limit self-directed learning opportunities to prerecorded video content, elearning assessments or MOOCs. However, such video content is more expensive than expected and leads to poor learning outcomes for employees. In fact, the inventor of MOOCs, Sebastian Thrun, said that they are terrible learning solution.
We believe that great learning experiences arise from connecting with phenomenal people. Education Psychology still shows that the most effective way to learn is with an instructor, in an intimate environment. Making self-directed, instructor-led learning available to all staff is critical to creating a healthy knowledge sharing environment.
6. Managers are Coaches, not Star Athletes
Many companies struggle to loosen the shackles of a ‘star athlete’ manager culture, which is when managers are expected to be top performers, rather than bring about the best performance from their staff. This can be one of the hardest things to do for a business that has traditionally promoted its top performers. However, in modern enterprise, your front-line employees should be the most skilled at their jobs — not your managers. Managers should facilitate good communication and knowledge transfer rather than instruct, order and monitor. In companies where management has a coaching role, managers have an question rather than answer mentality; they focus on the people not the tasks and are the gateway to resources and information that employees need to do their jobs best.
Christopher Schrader is CEO and Co-founder of Pathship, the first truly intelligent, personalized learning environment. We’re helping forward-thinking businesses put the future of talent development in their employee’s hands.
Further Reading
For some great information about what Teal Corporations are, read http://agilitrix.com/2016/04/teal-organization-illustration/ by Michael Sahota
For more information about “Dunbar’s Number” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-c-smith/dunbars-number-can-we-rei_b_1818635.html
