Agile Knowledge Sharing

In many AEC firms, specialized knowledge accumulates around a single person. They become the go-to expert, the one everyone relies on. Over time, that expertise becomes central to how work gets done. That was the context at Boulder Associates. They had a senior medical planner, Kate, who had developed a set of powerful tools to help support her project work. Naturally, she became the person everyone turned to for guidance. The opportunity was clear: how could that knowledge be shared more broadly so others could grow into it and contribute at a higher level? Todd Henderson, Director of Practice Improvement, started by breaking the work into smaller pieces. Each of her custom tools was assigned to another planner. Their job wasn’t just to use it, but to understand it deeply—at a “Kate-like level.” They interviewed her, studied how the tools worked, and then presented short internal “MED Talks” to their colleagues—explaining what the tool does, when to use it, where its limits are, and when to go deeper. There was one rule: Kate couldn’t present. Each presenter became the steward of a specific tool. Over time, a broader network of expertise has started taking shape—people connected to particular tools, confident in how they worked, and able to support others. And something else happened along the way. By teaching the tools, these planners didn’t just learn them—they internalized them. They became visible contributors. The “nextperts” emerged: people who could support the work, evolve it, and extend its reach. Meanwhile, Kate was able to step into a more elevated role—coaching, guiding, and continuing to advance the work. This is what modern learning organizations do well: create simple, intentional ways for knowledge to be shared, practiced, and carried forward by others. 📺 🎧 This clip comes from “Partnering with AI to Solve Knowledge Problems,” episode 7 of our Welcome to KM 3.0 series with the TRXL podcast. You can watch or listen here: https://lnkd.in/gBP3-JPa 📖 I also mentioned this story in “Overcoming the Unspoken Barriers That Keep AEC Experts From Sharing What They Know”, issue 16 of the Smarter by Design Newsletter. You can read it here: https://lnkd.in/gWB8vHTM #AEC #KnowledgeManagement #ModernLearningOrganizations

You're wasting incredible expertise on your team, and you don't even know it. Most teams already have people with years of very specific experience in-house. Platform knowledge, pattern recognition, mistakes they’ve already paid for. And a lot of that never really gets shared. I decided to fix that on our team by starting a lunch and learn series where team members teach other team members about specific things that they have deep knowledge about. We have had lunch and learns on: ➡️YouTube Ads ➡️Google Ads Scripts ➡️Understanding P&Ls ➡️ClickUp Tips & Tricks and many more. Any person on the team can do a lunch & learn, and anybody can attend even if the skill is not core to their role. The person doing the presenting makes a deck to go with their presentation, they present it on the call which is recorded, and there's a Q&A at the end. We store these in a repository for future reference. It's a great way to formalize knowledge sharing among your team.

Being agile and innovative is crucial for success in the constantly changing business landscape. Nick P. of Cloud Engineering at Fidelity Investments has shared a revolutionary approach called "empowered federation," which distributes the ownership of standards and best practices, allowing small groups to lead technical excellence and innovation within organizations. The Federated Model consists of three key elements: 1. Steering Group: This group comprises 5-10 members who are knowledgeable and passionate about specific technology problem areas. They align with the organization's technical needs and promote adopting best practices and standards inspired by open source projects. 2. Focus Groups: These groups work autonomously within their domain and help scale the steering group's strategy across the organization. They consist of engineers and technologists who help drive the adoption of best practices and standards. 3. Community: The heart of the model, where individuals collaborate, share knowledge, and network to foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Accelerating Adoption: The key to adopting new practices and standards is education. The model emphasizes the importance of demonstrating the value of these practices in real-world settings, building strategies transparently, measuring progress with clear metrics, and continually returning to education to drive innovation. Embracing a culture of knowledge sharing and best practices is crucial for agility and engineering excellence. Federated groups, supported by passionate communities, offer a robust framework for nurturing such a culture. https://lnkd.in/g_QcfuB5

Lean Community:  Knowledge-Sharing.  In The High-Velocity Edge, Steve Spear explores how top-performing organizations achieve continuous learning and improvement through deeply embedded knowledge-sharing mechanisms. High-velocity organizations—such as Toyota, Alcoa, and parts of the U.S. Navy—excel by creating environments where learning is constant, fast, and widely distributed. Highly Recommend ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -------------------- Spear identifies four key capabilities enabling these organizations to prevent knowledge from being siloed and instead drive systemic learning: 🏆 Seeing Problems as They Occur:  High-velocity organizations empower employees at all levels to detect abnormalities immediately. This real-time problem identification ensures issues are visible and actionable rather than hidden or ignored. 🏆 Swarming and Solving Problems Immediately: Once problems are seen, teams swarm to resolve them collaboratively. This mechanism accelerates learning and ensures that solutions are shared widely, rather than hoarded by a few. 🏆 Spreading New Knowledge Rapidly: Companies like Toyota standardize successful solutions and disseminate them across the organization. This avoids reinvention and ensures best practices are embedded into processes. The use of common tools, shared language, and simple documentation supports this rapid transfer. 🏆 Leading by Teaching: Leaders in high-velocity organizations serve as coaches, reinforcing learning principles and modeling behavior that encourages inquiry and continuous improvement. They create a culture where asking questions, experimenting, and sharing results—both successes and failures—are expected and valued. To prevent knowledge from being siloed, these companies institutionalize learning into routines and structures, making it a core part of daily work. Continuous feedback loops, process transparency, and decentralized problem-solving all contribute to a culture of shared learning. Ultimately, The High-Velocity Edge illustrates that sustainable competitive advantage comes not from one-time innovation but from an organizational system that learns faster and spreads knowledge more effectively than the competition. -------------------- Questions: 1. Is a culture of decentralized problem-solving more effective than centralized expertise for sustained organizational learning? 2. Can standardized processes for sharing knowledge limit innovation by enforcing conformity? 3. How can organizations balance speed in knowledge dissemination with ensuring the accuracy and quality of the information being shared? Looking forward to your comments! https://a.co/d/gwIBSYD #ContinuousImprovement #CultureMatters

👉 Share an Impediment Newsletter Throughout the Organization The impediments that make it hard for Agile teams to work empirically often involve people across the organization. Helping these people understand the impediments, and the problems they cause creates awareness that enables double-loop learning, which can lead to systemic improvements. 📈 This experiment is a great example of how teams can create transparency around issues that impede empiricism. To implement this experiment, do the following: 1️⃣ With your team, ask everyone to silently write down impediments they see that are making it hard for them to build what stakeholders need and/or ship fast(er). 🤔 What skills are missing? 🤔 Where is protocol getting in the way? 🤔 Which people do they need but don’t have access to? After a few minutes, invite people to pair up to share and build on their individual ideas. Together, share all impediments and pick the three to five impediments that are most impactful (e.g. with dot-voting). 2️⃣ For the biggest impediments, ask: ❓What is lost because of this? ❓What do we and our stakeholders gain when this impediment would be removed? Capture the consequences of the various impediments. 3️⃣ For the biggest impediments, ask: ❓Where do we need help? ❓What would help look like? Collect the requests for help for the various impediments. 4️⃣ Compile the biggest impediments, including their consequences and requests for help, in a format that you can easily distribute to everyone who has a stake in your work. It could be a mailing, a paper newsletter ✍, a blog post on your intranet, or a poster that you put in a heavy-traffic corridor. Include the purpose of your team and how to contact you. ## Our Findings: ✅ Make sure to include (higher) management and consider informing them upfront. Also, they will probably appreciate a shorter, more concise version. ✅ Transparency can be painful. Be honest but tactful in your messaging, and don’t blame others or be negative. State what is happening and make clear requests for help. ✅ If you are planning to do this frequently, make sure to include the accomplishments of your team as well. What is going well? What has changed since the previous newsletter? And most importantly; from whom did you receive (unexpected) help? Check the blog post for more details: 👉 https://bit.ly/357dUcd What are your thoughts after reading this post❓What other ideas do you have❓ Our book - the Zombie Scrum Survival Guide 🧟 - contains 40+ other experiments! Get your copy here: https://bit.ly/3ePjtj1 PS: the Impediment Pyramid is a model by Dominik Maximini