From the turn of the 20^th to the turn of the 21^st centuries, humankind experienced the greatest leaps in technological advances in recorded history. From horse-drawn buggies to space travel, human intelligence and creativity took us from a plodding, linear existence to soaring, exponential possibilities. Books like Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock first chronicled this geometric explosion of knowledge to Peter Diamandis’ Bold and Abundance took us the rest of the way toward the melding of humans and machines to remake the humanity that brought us here.

No need to recount those books or to re-tread that ground here. Rather, recognize that the same human knowledge and creativity that got us here will get us there. So with the rapid acquisition of new knowledge – some estimates say knowledge now doubles every two years – it is important that we identify our journey and catalogue it individually and collectively.

We live in the greatest transfer of knowledge in all of human history.

The whole of human knowledge is a big bite for anybody, especially you and me operating in isolation. However, taken one person, one company, one organization at a time, we can preserve what we’ve done so we can replicate it. To many practitioners at the organizational level, that is a training function. But a full knowledge capture goes beyond the practical and immediate application of developing a training program for employees to continue best practices. Each organization has a history, a culture and knowledge that went before that may have lost its current relevance but not its importance. It is that broader vision of knowledge capture that this book addresses.

As we rapidly move toward artificial intelligence and computer-generated activities that simulate human functions, it behooves us more than ever to preserve the knowledge, skills and attitudes that makes us essentially human if for no other reason than to create an accurate history.

Having defined your vision and the mission, preserve corporate knowledge, assess your circumstance and judge the value of what you would labor and spend valuable resources to capture.

What valuable knowledge are you preserving?

Please comment below and tell us about your contribution to human wisdom.

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash

In a little less than 12 minutes, we talk about the practical and the theoretical aspects of a CLO position. A great C-Suite does not just “think” ahead of the curve because change is no longer linear. Rather, change is exponential so a great CLO helps colleagues “dream” ahead of the curve.

Please comment below. We like hearing from you!

One of my living heroes Peter H. Diamandis recommends in a May 14 Tech Blog that when companies want to do something new and disruptive, they need to avoid their experts. His reasoning is very logical: Experts know a lot about the status quo; after all, they’ve likely created it!

The current experts will be springloaded to protect the status quo they have invested their careers into developing. Experts see things from the way they are, not the way they could be. Also, they have a vested interest in the way things are because if the status quo changes, their knowledge could get relegated to the scrap heap of history.

“An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how something can’t be done.” Peter’s Laws #21.

This logic dictates that you do not want experts on your team creating innovative, disruptive products.  When a company wants to move beyond the known, it needs to bring new minds to the problem that can see it in a fresh way.

He’s right. He’s my hero. Of course, I think he’s right. After all, he gave us the XPrize, Singularity University, and is squarely in front of the human potential movement.

He even quotes Henry Ford, that icon of innovation, here:

“I will close this blog with a quote from Henry Ford… I LOVE this quote. Enjoy.

‘None of our men are ‘experts.’ We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the ‘expert’ state of mind a great number of things become impossible.’

Keep innovating and let’s create a world of Abundance.”

But Fire Them? Maybe Not

Okay, so maybe you don’t want your seasoned experts leading the team that is coming up with the next great thing – your “Moonshot” – to borrow Diamandis’ language.  However, let me suggest that existing experts in the field know a lot about what has worked and what did not. Or at least experts know what has not worked in the past given the limitations of the knowledge and resources available at the time certain ideas were tested.

Innovation requires both a strong knowledge of what was and what is to provide a solid foundation to comprehend what could be.

This is why.

Sometimes the reason something was done – or was not done – is not immediately known. You can save hours, weeks, days, years and millions of dollars when you find out why – for example – you need to process something by etching or printing. Why water works in the process, or didn’t at the time. Why certain batteries failed at a point in the process. Why humans just wouldn’t do it that way. What happens if you incentivize buyers in a certain way.  And so on. And so on.

Perhaps another way to see the issue of “Fire Your Experts!” is to suggest that you enlist them as historical resources. Go to them. Ask them questions.  You may hear things like: “Oh, we tried that and were surprised that they bought less of this and more of that because of X, it took twice as long because we didn’t foresee Y or customers were driven to a competitor because of Z.”

Your current, fresh minds working on solutions will know if the limitations or parameters have changed enough over the last 20 or 50 or 70 years that problems encountered then no longer exist today.

Experts house history between their ears.

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797).

Therefore, I might slightly modify Diamandis’ suggestion to say that if you want to do something new and disruptive, have your fresh talent go at it full bore with a clean slate. And have your experts on call to backstop them and answer questions.

If your fresh talent and your experts can put their egos on the shelf and aren’t worried about protecting the status quo or their reputations as a brilliant young engineers, you may find that the one-two combo platter of shiny new genius and seasoned veteran are an unbeatable team.

The topics for this blog often come from you. Usually a conversation or an email results in ideas, and commonly the same issue will surface a few times within a week or so. This week, several American colleagues mentioned challenges in working with foreign experts who speak a primary language other than English.

As a result, I am going to try something new and start a discussion around the challenges in these situations by creating two hypothetical case studies for you to consider. The readers here have similar interests, so please share your advice, recommendations and opinions with others. Sometimes you respond with comments on the website, other times I hear back personally from you responding to me in email. Either way, if you’d like me to share your comments with other readers, let me know. Hopefully, we’ll all benefit as we learn from the wisdom of the Working With SMEs crowd.

Case Studies To Consider

Case #1: An American English-speaking training company is dealing with Japanese experts in Japan and working remotely with them using Zoom, so they are seeing each other and sharing slides. The training company has a team consisting of a designer and writer both on the calls. The Japanese experts have English skills and the American training team has no Japanese. The trainers are having difficulty understanding the experts’ accents, and the experts present their slides written in Japanese.

Consider: Taking the situation’s perspective from either the training company or the Japanese company, what would be your next move and how would you salvage this relationship so it results in an effective training outcome?

Case #2: An English speaking training company based in the UK with offices in the US has been contracted to build a series of training modules for a company of 150,000 employees located in 75 countries. Many of the employees speak English as a second language. The training company has been hired due to their strength in visual training modalities. They are excited at the opportunity to work with this global corporation and to explore the potential of their cutting edge technology.

Consider: What are some of the first steps you would take to ensure a smooth process? Who should be at the table from the training company and its client company? What kind of safeguards and procedures would you put in place so language and cultural sensitivity is built into the process at each phase?

General Questions to Consider

When an English-speaking American is working with foreign-speaking experts, whether within the U.S. or in another country, how do you build cultural and language supports into your training development?

Do you:

Hire cultural competency experts to ensure sensitivity and eliminate cultural bias?

Hire foreign language or translation experts to assist with non-native English speakers?

Provide cultural or language education for your English-speaking, Western-based training team?

Prefer to work in person as often as possible to develop and strengthen relationships?

Explore the issues openly with clients at the beginning of your relationship, looking for places where you can establish processes and provide additional supports to reduce cultural and language differences or misunderstandings?

Specialize in working with non-native English speakers or outsource your work to training companies that do?

Wisdom of the Working with SMEs Crowd

Instead of our usual offering of advice and opinion, we are turning the tables on you this week. We have a lot of questions. If you have opinions or experiences to share – or even other related questions and issues – we look forward to hearing from you.