Having worked together on an exclusive new Field Service News White Paper, Kris Oldland joined Martin Knook, CEO of Gomocha, to discuss the various layers of knowledge transfer and the art of information.
In this engaging long-form discussion, the two cover a vast range of topics relating to the importance of knowledge transfer, including why developing a culture of continuous learning is critical and what technologies need to be in place to make putting the correct information where and when it is needed the most.
In this section of the full-length conversation the two debate whether there is not enough value placed on the area of effective knowledge transfer within the field service sector, and why this could be a crucial mistake for many field service organizations.
This interview is part of the FSN PRO library of premium content. It is available in FSN’s free subscription tier FSN FREE. Make sure you log in to view the complete whitepaper and videos.
Transcript
Kris Oldland: Suppose for me as well, you mentioned the challenge around knowledge transfer. And it’s interesting when you say, a consumer, it’s almost through osmosis, isn’t it? This age of information surrounds us; that is exciting. You’re sitting on the bridge and were born in 1980. I see both worlds of the old pre-internet world and the world we exist in now. And I’ve got, as many viewers know, a few young kids. And it amazes me how we’ve adapted as a society to this. I need this piece of information. This is where I’m going to go to take it. As you said, we have yet to quite translate that consistently in our business environments. The other thing that’s there for me is when we look at these challenges, we can’t look at the challenge of effective knowledge transfer. We need first to understand the meta-conversation around all the challenges we have in our industry. There’s a lack of engineers, which is universal. I’m seeing that everywhere I’ve gone, whether it’s out in the States, whether it’s over AIPAC, whether it’s here in Europe, and it’s almost every industry. I’m trying to think of a service leader I spoke to the last two years as not [having] that challenge. There are financial challenges post-COVID, but there’s not a lot of CAPEX investment that puts pressure on service teams because their clients are sweating their assets. And it’s interesting because I almost feel in certain instances, I was in an industry of firefighting, we know that we inherently, that’s what we do, we put out fires every day. We’re slowly evolving into a more proactive service. And a lot of organizations, perhaps, are so focused on the right. How do we deal with all of these daily challenges? But they don’t take that step back and see the wood for the trees and if we improve how we move information around the business, if we improve how we can let that tech have access to a knowledge bank, or have access to the most experienced [tech]; do we improve that knowledge transfer? Sometimes they don’t see that would resolve many problems in the first place. Does that make sense to come into force around that?
Martin Knook: Yeah. Absolutely. And when you’re describing the art of knowledge and knowledge transfer, and then the art of field service, your particular business knowledge transfer, they are competing priorities. So you have to grow with the priority level. No one is against knowledge transfer; there’s no one unable to transfer knowledge. It’s competing with what priority level you develop with the sender and receiver of knowledge. Under the restrictions you introduced, Kris, that will not go away. The permanent challenges, the shortage of people. Some of my clients fall back on training, completely different from knowledge transfer. Hence, it’s easier to manage because it’s a training of a day or two, we send someone on external training, or it’s manageable because it’s easy to oversee. It’s two days, and you get something specific on the radar. So under these pressure cookers of knowledge transfer, I see people escaping from training, which is different from knowledge transfer.
Kris Oldland: I’d agree with that.
Martin Knook: Yeah, so that’s what I see. But then it becomes manageable, right? What costs are, you can predict the schedule. You can account for the time off or make it very transactional. And I’m seeing more creative, out-of-the-box ideas where knowledge transfer is simplified. It’s not simple. But you are creating a culture that makes it easier and allows it.
End of Transcript
You can view the full white paper, Knowledge Transfer: The Art of Information.
This blog was originally posted on the Field Service News blog.