In this discussion Christopher Parsons and colleagues outline an internal program called “MED Talks,” inspired by TED Talks, designed to spread the deep, tool‑specific expertise of a senior planner named Kate across Boulder Associates. The firm assigns each of Kate’s proprietary tools to individual planners, who receive coaching from Kate and then become the primary educators for that tool. These planners create and deliver bite‑sized presentations—MED Talks—covering the tool’s purpose, usage, limitations, and escalation paths. The sessions are recorded and digitized, creating a searchable knowledge repository. By moving the teaching role away from Kate, the program alleviates her bottleneck, diversifies expertise, and builds a pyramid‑shaped knowledge structure rather than a single‑point dependency. The approach also invests in planners’ professional growth, reshapes firm culture toward proactive knowledge scaling, and balances the benefits of technology with human expertise.
Chapters
I had this idea, you know, there are TED Talks. What if there were Med Talks? We have all these, we have all these tools that the planners have created. In true, true, true to form, we haven't really told anybody about them. And guess who knows how they work the best? Kate. So, We've assigned each of these tools to one of the planners. Their job is to learn how to use it at a Kate level or a Kate-like level. They can interview Kate, they can talk to Kate. Kate's gonna coach this process, whatever. The only rule is Kate may not do any of these presentations. It has to come out of one of the other planners. Haha. And then it's, we're gonna do like TED Talks on one of these tools. So teach BA how to use this tool, what it's for, why to use it, where it falls off, and when you should contact one of the medical planners to go deeper. Right. It does a couple of things. It elevates that planner. It transfers some, some of Kate's knowledge. It ties that planner to that tool. So Kate is, is Kate's able to elevate and be at Kate's level. And these folks are starting to be that second level of, of level of expertise, but on a narrower piece. So it's, it's bite-sized.
And Kate's no longer bottlenecked on supporting that tool. So she's been able to let that, let that responsibility go. It's so interesting because when people say we want to backfill Kate, a lot of times like we need to find a, we need to make a clone. And that's usually very, very hard to do with someone that's been working for decades to build that expertise. But what you're going at is decomposing important parts of her knowledge, in this case that are tied up and embodied in tools, and distributing that, right?
Is it, is it the, the best or the only way to kind of solve the Kate effect? I, I don't know, but it's the one that like meets it. It like, it just checks a lot of boxes right now.
Mm-hmm.
And it's kind of fun, frankly. I mean, med talks, who doesn't love that? Love the little doo doo drippy sound. I mean, you know, the whole thing.
I like how you're introducing people into this. Puzzle of scale, right? Because I think a lot of times when you talk about scaling knowledge or whatever it is, skills, you're usually, I think, approaching it from like a technology standpoint. Well, the tool handles the thing, whatever it is. And I think it's really interesting that you're saying, okay, now this person is going to be the— become an expert because that you, you're investing in that person, first of all, which I would think they would really appreciate. They're giving— you're giving them the time to do this. Right, because everybody's got deadlines and all these things. So you actually have to be really proactive about that investment and say, no, we need you to learn this. There's value in that. And then we're going to take that and you're going to become the spokesperson to deliver that information to an even broader group. Maybe it's a small group at first and then you get some feedback, but you build into the culture of the firm then how you approach scaling knowledge, which is more than just a technology solution.
Right. But you also record that. So you're also digit— you're externalizing it and digitizing it at the same time, which helps with retrieval and like, so you're doing both things at the same time, right?
It just exactly. And it, and it's, it's eating away at the structural problem. The structure of this problem is that we have this wide base and then Kate.
Mm-hmm.
Right. And what we need is, you know, yeah, my, my hand gestures aren't gonna do well on a podcast, an audio podcast. We have— but we need a pyramid scheme, not a, not a tall, skinny tower that's unstable.
Yeah.
With just Kate in it. And, and it's a way of solving the structure in it. And again, a tool works at both ends. So this will shape the culture of the firm a bit. The, the, the, the, the place I wanna put this carefully. It's not about taking anything away from Kate or how people see Kate, but it's broadening the base.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, I mean, if you think about the amazing person that Kate is, Kate is a rockstar. Kate is an asset. It's all, there is a liability side to that equation when it's the single person, right? It's so absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's, you have to diversify. That knowledge throughout the farm.
Yeah. And Kate's delighted, you know, Kate's delighted by this.
