In this interview, Christopher Parsons talks with a representative (Speaker A) from the Birdfeeder peer‑to‑peer learning platform about the difficulty of turning tacit, practice‑based knowledge into teachable curricula within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. The conversation highlights how experts often struggle to articulate skills they have internalised through hands‑on experience, creating a "codification barrier". Birdfeeder aims to encourage practitioners to teach each other, but teaching itself is intimidating and requires a separate set of skills. The speakers discuss the need to translate highly specific, situational expertise into a systematic approach that can be adapted across diverse clients and projects, without imposing overly rigid curricula that stifle flexibility. They explore the challenge of “teaching to teach” – developing instructional design capabilities within a small firm that lacks dedicated educators. Empathy emerges as a crucial element, both for effective teaching and for broader leadership development. The dialogue concludes that mastering these meta‑teaching skills can enhance project leadership, client‑facing abilities, and overall professional growth.
Chapters
It is really difficult when you're really good at something to codify it. That process is hard because we've learned it through doing, so we know how to do it, but we don't necessarily know how to explain it.
Yeah, it's all tacit knowledge and intuitive and yeah.
It's really difficult. And so we have this learning platform called Birdfeeder and we've been, you know, encouraging people to Teach. It's a peer-to-peer learning and learning and teaching. And well, teaching, first of all, is hard because it's a little bit scary, but it also involves that codification barrier. So how do I describe this thing that I do?
How?
Without saying, well, you do. And some people will say, well, you do this and you do this and you do this, or I do this, or you should do this. And that's sort of Mandating a process, right?
Those are 2 different things, right? It's hard enough to think about how I work, and then I'm going to tell you not only is that how I work, but it's how we should all work.
Yes, right, exactly. And not everybody works the same, and none of our clients are the same, and not all our projects are the same, right? So there is this translation that has to happen that takes it from the very specific experiences that I have to a sort of system systematic approach that you can now overlay onto different situations. And then teaching how to overlay that onto different situations is a whole other element of all of this, right? So it's this nested thing that happens, and it's— it can be really daunting. And so I think it takes time for people to put together a class on library design. What's important? How, where do I start? What are the basic things? What are the things I don't even think about because they're like breathing or putting one foot in front of the other when I'm walking? I don't have to think about that. Mm-hmm. But somebody who's never done it before has to think about it. So, mm-hmm, there are pockets of things that are very much procedural, and then there are things that are very much Situational.
Right.
Yeah, it's just like anything.
Are you helping— let's say I'm that library designer and I'm nervous about it. I don't know how to tell people what I do. How do you— can you help them? Is that something you are trying to do? How do you help somebody figure out how to teach library design, or are they thrown into the fire like you were at MIT and just figure it out?
There's a lot of swimming in the deep end of the pool that's going on. I think it's really an opportunity for us to actually focus on that. I'm really glad you asked that question because it's something I've been struggling with and we've been struggling with. How do you teach to teach? Because it's a whole other skill and something we've been trying to invest in, but it's been difficult because it doesn't really sit squarely in our area of expertise. So it sits a little bit beyond that. And we're not a huge firm, so we don't necessarily have— we're not so big that we could have a full-time teacher or somebody who would manage this whole system.
Instructional designer, kind of like somebody that— yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And the other thing we've been trying to avoid is to make it such a structured sort of curriculum that then can't shift, and you can't just go say, hey, I want to teach this class on mid-century modern library renovations, right? And then there has to be this review process, and we don't know if you can do that. And so it— there's a nimbleness that I also don't want to lose. But I think it's, it's how do we help people do that is something that, you know, came up during our, our symposium, our, our Level Up workshop.
Yeah.
And there was a really great conversation about that, that I took away with me to think about, and you're bringing that back to the surface again. I think it's helping people have empathy. And I'm just literally thinking about this a little bit off the top of my head.
Mm-hmm.
Because in order to teach, you sort of have to have empathy. You have to be able to think about what the position is somebody else is in and what their viewpoint is and what they need. In order to take the next step, right? Which also fundamentally is a major building block of leadership in general. It's not about what you need anymore, it's what others need.
Right, so I think an implication of if people can— you said that kind of that skill set is outside a little bit of the core expertise, but if people can learn it, it might make them better project leaders, client-facing business developers, whatever the things are.
