What the Best Synthesis Teams Do Differently | Susan Strom of Knowledge Architecture

Hello and welcome to Smarter by Design. I'm your host, Christopher Parsons, founder and CEO at Knowledge Architecture. And my guest today is Susan Strom, the Chief Client Officer at Knowledge Architecture. Our topic is what the best synthesis teams do differently. And so the reason we're talking about this is last fall Susan wrote an article on LinkedIn called What the Best Synthesis Implementation Project Teams Do Differently. The reason she wrote that article is she was approached by a couple brand new clients who had been around the KA community for a while, and they said, look, we want to implement synthesis and we want to have a great, great outcome. Not a good outcome, but we want to have a great outcome. The kind of outcome you see on the stage at KA Connect at the annual conference, featured in the Smarter by Design newsletter, shown on webinars. They want to be kind of elite in the way that they implemented synthesis. And that was a great prompt for Susan to reflect on. Looking back over 15 years of synthesis, of implementing Synthesis for over 200 AEC firms and really found 5 principles that seem to separate the best Synthesis implementation project teams. So we talked about that, but this conversation went much deeper than that. We started looking at, well, okay, fine, launch, like that is an important milestone in the implementation of a knowledge and learning management platform. But what about getting adoption? What about continuing to evolve and grow Synthesis as your firm evolves and grows? And so we had a really wide-ranging conversation reflecting back on our 15 years together leading Synthesis and running knowledge architecture and what we've learned from this AEC community. Susan, of course, is a lovely human being, an amazing leader in not only our company, but in the industry. And I think folks that know Susan well will really enjoy the conversation and people who don't know Susan yet or have met her and will probably work with her and her team if you become clients of ours. I think you'll enjoy it as well. It's a really, really great conversation and we surfaced a lot of cool new insights in the discussion. So, okay. Susan Strom, Chief Client Officer at Knowledge Architecture, what the best synthesis teams do differently. Here we go.

Sliding doors and a screeching noise. If the future's got a little grime, at least you know the train will come on time. We took the 5:30.

So Susan, welcome to Smarter by Design.

Thank you, Chris. I'm so excited to be doing this with you.

It is very fun. It seems like this should have happened a long time ago, but here we are.

Yeah, we've been doing a lot of implementations. That's the first thing I did when I joined Knowledge Architecture 15 years ago was that Yeah, start leading implementations.

Yeah, actually, that's a good segue. Look, for people who don't know or haven't met you yet, what does a Chief Client Officer actually do at Knowledge Architecture?

Yeah, great question. So the Chief Client Officer role here is responsible for the client's experience, our client's experience from when they're learning about Synthesis, like they want to talk to us and say like, what does it do? How do we implement this? How do we make this successful? All the way through to implementing it, to what happens after implementation, like monitoring adoption, going after new goals and strategies and strategic firm objectives and support. So it's that whole like client lifecycle journey with us. And what I see as my job is making sure that our clients have the right support, the right best practices, the right consulting advice throughout that whole journey.

That's great. And what, what drew you to doing this work with us? Like, what, what made you want to lead intranets for AEC firms?

Oh, so many years ago, I was an electrical engineer, and I was one of those like 22, 23, 24-year-olds who just got really itchy when things were inefficient in my learning and design process. I remember moments where I was asked to do something like read a spec book. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to retain this. I don't know what I'm looking for. Like, this is not efficient and effective. I'd like to give you 8 hours, you know, a whole day of learning because I want to be better and I want to learn and grow. And I'm here because I want to be an awesome engineer, but like, I don't think this is the best way for me to do this. So I started to, you know, speak up and had ideas and got involved. And my CEO at the time gave me time, space, focused time to start working on some of these challenges for our organization. And I just fell in love with that work. Like, I love teasing apart the people, process, culture, technology web that we can get caught in when some of these processes aren't working and helping straighten it out. So knowledge architecture was getting started. 15, 16 years ago, Chris and I were in a, like, roundtable, and at some point we each pulled out a book and we were like, oh, we both like reading. And it turns out we both also like knowledge management, although that language was still emerging. And so we got started and the work to be done initially was just helping firms get on board with the platform and figure out how to do that. And we had a lot to learn 15, 16 years ago when we were just getting started. So, you know, I have learned a lot in that time working with firms and refined our processes over and over and over again, incorporating what we learn, you know, from each implementation so that the next one is a little easier, a little better, gets clients to their goals even faster.

So you've been doing knowledge management about how to do knowledge management.

Yes. Yes, I have.

We get— we're gonna get meta in this episode. I am sure of it. Um, okay, so the piece. What I've Learned from Our Best Synthesis Intranet Implementation Project Managers. Why did you write it? Why now? Was there a particular client interaction or conversation that drove you, or was it something else?

Yeah, I had two conversations with two different firms that want to implement Synthesis within a week of each other. One was with the CEO of the firm, another was with the development officer, and these are both firms that are like, you know, 120 people-ish. They don't have a dedicated knowledge manager role, as most of our clients don't, and they really want to do synthesis, but they were getting kind of caught up on like, how do we staff this? How do we resource it? So I found myself having this conversation with them, and I felt like some of my— not my best practices, but some of my go-to talking points weren't quite landing. And I was reflecting on it. I was like, what is it that they're looking for that I'm not giving them? And I realized it's that they didn't want to just implement synthesis. They wanted to have an amazing synthesis implementation. They wanted to be best in class. And that's what they were really asking me. It was like, how do I resource this given my firm's constraints and resources so I get an outcome that looks like Snowheda? So I get an outcome that looks like Turner Fleischer. So I get an outcome that looks like these firms that I see on your webinars and that I see on the stage. So I spent some time thinking about that and The way I tend to get into questions like this is like, what data do I have around this? So I spent some time thinking about all the 200-ish implementations I've led, and I picked my top 10 teams on the client side.

We will not disclose that list on this podcast.

No, that list may or may not still exist, and it may have changed in 2 months.

That's right. It's dynamic.

Yeah. Yeah. I reserve the right to do that. And I just started writing about like, what were their makeup, what were their attributes, what seemed like it was consistent across these teams so that I could answer this question better for these two organizations. And so I could really get at how do you get to the next level? You know, when firms work with us, a lot of times it's because they don't just want a new intranet to replace their old intranet. They want to change as an organization, and they see this as a platform to support that kind of change. And that change isn't just technology. It requires people, process, culture, and all the things. But like, I wanted to hone in on that people side.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's— first of all, what a gift to have a client saying, I want to be one of your best clients. Like, amazing. I'd love to walk in the door. It's a good inspiration for the article. Um, so you ended up breaking this into 5 things, 5 lessons that you've learned from the teams. The first one is they, meaning the best synthesis implementation project managers, understand how your firm ticks. What does that mean?

Yes, the best implementation PMs I've worked with just have this deep understanding of how to get stuff done inside the organization. And that means that they understand the big picture priorities. Like our big picture priority is to deliver really excellent affordable housing that meets our clients' deadlines, you know, or our big picture is to design and like service bridges for our clients in this like very, very knowledgeable way where like they go to us because we know the most, the most about their bridges. So like they just, they get it. They like, they know beyond what's on the website, beyond taglines, they know what drives people at the firm and they also know how to navigate getting stuff done. People join different firms because they like the firm culture, right? And different firms have different firm cultures. Some firms are very much like, we're taking the long view, we're going to move slow and thoughtfully and get there at the right time. Some firms, their perspective is like, we want to move as quickly as possible and we can absorb mistakes and we can adjust. The only way we're going to adjust is if we make the mistake, so let's just get going. You know, that's just one example of firm cultures that are different. But a good PM just gets that. They know how their firm works. And why that's so important is because a lot of this work is around leading change, and that means connecting the dots for people. So helping connect what you're asking them to do, the new thing, or what you're asking them to spend time on that maybe is out of their normal job description with the outcome that like, you know, that they actually care about and then asking it in a way that works. With how the firm works, with the patterns within the firm.

Right.

And that's really hard to do if you don't— if you don't get how the firm works.

Yeah. And so you listed some things like what I wrote down was you understand kind of the strategy, whether it's written or not, and like what's important and priorities. You kind of talked about culture. I would assume it also has something to do with relationships. And I'm going to throw something out there and you can knock it down or build on it. But like, are any of the people that came to mind on your secret top 10 list, were they new to the organization? Did all of them have, you know, kind of like X amount of years with the organization understanding strategy, culture, relationships? Like, what are your thoughts on that question?

Yeah, it's a good question. I don't remember exactly if any of them were totally new to the organization. It's kind of unlikely, but I am thinking of a firm I'm working with right now, and their implementation team has two champions, co-champions, one who's been there for a long time and is transitioning into more of a firm operations role out of a design role, really gets, you know, she gets the strategy, she gets the culture of the place, and she has the relationships. And another is new to the firm, then has kind of a, you know, some background in KM and intranet stuff. And the person that's new to the firm is doing great because she's paired with someone who has the relationships and— well, she's paired with someone who has the relationships and gets the strategy, unspoken and spoken. And all of that. And she's been able to kind of draft off that and build relationships through the process. So I don't think it's like out of the question to bring someone in, but it is, you know, newer to the firm. But I think if you do that, you have to be really thoughtful about who you pair them with, either as a co-champion or who you pair them with as with for an executive sponsor.

How important is the PM part of implementation? PM, like, do they have to have managed big projects before? Like, can they rely on us to do some of that? Like, what's the— what happened? What does that look like?

Yeah, the PM part of the PM of the implementation. PM, right, right. Yeah, it's funny, a number of really great PMs that I've worked with have managed client projects, not big client project necessarily, but, you know, some client project work. They're kind of moving into a PM role in their career, but they may not have managed big projects. They may not have managed a technology rollout before. So I don't think that's actually that important. We do a lot of the project management, like we have the game plan, we have all the tasks laid out. We are— we're bringing that expertise to the table, especially for this particular project that like we know how to do really well because we've done it a lot, right? I think what's more important are other things that are in that list in the article, which is the ability to lead change and just have a good sense of how to influence with or without authority.

Yeah. So that's actually your second point in your article. Good transition. I like it. They are strong change leaders. So you kind of established why because, well, I mean, for context, you know, an intranet is one of those projects that touches the entire company. So it's all the firms now. It's not like you're implementing for a department or just a team. Like, this is an enterprise, you know, firm-wide thing. So it is a big change. What does, what does being a strong change leader look like to you?

Hmm. It looks like being able to listen and hear where people really are and respond. So being very open to feedback, having a lot of empathy. It also looks like bringing people in, the right person in at the right time with the right level of information. And I guess the empathy part is like when I say the right person at the right time with the right level of information, the way you figure out there's the right person, right time and right level of information is because you have a lot of empathy. And you listen and you're, you're treating people as people. One of the things that I coach our PMs to do is to build the momentum for the project one person at a time. So every time we onboard someone to start working on their content, we treat that moment with a lot of care, right? I recommend I coach people to treat that moment with a lot of care because their experience coming in and starting to build out the HR content or starting to build out their Revit content. That is change management, right? You're expanding this project out kind of one ripple at a time and you can't just, you know, zoom out and come up at the last ripple, which is all employees, and be like, okay, now I'm going to start caring about your experience as you're entering the platform, right? You do it one person at a time. I don't know. I think change management is a whole field. Change leadership is a whole field. I don't expect anyone to be like a change leadership expert. We've learned enough from our, you know, work doing this and like codified enough best practices that are specific to this, to an intranet implementation that we can coach people through, you know, a lot of the ins and outs. What the champion and PM needs to bring to the table is that like empathetic perspective and willingness to like listen and to like actually really care about these interactions and not like kind of bulldoze past anyone.

What does it mean, like in the example you gave, so you're encouraging a new implementation PM to, if they're onboarding HR into Synthesis, to treat them with care. What does it mean to treat an HR person with care when you're talking about bringing them in to putting their content on the internet?

Yeah, it starts at the very beginning of the project. So one of the first things that we do with a team is we help them audit the content that they have across the firm. You know, maybe they have an old intranet and like, yes, that's gonna come over. But chances are that someone has, you know, a calc sheet on their desktop that they send every new employee who gets onboarded into their department, right? We want to get that stuff on the intranet too. So the way that we help them get that stuff on the intranet is we have the essential content checklist. You can find it on our website, and it's just a long list of like things you might want to put on the intranet. There's a whole history to that. We can come back to it if you want to. One way to approach that would be that the intranet champion sits down, closes their door, and just starts going through and saying like, we have this, we have this, we don't We don't have this. We don't have this. Not a good way to do it, right? I think the right way to do that, the way to care for HR in this process, the way to care for IT in this process, is to sit down with your HR person and look through the HR section of that checklist and say, this is what's happening with this project. Here's some things that our partner has said we might want to have on the intranet. Do we have an onboarding checklist that you'd want to put on the intranet? No. Okay, no worries. We'll take that off. Oh, but you want to build one? Okay, let me just make a note of that. All right. Do we have— do we have ESOP guidance that we have? Do we have that? Yes, we do. Oh, you've always wanted to put that somewhere. Great. Okay, let me make a note of that. So it's like doing just even from the get-go, like involving them in that process and like listening to them, right? We're not forcing the fact that they're going to move their content onto— over them, right? We're in service to them. We're going to help them. Replatform content and bring content together so that their job can be better. So like it starts there. And then when it comes to us having things scaffolded out and ready to onboard them, it's realizing that like they probably don't care a whole lot about how the internet works. So don't teach them all of that, right? What they care about is just moving their content from one place to another and getting it set up in a way that's going to be really effective for them to maintain and effective for people to find. So narrow our coaching to the things that they actually care about.

So on one hand, don't like isolate them and just go do all the work without consulting them. On the other hand, don't go too far about trying to bring them, you know, just like finding the right medium of how much they need to know about what we're doing.

Yeah. And then also treating them like as people. The HR people aren't a monolith. IT people aren't a monolith. All your content editors aren't a monolith. We're we tend to work with firms that are small enough where we don't need to create kind of a one-size-fits-all onboarding for those really key roles. Right. It can be person to person.

Yeah, I think I'm thinking back to a particular implementation that was probably like 2012, 2013, like early in our journey. And it was kind of one IT person who bought Synthesis without a lot of consulting of other people and tried to implement it kind of by himself. It was kind of like you and I both like basketball, right? It's hero ball, you know? And so it seems like what's implicit in what you're saying is that they run this like a team sport with respect. And it's not like, you know, Denise's internet or Steven's internet or Brian's internet. It's the company's internet. And the PM is just the orchestrator, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think of them as like a shepherd of the firm's knowledge, right? They're responsible for moving it forward. They're responsible for coaching others. And in fact, that's an interesting thing I found when I was looking through these 10 is there were maybe 2, 2 out of the 10, something like that, of these PMs. The intranet implementation was a springboard to the next level of their career where they were transitioning from that like subject matter expert doer into someone who coaches other people. And this was just a, it's a beautiful project for them to build those muscles and show the firm that they have those muscles.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you a question you can't possibly answer, but like, you know, is it, there's this kind of saying that challenge or stress reveals character, doesn't build character. And I'm kind of curious if a project like this like reveals that capability or is it more building it? And it's probably both. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I think it depends on the, the case. Although someone today was on the phone with them talking about implementing LMS, so it's a little different. They're like, well, thanks for the therapy session. So I do think we are in the position where people are going through growth through this process.

And yeah, can you, can you, can you say you've seen people like in the 4, 6, 8 months, however long, like, do you feel like you saw people that were different by the end than they were when they started working?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've seen people be different by the end, you know, individually. I've also seen people just get promoted at the end, right? So they're being recognized by the firm that they have also changed.

So going back to the root of why you wrote the piece. So if I'm a company looking to buy Synthesis and I'm asking you this question and we want to be great, I feel like part of what you're saying here is this might be a growth opportunity for a person. So, you know, like someone who's shown some promise and maybe you need to pair them up with somebody, probably need to pair them with an executive sponsor to make sure they don't get— but like there's some degree of like if somebody's showing promise, they can let them grow and like show what they're capable of. And by the way, also build a lot of relationships with all the different departments and all the different markets and all those people through the course of this work.

Yeah. Yes, I— yes, do that. If you're listening and you want to work on synthesis, you want to have a great, fabulous implementation. That is one of the pathways to success. It requires like, wow, I happen to have this person, right? We don't always have, have that person. Although, you know, I do recommend this to firms and frequently they do have that person. So, you know, you have—

they have kind of an up-and-comer who like needs a place to prove themselves.

Yeah, I think the nuance to that is being able to give that person some focused time to do the work, which is— I don't remember which point it is in the article, but it was one of those.

I think that's 5. You called it they have the time and space to lead and We can just call an audible and go out of order, Susan, because hey, that's how we roll. So talk about that. Yeah, you walked right into it.

Yeah. So you don't need to have someone full-time in this role. In fact, most of our clients don't, and they certainly don't when they're implementing, right? Maybe 5 years into working with Synthesis, they've grown their KM program and, you know, things have happened and they, they give someone that role. But in implementation, very, very rarely is that a full-time role. But that doesn't mean that people can just squeeze it in between everything else. Like, it is still work. And what happens if you do not give that person some time and space to lead is that they can't improve anything, right? In the margins of their day, because they're passionate and they're excited, they will be able to launch the platform, right? They will be able to move stuff from the old platform to the new platform. They will not be able to rethink the organization and optimize it for where the firm is today and where the firm wants to be in the next 5 years. They will not be able to be really thoughtful about onboarding each of those community managers and tailoring it to optimize for their, you know, engagement and joy in the platform. They did— they won't— they just won't be able to really lead. The urgent will get in the way of their leadership, right?

Efficiency is going to trump kind of other things.

Yeah. Again, they don't need to be full-time. They don't need to be half-time. Yeah, but like maybe give them a project number to bill to. Maybe incorporate this into project staffing if they're a billable person. Incorporate this into your staffing if they're a marketing person. But like, be really thoughtful about giving them some time to do the work if you want, if you want to get those best-in-class outcomes, right? If your goal is like, no, we just need to replatform And we'll, we'll get best in class later.

Our old platform is going out of business in 6 months and there's a fire and we have—

Yeah, that's, that's totally legitimate as well and requires a different level of focus and gets a different outcome.

Well, you just said something. Point 4 was they represent both practice and operations. And so you were kind of talking about time and space to lead, I think from the perspective of somebody who's billable, like a practice person. Tell me about that idea, because I think I've heard you say this, like, A two-person implementation is better than a one-person. And if you're going to have two people, having them come from different parts of the business is really useful. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely. I was on the phone with someone yesterday who, again, very excited about synthesis, trying to figure out how they're going to staff it. And I shared this bit about, you know, it should be someone who really gets the firm and is good at change management. She's in HR. Been talking about a lot about HR today. Interesting. Must be on my mind. She's in HR and she said, oh well, I can do change management. I know a lot about the operations side of the firm, but I don't know a lot about our project delivery. I'm not an architect or an engineer, like, so maybe I can't do it. And it's like, aha, point 4, whatever. Get a co-champion. This is actually the best, in my opinion, of the structures is to have someone who really gets how things work behind the scenes, who like gets your systems, who gets how the business operates on a, you know, a system level. And frankly, since they're on that operations team, part of their job are these kinds of improvements.

So getting their time isn't as hard.

Exactly. Yeah. You can fold it into your strategic planning. It's like they're going to be working on some strategic improvements this year. Let's make it this one, you know. And pair them with someone who's on the practice side, who has a lot of empathy for how it feels to go find a code. Right, right. And knows other people who need to find codes, knows other people who are storing standards, and knows other people who have the calcs that really should be on the internet because that's just part of their network. And again, they've done it before. If you pair two people like that, talk about knowing the business and like knowing my business, how the business ticks. Like you really have a lot of coverage in that knowledge. You have a lot of coverage across relationships and then they get to play off each other. So people, you will hit a wall, right? There will be an area of content that the person who kind of needs to be involved is on a deadline or they're, they're just, they're not connecting the dots like they're not bought in and you need to figure out how to navigate that, right? You always have myself or my colleague Sarah Davies is great. We lead implementations. We're happy to coach you through it. But if you have a champion pair, then they can talk to each other and they, they know all the people and they have bigger networks inside the firm, right? So they can be strategic support.

Yeah, I like that for a lot of reasons. You know, they can also— you've seen more of these than I have, but I think one thing I've also observed is they have different— they can have different strengths and weaknesses, like you know, there's an internal commsy component, there's a more structured data component, there's an analytics component, and maybe one of them is analytical and maybe one of them is more feelingy kind of person. And so you can also balance each other out a little bit that way too.

Yeah. One of my favorite implementation teams was very early in our journey, probably like my third year at KA or something. They're a structural firm in Seattle. And their champions was someone in operations who really wanted Synthesis. Well, his role was like operations director, but he wanted Synthesis to support structural engineers. He was like, we need to document how we do really great steel structures and how we do really great mass timber structures. Though mass timber probably wasn't a thing at that time, but that sort of thing. Like, we need to give a space for these— are these technical communities to capture and share and learn with each other. And he had a lot of empathy on that side and he was like a feeler. And then we had a marketing director who had been cultivating Deltec vision at that time and had really great project data and data about their clients. And she was like kind of the only person who could get to it. And she was very analytical and she wanted to expose that and get that in front of people, daylight it so that people could interact with some of this project history. Data that like they have and would be really useful to understand what steel structures we've done right in Vancouver. When we're going to do another one in Vancouver, we'd like to give that to our engineers. So they had different kind of starting points, different objectives, but also different personalities. And together it was just fabulous. They could pick up where the other one left off and it was a joy to work with them.

Shout out Brian McIntyre and Julie Jackson.

Those are the ones. Now both retired.

Now both retired. So hopefully you're listening to the Smarter by Design podcast on your retirement somewhere in a lovely—

Yeah.

Washington Beach. Yeah. Bainbridge Island. Okay. Number— well, number 3, but the 5th one we'll get to was they influence with or without authority. Tell me more.

Yeah. So I was an electrical engineer, as I mentioned at the top of the pod, and then I kind of moved my CEO gave me time and focus to do some more professional development in HR role stuff. And one of the first things I ran into was like, I have no authority. I am no one's boss. How am I supposed to like get people to do, I don't know, to do performance reviews differently? And he gave me a gem of advice, which is that you have to lead through your influence. I'm not actually going to give you formal authority, in this role, because like, what exactly— what, what authority exactly do you want? And then how can I give that to you, right? You have to like earn it, at least in professional services and the kind of firms we work with, right? It's built over time by showing empathy, by building trust, by building— showing outcomes, all of that. So people who are, are doing this kind of work, rolling out a new intranet Yes, maybe they do have some formal authority. Is that going to help you? It actually can kind of be a hindrance, potentially, if you think that the fact that you are in charge of operations means that everyone is going to start operating the way you tell them to tomorrow, because that's just not how it works. Change leadership— lots of literature on how people change behaviors, and it is not that way. So if you understand that, either because like you literally don't have formal authority or because you just get that, like the way that you get things done is by influencing people, by listening to them, by meeting them where they are, by showing them a different way and giving them the opportunity to digest it and then come a little forward. Right. You'll have a lot more success with implementing synthesis, probably with a lot of other things.

We had a person come speak at one of our workshops years ago She quoted another person. I remember it was Rose Hollister, but she was quoting a change management expert. And the, the one I've always remembered is people want change done with them, not to them.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel that's been a lot of what's been in what you've been sharing is, you know, the kind of empathy, the individualization, giving people the big picture, but not too much information. Yeah. It's, that's powerful. What I'm trying to decide if I wanna ask this question. You looked at the best 10. I'm assuming you didn't do the— sometimes when I do these exercises, I do the inverse also, and I'm like, where firms really struggled, what did that look like? Is it as simple as it's just the opposite of all these things? You know, they put people there who didn't understand who the firm ticked. They put someone in who couldn't lead change. They put someone in who didn't know how to influence with authority. They didn't represent the whole business. They didn't have time to work on it. Like, Is it that simple? Or like, I'm just curious, like, what can we learn from things that didn't go well?

Yeah, I think all of that is true. And I did not do the inverse. I did not look at the bottom. I also didn't look at the middle, which is another thing I think about, which is like, is being the middle okay?

Right.

Some case it is, some case it isn't. I would say that, you know, nuance that I would give to like how firms sometimes fail is one person thinking that they can kind of do it all. Like, I'll take care of it. No one else has time. I will be the champion. I will be the sponsor. I will get all the content on the internet. I will do all of the, you know, the presentations. I will tease this out to the firm. Has that ever worked?

Right. They built no— they've built no momentum and no buy-in progressively as they've gone through. It's just a hard, hard cut for everybody.

Yeah. And like, if your goal is just to— again, it's just to replace a platform and you're not trying to get to people capturing more knowledge or sharing themselves or, I don't know, using AI search because like that's going to clearly probably be new for every firm right now. You don't care about those things and like that might be fine, but it's not going to get you the kind of outcomes that the two firms that inspired this whole thing wanted, right? Yeah. So the one person, not a winning style. And then the other thing that actually is not so much about implementation, but get set up maybe a little bit in a mindset during implementation is what happens after you go live.

Right.

Right. I would say you're still in implementation for a little bit.

Like how long?

I tend to care a lot about what happens the 12 months after.

After you launch.

Right. After we launch. So part of our process for anyone who doesn't work with us and doesn't know this is that every year we offer is like a partnership service. It's just part of how we work. It's not an additional fee or anything, is to help you develop your intranet strategy. Right. In year 1, it's kind of obvious generally what needs to happen. We still refine it, you know, because what one firm needs is multi-office, multi, you know, discipline firm is what they're working with is going to be a little different than a single office firm that is going from 20 to 40 employees. Right. And what their pain points are. So We just modify it, but the gist is kind of the same in a lot of ways. Like we need to get the platform up, we need to get people using it. But what happens in year 2 and 3 and 4 diverge. So in that first year, well, in our process, we do that strategy work and then we meet with you every quarter to look at your analytics and to talk about what you're experiencing on the ground with respect to your 3 to 5 business priorities that you've identified for the platform. In the first year, I do not let clients out of that. It's like, you have to meet with me. I am going to, I'm going to help you whether you like it or not. Hopefully they like it.

Why?

Why do I, why?

Yeah.

Um, gosh, let me, I mean, I want them to be successful. Uh, and I think when, what firms are like, I know, I don't know if we need to, I don't know if we need to look at this with you, sometimes what I fear is that they think that since things have been, you know, on an upward trajectory, they're like, we did the things, that it's just going to continue that way. And like, I know about the trough of disillusionment, right?

You're going to get to a high and then there's going to be a dip.

I know that things might be falling off or could fall off in the future. I know that because I've just been through this so many times.

Mm-hmm.

Just because people got their stuff on and it's like looking good does not mean they're going to maintain it.

Mm-hmm.

And if they don't maintain it, we're not going to have a good intranet in 2 years anymore. Right. Right. We might have had something really great at launch, but if we don't continue to tweak it and build the culture of caring for this new member of our firm, we're not going to be where we want to be. So in that first year, like, it's kind of like onboarding a new employee. It's like, I brought them in, I recruited them, I brought them in. I'm not going to walk away and hope their manager does a good job. I'm going to stay with their manager, make sure that, you know, they get to their 12-month mark and it's working. So it's that kind of like responsibility and accountability I feel like I have to them to like to get this.

Well, you're talking about the transition from being in project mode, which is launch the thing, to operational mode, which is sustain, build, evolve, grow, develop the thing as your company evolves and grows. And I think what you're saying is, you know, that change is coming even if they don't. Like, you've seen that, like, people get excited when something launches, then they kind of go back to work, and that the long work is to kind of like build adoption over time to make it the new normal. Yes. Right. Is that the same— back to the premise of the article— are the same people who help you in the build the thing, launch the thing, the right people to be in the sustain, evolve, grow, adopt the thing?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I've seen it go both ways. Most of the time they're the same people and the skill sets of like being empathetic and listening and, you know, leading change and, you know, understanding how the firm ticks translate really well. But in some cases they don't. There's some— I've worked with some you know, PMs who have been really great at getting this live, but then like, frankly, they, they either want to go onto the next project, like the next new thing and get it through that process, or they might want to go back to like their, I don't know, their day job. Like I've, right. I've been thinking of a, an architect we worked with who was wonderful. Like he led this project really well. But at the end he was like, I, I'd like to hand this back off to someone because I'm an architect and this wasn't a career move for me. This was a service to the firm and I've completed my service and now I want to go back to my job.

That makes sense. You kind of maybe as a pure project person, you have maybe a different metabolism that's different than, than someone who wants to stay with something and maintain and support it.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That is really interesting perspective because it brings up a question for me of like when we're looking for this implementation PM champion, should we be prioritizing more people who have the passion, interest, the personality to nurture and grow something versus people who are more of a project-based type person? And I will have to think more about that.

Yeah, I'm kind of like, or can you find a way to continue to add new projects, like new challenges that are project-oriented to the internet? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah. It's like, yes.

Yes, that is. And I think that's a really healthy way to, to think about it, but it's also not quite true because like we have the project of getting this up and running and now it is a program that needs to be managed. It's a portfolio of opportunities and projects that need to be managed and resourced, which gets back to that like prioritization and nurturing, which is just a different way of working and thinking than project management, right?

So you open a library on a campus, you can't not staff it and make sure that people can check out books because now you're on to the next building on campus. You have to— you can do new things, but you have to still resource. Yeah, gotcha.

Yeah.

So you've been doing this for over 15 years with us. Thank you for your service. How has your thinking changed? Like if you had gotten that question from a potential client 15 years ago or 14 years ago, and said like, what will make us great? Who should we put in this job? Like, you look like you might be in pain thinking about that. You don't know? Yeah.

Like, so I'm literally trying to imagine myself like sitting in an old— an apartment I lived in 10 years ago and talking to the new team and like, how would I have answered that? And I don't know. What I do know is I don't think I understood how much this is change management. We've talked about change management, change leadership so much in this conversation, we used to say that synthesis can be a Trojan horse for change. Like, you buy synthesis, you know, leadership, a CEO buys synthesis because they want to achieve some sort of organizational change, and we're just going to make it happen. We're going to sneak the change in. And I think what's different now is I might— clearly we've talked about change management a lot. I'm not sneaking anything about the fact that we're doing real organizational change here. That is very transparent. We're talking about it from the beginning. We're setting a strategy on what we're changing. We're doing stakeholder identification and success metrics, and we're following up on those. It's just so much more visible. And I think that's what's really changed for me in this time. And thinking about who stays to staff the team is understanding that's such a huge part of their role leading change.

So do you think that's changed because— how do I want to phrase this— because the culture has changed, because the surface area of the product has changed? Because we just didn't know what we should have known back then. And if we just said, started this way, it would have been really helpful for us.

Yeah.

You know, to kind of really emphasize getting change agents on your team.

Mm-hmm. I'm thinking back to some of the early, early teams, and I think I just didn't know it.

Mm-hmm.

From the beginning of our journey, we've looked for clients who have done something other clients would want to learn from. And tried to let them tell their story to build knowledge. And I'm so glad we did that because I think that's how we discovered this, was putting implementation teams and implementations on stage that had been really successful. And hearing them tell their story helped us realize that part of what made them so effective is that they were leading change seriously. It might have been accidentally, but they were doing it. And it was because they were just— that, that was in the DNA of the leader, right? It was a marketing leader who just knew that in order to be effective— think of Amy Aponte.

Yeah, Amy Aponte. Shout out Amy. Or I was thinking Pat and Kathy from Meet and Hunt.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think their K Connect talk was like, change is the new black. So they like, they even named it in their presentation, right? Is just a thoughtful—

yeah. So like, you hear your clients tell you enough that what they're doing is change and you take that in.

Yeah, I guess it's kind of like we got really lucky having people that intuitively understood it. But now that we've named it, having now known this and being able to tell people, when you've kind of surfaced that as a really important component to building out that implementation team, has that helped them connect the dots on who the right people would be?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think it has. I, you know, I published this a couple months ago, but I was writing it and I shared some early drafts with these two firms that kind of inspired it. And one of them has like picked a really wonderful pair of people who represent the two sides, the operations side and the practice side, and they're displaying all the behaviors. And then the other is being really thoughtful about who they pick and they haven't picked their team yet, but that's because they're like taking this so seriously. So yeah, I do think that naming it helps people. You know, our clients, they come to us because they want these big outcomes and they're smart leaders. And I think they like intuitively know that the people that they put in the position of making all these little decisions along the way are going to have an impact on the kind of outcome they get.

Mm-hmm. We've talked a lot about the implementation PM, which I think is really important. There is another very, very important role which we have lightly touched on but not really gotten into, which is the executive sponsor. And I don't want to get into a whole thing around what makes for a great executive sponsor, but the thing I do want to explore is the relationship between the implementation PM and the executive sponsor and where there are things that only the executive sponsor can do. Even if you have the best implementation PM in the world, what's their ceiling and how do they complement each other? Yeah, just kind of cure the edges between those things. Yeah. And maybe start with like, what's an executive—

Sponsor? Yes. Great. So the executive sponsor is part of the core team. They're part of like the structural team that is making this intranet project a success. And then after, when it's into its program phase and we're managing a portfolio of possible improvements and behavior changes, they're part of the core team that's helping prioritize which ones we're going to go after and resource and what's actually going to move the needle for the firm. A really good executive sponsor isn't in every meeting, but they stop in every once in a while because they're interested. I tell them they don't have to be there and they're like, but I just want to know what's going on. You know, that's always nice. So like ask them a couple of things. They can leave their fingerprints on a few ideas. But what they're really there for is winning hearts and minds of the leadership team.

They're like kind of the conduit between the intranet team and the leadership team.

Yeah. And speaking of written and unwritten strategy, there's the formal and informal leadership team, right? So the executive sponsor gets that. Like, they know who needs to be influenced and they know whose networks touch which employees. And, you know, the champion might know some of that too, but they probably don't have the influence and access to that full leadership network that the executive sponsor has. So the executive sponsor's job is to like work that network as the champion is, you know, developing content that will be part of rollout. For example, frequently the executive sponsor will share that, share like pieces of that. Again, right information to the right person at the right time. They're not going to overwhelm the whole executive team with like a 15-minute how-to or anything, but they're going to, they're going to know how to have the conversations with those influential leaders to get them ready for what's coming and then also hear objections and think about them and then find ways to go back to individual leaders with ideas or just letting them know that you've heard their concerns. Right. And bring that executive team along.

So part of the implementation PM number one was it was like basically they know how to understand how the firm ticks. And so part of what that would— an implementation PM would know when to pull in their executive sponsor or not. Like, I need the board to— this thing is very important. I don't have the access or the reach or whatever it is, relationships to get that decision done.

Yes, I think you're right that like somebody who knows the firm tech will like be able to see that some of the time. But they also have blind spots because they're not in the room and they don't really understand what it means for the leadership to buy off because they don't know.

They've never been in the meeting. Right.

Exactly, exactly. They don't— they haven't seen the back, the, the way that things have happened in the past. So the executive sponsor does need to play an active role in knowing what's happening enough with the project that they can figure out when they can elevate it and how to navigate the executive team.

Okay, so these two conversations you had with the prospective clients, and they asked you how we're going to be great, and you thought about the implementation PM thing. Did you also give them advice on the executive sponsor to?

I did.

You did? Okay. And what did you tell them?

What did I tell them? Well, in one case, the person I was talking with is the executive sponsor. I know it, right? You did.

Did they know it? Is that one of those? Because I've had this situation where, like, I know it's going to be you. I don't know. You know?

Yeah. Well, I don't know if they knew it, but I shared with them that I thought it was probably them and that this was why, you know, they see how this work is going to impact the firm strategy. Right. And that they have a seat at the table to influence others who are in leadership roles. And they understand that just them seeing it is not going to— I think I helped them understand maybe this conversation that them seeing it was not enough to change the firm. Right. They would have to do some work. Someone was going to have to do some work to help everyone else understand. And like, that was probably them. And they were like, yeah, that is probably me. Okay. Okay. Now I have a name for it. I'm the executive sponsor. All right, cool. And then the other one, I think I just, I've described for them multiple times what an executive sponsor looks like and acts like. And I think they're still navigating, just like they're still navigating who exactly they want to staff the project with. I think they're still navigating who exactly is going to take that role again, because they're thinking about it really seriously. They want to do it right and they want that person to, you know, they don't need to be hands-on, but they need to like track the project and figuring out what executive team member both has the vision and has the ability to track the project, I think is the tricky bit. Again, thinking about focus and having some time to lead, right? For the executive sponsor, there's not a ton of time. But those people are swamped, like they're responsible for business development or a whole team. They already have a lot on their plate.

Would you— I feel like this sounds like a leading question, but I don't mean it to be like— so you're the client number 2 or prospective client number 2. You're having this conversation with them. Like, it could be X, it could be Y, maybe it's Z, maybe it's me. I don't know. We'll see.

Maybe it's all 4 of us.

Maybe it's all 4. Whatever it is, if they can't figure that out, was your advice to be like, don't start? Or like, what happens if they do? Should they just wait 3 months or 6 months or a year until it's clear that like someone's raising their hand and like, I'll take us up the mountain? What's your thought on that?

Yeah, good question. I would say just get started and the right person generally emerges.

Interesting.

Sometimes the same with a champion. Like if there's a few people that they think might be the right person, like let's bring them all into the strategy session, I feel like we'll probably figure this out within 2 weeks of like who's— who actually has the interest, the passion. Part of what happens in this, in the very early stage of the process, the project, is everyone understanding what this project is going to be. I mean, I think it's not unlike designing a building where you have a bunch of stakeholders. I guess we want this building, but only when they start working with the architect and the engineering team Do they understand the kinds of decisions that need to be made and how exciting that is and how powerful that is, or how much they do not want to be in that room?

I mean, yeah, yeah, but like 24-year-old Susan Strom would have wanted to be in that room leading that project.

Oh yeah, 100%. Yes.

Cool. So I want to ask you finally, kind of just kind of community, like it's something we've invested in a lot. We meaning Knowledge Architecture, but we also meaning just you and me, uh, personally over the years. How does the KA community factor into implementations or kind of that period after implementation where you're building adoption? Talk to us about that. I guess also like, again, back to those two people you were talking to, like, do you bring community into the discussion with them? Also.

Yeah. Yes, the K community is a very special group of people who share very openly about their experiences working through the kinds of changes that we're talking about with one another and ask follow-up questions with empathy and interest. So it is a rich community to learn from once a firm is done with implementation, like they finish the project, they hopefully start connecting up with that group. And actually, frankly, this is the, the tacit knowledge of my job. One of the pieces of tacit knowledge of my job is I want to introduce the implementation PM and the executive sponsor to the community through the implementation process, but I also don't want to overwhelm them.

Right.

So I will wait for like the right moment.

You're treating them with care.

Exactly. Yeah, I'm onboarding them with care. Well, we're having a virtual roundtable and I think a topic might just fit squarely within their interest zone. You know, I'll invite them to that so they can just see who's here, right? What does this community look like? And maybe have a couple of conversations that stick with them.

Should affirm and implementation come to K Connect, to our annual conference, or do you think it's better if they come later?

I mean, I think they should come during implementation, before implementation, after implementation. I feel like K Connect is supportive at any time. I think the, like the tighter KA community that is client-specific only where it's, you know, the virtual roundtables, like you need to be in implementation or after to, I think, fully be able to engage there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So final question for you. 15 years in, we hope everybody listening to this hopes there's another 15 years of Susan Strom at Knowledge Architecture. Where were your hopes and dreams for where we'll take, you know, whether it's implementation or supporting people afterwards or helping them just kind of go to the next level as learning organizations? Like, what are, what are you thinking about, about raising your game and then the game of all of our clients collectively?

Yeah. Since we moved to the new platform, my focus had been on trying to make as much of what we know about how you move through the project visible to our clients so that we're not the bottleneck. Like we're here as coaches, but they don't have to wait for me to say, well, the next thing is we should talk to your marketing team about their project data, right? I've been trying to surface that. And I think what I'm thinking about now is how can we surface that like level of detailed, this is how you do it for the things that happen in year 2 and in year 3 for an organization. The stuff that happens after launch. I don't want to like spin up a bunch of projects for firms that like, oh, you've launched, now you have to start project 2. But I think with LMS, you know, all of our clients are already live with intranet, are going to— they won't all want to implement LMS, but many of them will be. It's like, yeah, how do we coach them through that and take the things that we're learning and just make it available while still creating a lot of partnerships that they're not in a position where they feel like they have to go at it alone.

Yeah. So you, to name it for people that don't know, like you've revamped our onboarding platform, you've brought in a piece of technology that makes it so they can go as self-serve or self-directed as they want. And the kind of the next steps are very, you know, there's videos and there's all kinds of stuff. And, and I think what I'm hearing you say is like, okay, great. So that's been optimized to get you to launch. But like there's all these other moments that are going to happen in your journey in those 2 or 3 years that we know are coming, can we try and make those kind of come to you automatically or be self-directed or codified a little bit more? Is that kind of where your head is?

Yes. Yeah, I think that's right. And part of what I want to— what I would love to codify even more are the strategy parts of it. I think LMS is a really interesting one, and AI search also has been a really interesting one. When it comes to strategy.

Mm-hmm.

For some firms, they'll be able to turn on AI search and like just go at it. But for other firms, having a clear outcome, it's like we want people to use AI search to like start to answer project questions so that we can deliver project advice that is more tailored and is based on our actual experience. We want to get our employees to do that. We're going to do that by really teaching them how to use AI search really effectively. Like, that's a, that's another level. And that's where you get into like strategy and change management, not just turning something on. Right. Again, for the implementation, like obviously it's a lot about strategy and change management and like we know how to do it. But for these other pieces of technology or these other goals, like having the strategic advice kind of boiled down for firms to be able to work with. Mm-hmm. Would— I would be very proud to have that.

Yeah, I agree. I think that sounds really helpful. I mean, in some ways we're trying to do— I think you're kind of— it's almost like you've built a 100-level series on how to build synthesis well.

Mm-hmm.

And I think we're looking towards what would a 200-level series be, or maybe a 300-level series, and how could we scale what we've learned I mean, ultimately I said this would be a knowledge management discussion about knowledge management, right? In some ways. And yes, I think that's kind of where— here we are again. But good. Well, Susan, thank you for making time to hang out with me and talk about this stuff.

Yeah, thanks for inviting me on. I love this work. It's such a specific thing that we do with implementations and synthesis and intranets and AEC. That getting to explore it in conversation is a real treat. And I hope that others find it useful.

Me too. All right. And if you did, let us know. Send us your ideas. If you've got other things you'd like to hear about from Susan, from people that have known Susan, please do. Cool. Thanks, y'all.

Bye.

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