Why It’s Critical to Adopt Learning Technology That Fits the Culture of Your AEC Firm

Yeah, there's something, Jim, in what you're saying around that, you know, for full disclosure to the audience. Shepley is in our private beta for synthesis lms. So one of the things that has been true throughout that process is that it's been very little about the technology. It's been more around kind of philosophy, culture, norms, you know, like, how, how are we going to do this? And to like overly simplify the universe, there's kind of like knowledge sharing on one hand and like maybe knowledge transfer on the other hand. So the knowledge sharing is here's a lunch and learn or design tip or go watch the Healthcare 101 if you're interested. It's kind of like you can do it. Like the world doesn't fall apart if you don't. And then on the other hand, there's like, you're going to go out and do this field observation report, like, we need you to know our process or you're going to be a project manager. You need to understand these things about billing or these things about difficult conversations with clients, whatever the things are. And I think one thing that, not just at Shepley, but I think you can speak to it a little bit, is I think you guys said the thing in our last meeting which was, you know, knowledge management is for the people, by the people. You know, at Shepley, we don't, we don't tell people they can't share anything. You know, there's not like a lot of guardrails there. But when it gets to knowledge transfer, there's perhaps a little different, a different kind of set of rules like this. Actually, no, we don't want to have it be like the Wild west when it comes to teaching them how to do this thing. And I'm wondering just kind of your two thoughts on that. Kind of like what it means to start doing assignments or start having it be a little bit more directed versus just we're a learning organization and people should consume what they're interested in.

Yeah, we've looked at learning management systems in the past and when we see one that doesn't match our culture, we kind of immediately back slowly away. Because I'm not interested in a learning management platform changing the culture of the firm. That is not the reason to change the culture of the firm so that you can adopt a learning management platform. So, yeah, so we're in an interesting situation because, you know, we went on, we went on to synthesis the Internet platform, you know, 11 years ago at this point, and we had the benefit of A bunch of other people getting onto the platform before us and knowledge architecture helping us understand what the platform could and should look like. So we knew what good looked like and we were able to understand how we would take that and turn it into something that would be a force of positive change for the firm. This time around, we are in the private beta and I think we are all a little bit trying to figure out together, you know, what the learning management system actually is going to be. So we don't have the added benefit of knowing what it looks like when it's finished. So it's much more difficult for us to figure out, well, how are we going to actually use this tool in order to be a positive force for change in the firm? Fortunately, it's, it's looking like it's going to be absolutely that, but we kind of have to wait for it to be finished before we're going to know how we would go about integrating it with the rest of the firm.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, LMS systems have been around for 30 years, but so many of the conventions that are built in come from like a high school or point of view of very punitive, or you're going to get X grades or you turn in your homework this time, like, it's very, I don't know, it's just like the vibes aren't great. Yeah, I think that's what Ken, you're getting at. And so we're like, how do we describe, how do we design a system for high trust organizations that are full of professionals who very much are motivated to want to learn, but then also sometimes they have to learn something. But how do we just. You don't want to turn that dial up too high where it feels like it's. You're just getting your hand slapped all the time. And so we've been erring on the side of not doing that kind of. But. But I agree with you. I think we can do all the design conversations with our clients as we want. We go build the software, but until people start using it, like, that's exactly what you're describing, is we're in that now. It's like, so we had hypotheses, like, how do we not do that? But I think it's. That's on the tech side. But then I think you guys maybe had hypotheses around, like, well, what does it mean to have a learning path with assignments and somebody has to complete it over a certain time? Like, what happens when they don't? Right. You Know, like, what does that mean?

That's an excellent question, Chris.

Right, exactly.

He's going to leave it. He's going to leave it right there.

No, no, no. I mean, Rilke has. The poet has this thing about living the questions. And I feel like that's the era we'. We're just trying to accumulate as many of the right questions to ask as we can without having to try and answer them all on day one, because they're, they're unanswerable if you want to do it. Right.

And I'll just want to throw in that, like, the, the whole, like, the communication side of this equation is huge. And, and traditionally the IT department is deploy and then put out fires. Right. Like, this is how we have lived for a long time. And it's not proactive communication around the intentions and like, what are the, the values of why we're doing this? And so I'm just curious from your point of view. I mean, that seems to me to be an integral part to effective rollouts, especially with things like this that are a little bit like people are wondering, what are they doing? Why are they tracking? I mean, there's. There's other parallels, especially in the technology side of things, with analytics and tracking what people are doing in the software for good and various reasons. Right. So I'm just, I'm curious, from your point, where do you guys stand on the communication side? How are you handling that?

We have a pretty robust process that Jess has been filling out for the last couple of years for, you know, rolling out technology change over time. And it includes multiple phases, alpha beta and then just early adopters and getting them to tell the stories, so we're not telling the stories and yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we have a pretty robust process for that. I think for me, the bigger issue is it's like, what is this technology going to do for the processes of the firm and for the culture of the firm? And that's where it's like, I have zero interest in gamification of learning management. That feels gross. And that would feel gross.

Like leaderboards and that kind of thing.

Yes, yes. So there are certain things that if they were options in our tools, we would simply turn them off or not use the tool. I do not have any interest in making people think that because they didn't watch 57% of this video, that it doesn't count. Right. Again, it's like there are things that we could do that would be really helpful from a statistics point of view that would be really detrimental to the culture. So I don't want any of the tools that we build to detract from the culture of the firm that we have spent so much time building and curating, because it's just way harder to build positive culture.

This makes me want to just point out how I think it sounds so important to have the continuity of someone like Jim Martin in a position that you're in as a tastemaker who understands the culture and understands the intentions of the firm and. And what those things are, because I think a lot of times people come into these positions and they just don't have that baseline to keep calling back to, to fully understand that. And so then it's. It's way less. Well, it's more difficult, I think, to. To make things stick because they're trying a lot more things because they're not having the tastemaker say, this absolutely doesn't fit the culture. So I. I mean that. I just thought it might be worth pointing that out, because this is something that ultimately is a deciding factor for so many things that you guys are deciding to pursue or not.

It is nice kind of having the history and being trusted in the organization in order to do that stuff, but it doesn't require 12 years of time at a firm in order to do it. It just requires a good process.