Setting up a world-class knowledge management system

Ryan Barry:

Hello everybody. Welcome to inside insights, podcast powered by Zappi. We are committed to bringing you tangible insights and tips that you can bring back to work the next day to help you navigate your consumer and your company better. I'm joined as always by my friend and cohost Patricia Montesdeoca. Hey, Patricia. How are ya?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

I'm doing pretty good. How are you?

Ryan:

I'm good. You know, Patricia, I figured that you've only been in Boston a few years, but you're dropping a few "How are ya's" nowadays.

Patricia:

"How are ya" is an important thing.

Ryan:

I dig it. So for those of you who haven't visited Boston yet, we're recording this interview today that president Biden announced we're all going to have vaccines by the 1st of May. I hope he's right. Because I'm sick of being stuck here. So when you come and visit Boston, make sure you come in the summer. It's beautiful here in the summer. And when you're walking around the streets and someone goes "How are ya?" you don't answer with anything other than "How are ya?" They don't actually want to know how you're doing. They just want you to say "How are ya?" back.

Patricia:

I always say good though, because I'm Latina. So of course I have to say something. 

Ryan:

Just to greet them back. Exactly.

Patricia:

I'm mixing, like cultural mix.

Ryan:

It's a beautiful thing. So today we're actually talking to somebody who's not from Boston. We're talking to somebody who's one of the most New York people I've ever met.

Patricia: 

Oh my god.

Ryan:

There's not many more New Yorkers than Frank. So I'm really excited for this conversation. You've known Frank a lot longer than I have.

Patricia:

I met Frank in December 2000.

Ryan:

Wow.

Patricia:

We've been friends since. I mean, we hit it off immediately and he's not only a new Yorker. He's a Latino. So it's like the most amazing combination ever.

Ryan:

Ever. So Frank has set up and now manages and continuously innovates knowledge management at Colgate-Palmolive. He sits on the global insights team. I think I met a lot of people who are working on trying to solve knowledge management problems. I've only met one who's figured them out, and that's Frank. Colgate’s set up for knowledge management is genuinely world-class and industry leading. And so Patricia and I wanted to talk to Frank because I know many of you are thinking about how to do this. And so we wanted to give you some advice from the master himself. So Patricia, should we get into it with Mr. Frank?

Patricia:

Let's go for it.

Ryan:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast designed to help you bring change to your workplace. Today I'm joined by my friend, knowledge management industry legend, and New York Yankees fan, Frank Santiago of Colgate-Palmolive. Hey, Frank.

Frank Santiago:

Thank you, Ryan.

Ryan:

So we're recording this interview four days after the Super Bowl. It will probably ship sometime in March. But where does Tom Brady rank on the greatest athletes of all time is the question Frank and I have been discussing. We'd love to know what you think.

We're actually not here to talk about Tom Brady, despite the fact that I was very happy that he won. We're here to talk about knowledge management, and Frank, when I think of knowledge management, there's very few people I think of that have had more success, more innovation, and more tenure in the space than you, and so this podcast for me is all about giving people that work in insights departments at big, small, medium-size organizations, tangible tips to help themselves improve. Frank, before we get into the meat of the topic, how did you get yourself into a career focused on knowledge management? 

Frank:

Yeah, it's so funny because people ask this all the time. I think originally I started as almost like a research librarian. And if you think about the old days where you went into a library and if you couldn't find books on the topic you wanted, you went to the librarian and he or she would work with you and help you, and even some of the fancy libraries had multiple librarians. I think when I started at Colgate, that wasn't what I was setting out to do.

I just came to Colgate to help organize knowledge at the time, organize a place where we could keep a certain amount of learning. Over the years it catapulted and what started in one little set of cubicles got bigger and bigger and bigger, and filing cabinets, and then we went to scanning, and then we went to cloud computing, and the world is just... It's one of those things where it's just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, right? It's old school, but a lot of people still get it wrong, you know what I'm saying?

Ryan:

Yeah, you're right. And it's funny that it's old school when a lot of people still get it wrong when all that's actually happened is the amount of data and information that businesses have is what, thousand X in the last five years, 10 years? I mean, maybe more than that. But you could argue there's more lost information in some companies than actual usable information.

Frank:

And speaking for a company like Colgate and a lot of companies that are Fortune 500 companies, the biggest thing I hear, and it doesn't matter who I talk to, it could be a competitor, it could be non-competitor, it could be any big major company, "Oh, we don't have enough information.” The problem is they have too much information. They just can't get to the information that they need to answer those questions. So if they tell you they don't have enough information, generally speaking, they have it. They just can't find it.

Ryan:

This is actually a question I wanted to ask you because we were talking... Frank and I are buds. We talk from time to time. We were talking about how even Zappi would benefit from knowledge management. We're a 220 person software company. So Frank, from your perspective, what's the signal in a business that says, "You know what, we've got an opportunity to organize our knowledge and integrate knowledge management." What's the right time to get it started, and what are some of the signals?

Frank:

Yeah, I think two things. One, when companies are struggling to be more innovative or they're struggling to build new products. A lot of times they just keep doing research, keep doing research, keep going to research, and a lot of times they don't understand that they probably have done so much research in certain ideas, but they can't get it. So I think that's one area where that becomes an issue. Like, how do we know what we should know? And how do we find out the things that we don't even know we know? And I think that's number one.

Number two, I think a lot of times there's pressure where one company may have a knowledge management strategy or one company may be very organized at capturing curation of knowledge better than most. I think that brings a little rivalry that comes like, "Hey, you know what? I want to do what Pepsi's doing. I want to do what Colgate's doing. And I think that's what kind of sparks it. But for the smaller companies, it's about if you can organize information and get a grip on what you have, that's your biggest asset, right? It's everything that you are as a company is your own assets, so it's your information, your people and your products.

Ryan:

I love it. I love it. I mean, it's actually very timely for me even to do this conversation with you because we're literally kicking off... We're calling it discoverability, but it's the same dynamic, where we know there's stuff we have we know but we can't access, and we know there's known unknowns, and it's, you're leaving money on the table as a company. All right, so Frank, you started as a librarian. I think you probably have one of the most advanced instances of knowledge management in a massive global organization today, but you've been on a journey, right?

So take us through some of the mistakes that you've made along your way and how you would recommend other people would address them. Because what's interesting to me is as big of a problem as knowledge management is... Let's say I talked to 10 brands, Frank, seven of them are at the beginning of their journey on this topic and of those seven, five of them have done it and it completely failed and now they're back at ground zero again. Let's reflect a little bit on what you've learned.

Frank:

As much as I've learned and know a lot about this area, there's a lot of things that I don't know. There's always going to be something I can learn. There's always something I can do better. I think the biggest drawback for me was in the past thinking that I can do this on my own and get it right alone. A lot of times you get frustrated. You want to deliver, you want to basically earn your take in a company, so I think early in my career you know I tried to be so perfect about doing it, and the problem is you got to give it a shot, and you got to scale it out, and make mistakes because making mistakes is healthy, right? As long as it doesn't cost the company millions of dollars. But I think I tried to be too perfect early in my career, number one. 

Number two, I listen to my insights people to the commercial team members. But a lot of times what people tell you they want, and when you build something and deliver it to them, they go, "Oh, that's not what I want." And I go, "Well, that's what you said." And I think in the past I used to just take what they told me to do. When now, I stand back a little bit. I'm like, "Well, why do you want that? What's your process? What are the things that you're doing across regions that are the same?"

I ask them questions that they're like, "Why is he asking me this?" Why? Because that helps me better understand if what they're looking for I can give them, or it helps me get them a better product or a better process to analyze their knowledge. I didn't just dive into that early in my career. That took time that came with experience.

Ryan:

Yeah, that's a muscle I think everybody, regardless of what they do, should develop. Like if you take someone's surface-level answer, you'll get a very different outcome than if you ask them why five times, because you get to the actual root cause of the problem. I love that. And also just like controlling failure, right? 

So let's just say for a second you didn't have a system, which I know you do. What are some of the things, Frank, that you'd recommend people look for, or perhaps advice on the process of going about selecting a system for them?

Frank:

Great question, and I wish more people would ask me this question. I think the first thing I will do is get your house in order, okay? So you want a system. For what? I want to know, do you do research? Is it traditional research where a supplier generates a report and gives you a report? Or are you a shop that does all agile research, like Zappi, Toluna, Black Swan? Or you don't really do a lot of research, but you rely on secondary sources.

To me, you have to understand what they are using now. How do they make decisions? What information are they buying? Because once you understand everything that they have in their arsenal, then you can say, "Okay, how much of this are you actually using?" But if you don't know what you have, if you don't know a process on how you ask the questions, and you don't even know what you spend on what you have now, a new system is not going to solve your problems.

Ryan:

No, it's not. It is funny, and I see this, big businesses, small businesses, and it plagues us some chief growth officer reads an article and says knowledge management, all of a sudden it ends up on a head of insights' lap, or some chief growth officer has an engagement with McKinsey and is like, "We need to become agile,” and then the insights team is like, "Awesome. We'll just go buy a bunch of software." I could complain about that for a while, but let's be positive today.

So Frank, that process, audit what you know, understand how people use things. Who are some of the key players that you partner with in the organization? Because I imagine it's a cross-functional job. And what are some of the ways you go about getting that information? Because in big companies, it is also very matrixed, and so it's not easy to get that connectivity, so what are some of the things that you would recommend to people to actually do that.

Frank:

I think if you're in a bigger organization, you start with insights, analytics, and R&D, in a big company. But in companies where the insights function is smaller, you got to start with commercial team members. And when I say commercial team, I mean, get some buy-in from marketing, get some buy-in from CDO, get some buy-in from CIC, or you have those quasi retail cross functional people that wear multiple hats, get those get some senior people to tell you where they're struggling to get their business questions answered.

Because once you understand how they're struggling to get answers, then it's easy because you know that if you can give them the information in a way that helps them answer those questions, they're going to use the system. But if you don't understand what they're looking for, they're never going to use the information. They're just going to keep testing, or they're going to go to one person who's going to go to eight people to get an answer. They're going to put together this huge PowerPoint and give it to Ryan, and Ryan has to read a hundred slide presentation when you really only need three or four key slides.

Ryan:

Good point. Okay, so buy-in from the top, deep discovery of what you've got, now you know all this information. And so in your experience, is it a build or buy decision or is your experience that, you know what, there's just such great options on the market that you're better off using some of those capabilities?

Frank:

Look, I've done it both ways? We've done home grown, we built our own, we did a combination build/buy, and then now I'm in a situation where we use a regular state-of-the-art application through Market Logic. But I think the issue is that things that are off the shelf that are enterprise wide that give you the ability to expand, that's the way you want to go. Because even some of these big knowledge systems, you don't have to start big. So one of the things that we did over time is we did one module, we did a proof of concept and we added on. We used it for about a year. We tweaked it, we massaged it, we built in our process. Because look, anybody can spend a million dollars on one of these systems.

The problem is you don't need that out of the gate. 

Ryan:

Right.

Frank:

Sometimes it's better. Do a proof of concept. Buy the module that you need the most at that time. Maybe you need a module just to collect information, sort it and make it searchable. Maybe you need a module to do your budgets, and approve your research spend, and work with your suppliers. Maybe you need a module that does both, but analyze what you need because if you take too much on... not every company has a dedicated knowledge management person, so what ends up happening in most companies is the role that I play, a piece of it goes to GIT, a piece of it goes to marketing, a piece of it goes to insights, and it's just like 5% of everybody's job. 

I consider myself to be like a ringleader of the big show, right? I'm not the main event. I'm not the star, but I'm the ringleader that makes it all happen. People don't like when I say that because they think I'm saying don't buy big. No, I'm just saying why buy big and it's just going to sit there? Because at the end of the day, I don't care who you work for. You spend money on a knowledge management system, the first thing they're going to say is, "Who's using it? Are we getting money back? Are we getting ROI? Is this system paying for itself?" If you can't answer those questions, you're back to square one.

Ryan:

You're spot on, man. 

Frank:

And now they won't give you money to do it again.

Ryan:

Now you've lost credibility, right? You've spent money. You haven't driven adoption. There's two things that I really liked about what you said. The first is supplemental or incremental wins first.

Frank:

Yep.

Ryan:

And I think too often we try to boil the ocean of big problems in business. If you're like, let me take all sales data, all social data, all survey data, all syndicated data. Day one, I'm going to turn it all on. I mean, good luck. I know Pepsi's just gone through this journey and a lot of their journey was like let me first get my Zappi data in. Now, let me get my Kantar data. Sort of going down that path, and I think that's really important. But the other thing that you say I want to unpack a little bit.

So Colgate-Palmolive, one of the biggest companies in the world, has obviously identified the importance of your role to the degree where it's a full-time role. In many organizations it's not yet, particularly the midsize companies. But what strikes me about your success is clear ownership of the problem in a world where everybody's only got 5% stake in the game.

Frank:

Exactly.

Ryan:

Have you seen, I don't know, from other peers of yours, what about an insights department that's sitting here listening to this interview being like, "I don't have a Frank, and they're not going to give me one yet." How would you solve that problem in a world where, you have this meeting with me about knowledge management, but you also got to go to a tracker meeting after this and then go to some stakeholder interview.

Frank:

Yeah. I just went through this with somebody in insights at a peer company. A lot of times I hear, well, Colgate is fortunate to have me, and they are, but I'm fortunate to have Colgate because they let me do my job. I have to be held accountable. I have to earn my take, but they let me do my job. And by letting me do my job, we've become a better place to manage knowledge. What bothers me though is that even though there isn't my role in every company, but there's so many resources that are used in the knowledge management area that when you look at two or three head counts in IT, two or three headcounts in insights that are helping out, two or three administrative assistants, two or three consultants, it triples my resource at Colgate. It's just that they don't look at it that way because they're spending the money. So I just want to tell you that, because that happens a lot. Number two-

Ryan:

Of course.

Frank:

I think what happens for those people that don't have a knowledge expert I think it goes back to simplification. What is it that you're responsible for? What is the data that you own? What is the data that you manage? Number one. Number two, what are the kinds of questions you get from all of your commercial team members on a regular basis? I bet you if you talk to a hundred insights people, the basic answer is going to be, "I need a concept. I need a report. I want to know how this idea tested," because that's what they do. They just constantly go to insights people.

But when you build a knowledge strategy and you teach people to look for things for themselves in an organized fashion, a lot of those things they can get on their own, and those insights people now can free up their time to dedicate a little bit more to knowledge management and maybe to like ethnography, foundational research, where now they're just so bombarded with so many things they have to pick and choose what's more important. 

Ryan:

Sorry. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying because I think it's really cool. So if you get to a place where you set your knowledge management system up right, are you then recommending democratize it to people so that way insights isn't actually that intermediary point, and you're like, "No, no, I've set this up for you. You go find your idea. Here's how." Is that what you're recommending?

Frank:

You don't have to cut that relationship between insights and marketing, but you can say, "You know what, every time someone asks me for a questionnaire or a concept that I know was tested, I'm going to send that individual to this link.” That'll take them to the knowledge management system. If everyone did that, you'd be shocked at the domino effect of how the industry would change.

Ryan:

Yeah, you're right. To your point of not ruining that relationship, it means that they can talk about stuff that's actually strategic.

Frank:

Yeah, and most people, believe it or not, despite what you may hear out in the open, a lot of people like doing things for themselves, especially now during COVID where we're all home, we're all overwhelmed with juggling personal life. If you got to wait for somebody to get you something and you're like, "Damn, what's taking them so long?" You're stressing out, right? But if I sent you a link and I gave you something and I said, "Oh Ryan, by the way, I thought these things were interesting too." You know what? I just got you started.

Ryan:

Yes, that's right.

Frank:

Right? So that's what I try to tell insights people. Organize what you can control, organize what your company owns if it's relevant, and send people for some of the basic stuff there. Little by little, you will change, you will actually open up that change management. It's not going to happen overnight. And most people that are outside of marketing are probably going to be quicker to adopt because R&D people, CDO people are the kind of people that always roll up their sleeves and dig in stuff. Because insights people historically are part of marketing teams. CDO, R&D, CIC, they don't always have unlimited insights people in front of them. But at the end of the day, they're not always at your disposal. But I bet you one of your marketing people that works closely with them always has them on their fingertips. That's the point that I'm making.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's a good point. And your point about the change since COVID I think is actually worth talking about for a minute, Frank. People's lives have completely had to integrate, and so I've been on this, I would say it's a tangent, about when we use synchronous versus asynchronous communication. And to me, the cost of getting someone from China, someone from Germany, someone from Boston, someone from Portland, Oregon on the phone together to be talked at, or given information is just not worth it. People want information when they need it. Then they got to go deal with their kids, clean the house, whatever. Think about it. Let's not meet to present, let's share information, and then when we meet we've all actually formed an opinion about it and we can actually have a discussion about what do we do with it. And I think this is a big theme in business, Frank, because we're not all in the office. Teams are distributed.

Frank:

So we started about a year ago where everybody got sent home. We've been working home. Go back two years ago. Whenever people order takeout, what was it? Chinese food, pizza, sandwiches, wings, whatever. Basic comfort food. Now, a year later, people are ordering from the finest restaurants in the entire world and getting that high class great meal delivered to their home, whether it's by Uber Eats, the restaurant themselves, some kind of monthly subscription. But if I would have told you two years ago that we were going in that direction, "Oh no, Frank. You're crazy. I want to go to these fancy restaurants. I want to enjoy, etc." I'm just saying things will change. Sometimes it takes a really bad pandemic or really negative experience to get there, but you know what? Things can change. And sometimes despite the negativity or the suffering, you can come out on top.

Ryan:

Yeah. And the businesses that harness that I think are winning right now. All right. So Frank, we now have done some discovery. We've got some stakeholder buy-in. We know what we don't know. We know how we would use it. Fictitious example. We've now got to go present to the chief growth officer to get a million bucks. You only want 300, but you want approval for the full million because you're going to supplement. Name for me, from your perspective, three to four macro benefits that knowledge management brings to a company. 

Frank:

The first thing is I would come in there with proof by other C level people that bought into my idea so when I'm coming for money-

Ryan:

They're peers or the people on their team.

Frank:

Yeah, yeah. I would already have either their direct reports or a couple of their peers that already bought into my idea. I already took them through the idea, and now I'm coming for the money, right? That's the first thing. "Oh, by the way, I'm here and I already spoke to these people and they bought into this, and they support me coming to you," number one.

Number two, I would try to put together or frame an argument about this is what you're spending now on research, and this is what you're spending year in and year out over and over and over, but you're still struggling to answer your business questions. 

My third point is don't you want to have better control of all of the knowledge that you build in your company? And if you follow me on this journey and let me go this direction, this is the first step to doing that. I think those would be the three talk points I would have.

Ryan:

Your leaders need it. We're spending X, I'll bring it down to Y, and think of the possibilities of having institutional knowledge actually in a place that's successful.

Frank:

Correct, and going to the second point, because I got to be careful, when I say we're spending this and I'll bring the cost down, I don't want them to think I want to cut people's budgets, take money away. No. I want to take that savings so that when their budgets run out, now they have money to do other things.

I want to give them money to reinvest back into the business. And these systems, I can assure you they pay for themselves if they're managed properly.

Ryan:

All right, so the meeting goes well. You got the money, Frank. You got the money, my man. This is the part that I think most software fails. Rollout.

Frank:

Yep.

Ryan:

Give us some advice, Frank. What are some lessons, tips, best practices for... So now you've got the C-suite onside. You have a plan. How do you go from that day of I've now got a system to the people that are in insights, marketing, R&D use it and love it? In other words, how do you implement it?

Frank:

The first thing is you don't show the checkbook to the vendor. You don't want them to know what your overall budget is because if you go to a vendor and say, "I got a million dollars to spend," they're going to write you a proposal on a rollout plan to cover it.

Ryan:

A million bucks.

Frank:

What you do is you take a realistic approach. Every company is organized different, but are you organized by region? Are you organized by brand? Are you organized by category or overall business? I don't care which one you take, a brand or region or business. Take the one that you have the closest relationship and rollout with them first.

Ryan:

Smart.

Frank:

Because you learn, you roll out, you fix things, you get feedback. Now, I come to you and I go, "Hey, I just rolled out with Patty's team and we killed it, man. You want to go next?" "Yeah, I want in."

Ryan:

It's one of the best change management lessons right there.

Frank:

You have to do it. I know people think sometimes you're selling yourself short. You're not. By taking that step slow at the beginning you're going to go so fast later, man. I remember when I brought on my first couple of data sources. As secondary sources, took forever. Now, I mean, I can bring them on like nothing. If we have a secondary source and we have enterprise wide access to it, I can bring it on in a matter of two weeks, and everybody can get access to it because we own it, we pay for the service. But that didn't happen overnight. We just learn how to do things right.

Ryan:

So that point, I advise that point that you just made to every one of our clients because how rare is it that every single category, region, brand, executive team all opts into something in matrixed organizations. It never fricking happens.

Frank:

But you know what's funny, Ryan? The weird thing about this discussion we're having is some of these big companies they're doing this, right? So they have knowledge management company number one and one division. They rolled out a little app for that team. They have knowledge management company number two. They rolled out in this app. 

There's many companies out there that are using two or three or four knowledge management-type companies at the same time, but they're using them on a very small scale. But the problem is that each of those instances, no one's learning from each other. Why? Because they're competitors.

So even though the people in the company are not competitors, the solutions are competitors. You see the problem? It's easier to scale up slowly with the same company because you're not competing against another company. But it doesn't mean that my first rollout with my company that I'm using could have been easy. My second rollout could have been challenging. My third rollout could have been a piece of cake. My fourth rollout gave me problems because their requirement, they changed that at the last minute, and that happens. That's just the way the world is. Something could have changed. There could have been an acquisition. It happens all the time, an acquisition, and I got to bring in 30 users, they don't even know nothing about Colgate. So now not only do they know nothing about Colgate, but they don't know about knowledge management either. So now I got two problems, you know what I'm saying? I think that's something that I've observed, and I wish more people got it.

Ryan:

Yeah, and that's very tough to police because you're right. I know the companies you're talking about, we'll leave them out of this. But it's more often that big CPG, big telco, big QSR has multiple disconnected knowledge management systems than a coordinated strategy, and the truth is, Frank, it's because we have, for the necessity of global versus local, we've matrixed all the companies. So how do you police against that? 

Frank:

So years ago, I remember hearing, "Oh no, we do it different in our division than the other division." I actually asked, went and did an analysis of how each division does it. How do they budget? How do they do their research? How do they share their knowledge? Do you know that when I went to each division, put it on a piece of paper, the processes were exactly the same.

Ryan:

Of course they were.

Frank:

You know what the problem was? The order was different. Or something was not done. Something was just excluded. So I said, "Why don't we look at the one thing that every division does the same way, and let's pull that into this corner. What's the second thing that everybody does the same?" That's easy, right? So the first two things are easy. The third one gets hard because now everybody does it different, but guess what? What if you did it this way, would you still be able to do what you're trying to do? And then people look at you like, "Oh, okay. Okay." Like, I use Uber Eats because I'm an Uber guy and I have my points, but I use Grubhub because some of the restaurants on Grubhub are not on Uber Eats.

Ryan:

Right.

Frank:

You see my point?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Frank:

But you got to have a rationale as to why you're doing things two different ways.

Ryan:

I think this is something the insights industry holistically needs to understand. We're moving towards a world where technology can allow us to be impactful and strategic, but we have to be intentional about how we set it up otherwise it's just fast and cheap chaos.

Frank:

Yup.

Ryan:

Genuinely. I've seen it way too frequently. 

Frank:

And I think the biggest issue in my opinion that you're going to always hear is there's no system out there that can do it all. There's no system that's perfect. Because as soon as that system becomes perfect, another need pops up, so you don't want a system that's perfect. You want a system that continues to evolve the way companies evolve. And that's why in this space of knowledge management, there's only a few companies that get it right, in my opinion.

Ryan:

You're right because businesses are changing so fast. You have to be able to keep up. Frank, you've said it all. Anybody who wants to get at Frank he's on LinkedIn, unless you're trying to sell him something, then leave him alone because he's busy. No, I'm just kidding. You can try. Frank, you're a good man. You've been gracious with your advice and your time. I think a lot of people are going to leave this session a lot smarter thanks to you. So on their behalf, thank you, my friend.

Frank:

No, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Ryan:

Absolutely. 

Ryan:

I always love talking to Frank, Patricia. And this was a rare time where we didn't talk about the Yankees because, it's funny, Frank calls me a lot and wants to talk to me about sports. We don't actually talk about sports. We talk about his sports teams. So today we got to talk business. It was great. I thought Frank brought the heat.

Patricia:

Always brings the heat. Whether you're talking business or not. I mean, I usually don't talk to him about business. I usually talk to him about people we know and things and stuff like today, he just brought it, all of it.

Ryan:

Frankie brought the heat. So what were some of your key takeaways? If you're standing up knowledge management today, I imagine you'd be much better off having listened to this, but what were some of the themes that you took away and insights for people?

Patricia:

It was fun listening to him talk because since he and I worked together for so long, I lived some of that with him, but I took away five important things, tips of his, because he's just full of wisdom and he wants everybody to succeed. First one is make sure number one, make sure all of your stakeholders are super aligned on why knowledge management is necessary. He was very clear on making sure that everybody knew that the company's assets are their information, their products and their people. And if you don't take care of these, you're leaving money on the table. Right? He also said something that I thought was very deep. Most companies believe they don't have enough information, but all of them, and he used the word all. All of them have the information, they just can't find it. That's us too.

I bet you that's us too. Because you said...

Ryan:

100% us.

Patricia:

The second thing he said that was really important is chart the path for getting started, don't just get started, just chart the path, right? Audit the information first, all types of information, audit it and then determine what your scope and your reach is going to be so that you know who your end users are, the markets, the data, direction. But do that second. That's your second step. 

The third one, this is the money one. Make it sustainable. Now for all of you out there, that are like, "But what do you mean exactly? But make it sustainable? What am I supposed to do on Monday morning about make it sustainable?". Make sure it's easy to use, so nobody's going to say "That's too hard, I'm going to use my own." Make sure that you can afford it, not just today, but maintaining it for a long, long, if not forever. And make sure that it creates shareable value. It's really cool. Always start with a pilot. So I'm going to prove the concept, but make sure that it's not going to be a one flash in the pan, flavor of the month. That was really important to me.

Ryan:

I love it. Frank was working in agile ways before it was one of the biggest buzzwords that plagues our industry and he was just doing it.

Patricia:

Totally. He was cool before it was cool. Totally.

Ryan:

He was cool before it was cool.

Patricia:

Step four went close to my heart because you know very well that my role here at Zappi is all about onboarding and making sure everybody knows how to use all the toys. Right? He says that that's what number four is, make sure that everybody's onboarded and everybody knows how to use whatever it is that you're building. Because if you build it and don't tell anybody how to use it, they won't come. It will not be a field of dreams. Sports reference. I always have to have a sports reference.

Ryan:

It's true. If you build it and don't give them any value or teach them. They're not going to come. Sorry. Nobody actually wants it. 

Patricia:

So those were the four golden rules that he gave us. But then he said there are five mistakes that people make, please avoid these. He said one, don't think ever that it's once and done. It is a permanent commitment. It's a relationship. The second one, never ever try to do it by yourself. This is not a hero thing. This is get help. Get experts. Tell people to help you. Make sure it's a group thing. Number three, don't launch it all at once. Try something small and then build it. But make sure you fix some errors as you go. Number four, do not ever forget ever, ever, ever to get input from your stakeholders from the beginning. Because if not, they are never gonna buy in. And that's so important for change management. And number five, which is one of your favorites I think, choose evolution over perfection.

Ryan:

Yes. Well, the reason why it's one of my favorites is, in business with consumers and markets moving the way they do, you're never actually done. You're always having to learn, unlearn, learn, unlearn, iterate, iterate, iterate, experiment, evolve. Your job is to help our customers transform. Your job is to also transform Zappi so that we can help our customers transform. That work's never going to be done. You're never going to be happy with the way we're doing meta, because you're always going to be thinking about the next thing that we can be doing meta better with. And I think Frank's wise to think that way. Obviously we're partners, we've integrated into their knowledge management system and you can feel that in how he operates. He's not overly stressed, he's able to keep calm. And I think that's really important because he's in it for the long game, and we all should be in it for the long game. Business is not nearly as much of a quarter to quarter grind as we make it out to be. I hope people on boards are listening because we create a lot of this tension, board members, chill out a little bit. We're in it for the long game everybody.

Patricia:

He's an Uber marathoner. And you talk to him and you have to think about, he runs knowledge management for Colgate Palmolive worldwide. Now let's just imagine that. I've worked in many different places, you know? And you worked for many different places. I don't know anybody who does it like he does it. It was just built step by step by step by step. I remember, we had KPIs, we implemented them. And he's really humble about the whole thing. I don't think he realizes what a beast he's running.

Ryan:

A beast. So Frank Santiago said it all, everybody who needed to know more about knowledge management just got the masterclass. So share it with your friends, subscribe to Inside Insights. We need your help getting the word out there. Our next episode, Patricia is with Karen Kraft, who is amazing. She's a researcher who's turned into a major business impact leader. She's figured out how to use software and integrate storytelling. Really excited to talk to Karen. And if anybody knows anybody that Patricia I should meet with, if they're on the ground, helping brands grow, helping businesses.

Patricia:

Getting shit done.

Ryan:

We want to talk to them, hit us up directly on LinkedIn, hit us up on email, or at insideinsights@zappistore.com. Last time we shouted out Kelsey Sullivan who manages our podcasts. We wouldn't be here without her. I'd also like to give some love today to Emma Vazquez, who actually does a lot of the editing and all the graphic work that I think is just beautiful. Patricia and I, we had the fun and easy part of this job. We get to talk to them and talk to cool people, but we have a team behind the scenes helping us pull it off. So thank you ladies. Patricia. Thank you. I look forward to seeing you for our hike next week and to everybody who's listening, we'll catch you on the next episode.

Patricia:

Go get some shit done! Bye guys.