201: ‘Redefining Leadership in AEC’, with Phil Putnam

202: ‘Knowledge Management is Everyone‘s Job’, with Katie Robinson and Christopher Parsons

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Katie Robinson, Chief Marketing Officer at LS3P and Christopher Parsons, CEO at Knowledge Architecture. This is the fourth episode in the Knowledge Management 3.0 series, and I've included links in the show notes to the previous episodes.

Katie's career journey is an example of how solving one problem, making proposal writing easier, can spark a firm-wide transformation. Over time, her role expanded to include knowledge management, leading to innovations that go far beyond marketing. Today,

Today, LS3P operates with a deeply integrated approach to capturing and leveraging knowledge across their 12 offices and 500 team members. In our conversation, Katie shares how LS3P developed their Data Manager program drastically reducing time spent, gathering project information while mentoring emerging professionals along the way. We discuss how this groundwork enabled the firm to unlock incredible capabilities throughout their intranet, which they call Frank, transforms how information flows throughout the practice and gets used in real time.

But what really stands out to me is their "Expert Hours" initiative, because I know that many firms out there think the barrier to capturing knowledge is just too daunting. Katie explains how informal recorded conversations with subject matter experts have become one of the most powerful ways that LS3P captures tacit knowledge, the kind that usually disappears when someone leaves or retires.

By making these sessions searchable and feeding them back into their systems, LS3P has turned everyday storytelling into a knowledge engine, driving better marketing, mentorship, and project delivery. This low lift, high impact approach is making hidden expertise accessible to everyone, creating mentorship opportunities, and setting the stage for more informed, collaborative decision making across the practice.

So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Katie Robinson and Christopher Parsons. I.

Welcome to the podcast, Katie Robinson. Great to meet you. And, uh, I'm, I'm happy to have you on the show and talking about knowledge management. Thanks for coming,

Katie Robinson: for having me.

Evan Troxel: Chris.

Christopher Parsons: Sir.

Evan Troxel: back.

Christopher Parsons: Thank you.

Evan Troxel: it if you would set the stage for this conversation.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah, I mean, I've had the pleasure of knowing Katie for close to a decade now. We met through, you know, various different industry events and I'd always see her at one of these events and we'd kind of get nerded out on knowledge management and all things AEC and, um, Katie spoke at, uh, we did, we have an annual conference called KA Connect, which is a knowledge management conference for the AEC industry.

During the pandemic, we were virtual. And so Katie did a, a great, uh, deep dive into their data management program, which we're gonna actually talk about today. Um, and then became a client of ours in 2023. They launched their Synthesis intranet, Frank, in the January of 2024. They've since moved that into AI search and are doing some learning management stuff in the future.

So we'll get into all that as well. Um, but one of the reasons I wanted to bring Katie on other than that she's a awesome human being, is what we're trying to do in this. Welcome to KM 3.0 podcast series is look at knowledge management leadership through different lenses of where people sit in the organization.

So we started with Ellen as a CEO in the last episode. We talked to Corey, who's a director of sustainability, and now Katie as the chief marketing officer, brings yet another lens to knowledge management in AEC. Um, I actually think that Katie's title should be Chief Marketing and Knowledge Officer, but that's something we can talk about another time.

Um, but we're really, really,

Evan Troxel: meeting.

Christopher Parsons: yeah,

exactly. Um, so we're really excited, Katie, to have you join and just talk about knowledge management, LS3P, both you kind of personally, but then the organization. So thanks for, for being here.

Katie Robinson: My favorite topics. I love it

Christopher Parsons: Well, let's start there. Why is it, one of your favorite topics?

Katie Robinson: I think the main reason is it combines both sides of your brain, so mine don't have limits. So, uh, they like to go and, and mess with each other a lot, but it takes all of the importance of data and knowledge and, and facts and it combines them with the creativity of marketing and communications. And it's just, it's such a lovely pairing and such an obvious pairing as well.

Christopher Parsons: I like that. Um, maybe for the, for the uninitiated, you can kind of talk about like, how do you, how do you tell other folks when they join LS3P who haven't heard of, heard of knowledge management, like how do you explain it to them?

How do you talk about knowledge management at LS3P? Why are you the chief marketing officer talking to them about knowledge management?

Like how does that all fit together?

Katie Robinson: Uh, great questions. Uh, essentially knowledge management falls under my umbrella at LS3P. Marketing and knowledge management are two separate teams, but they both, uh, fall under me. And the reason this happened was almost by accident years ago when I was really struggling as a marketing coordinator doing proposals and interviews.

I was pulling out my hair, trying to find project data like most firms do. it was kind of an accident that we stumbled into knowledge management and it, it started with our journey for, for the need of data in order to do marketing proposals. And it just kind of snowballed. So ever since then, it's. It's really become, this is gonna sound cliche, but part of our culture.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: we, we do talk about knowledge management a lot. Um, it's, it's part of our onboarding process with new team members. We celebrate it a lot, um, with all the different initiatives that we do, both from knowledge management and marketing. Um, so really it's just, um, part of how we practice and do business. Um, we don't need to do a whole lot of, um,

internal marketing to, to support why we do this.

Evan Troxel: I'm raising my hand. I have a question.

Christopher Parsons: Evan.

Evan Troxel: thank you, um, first time caller. Um. Uh, the, the, the idea of your team being excited about this is something that I don't think is kind of across the board in AEC and I think that one thing that I hear when I hear you talk about that is like, recognize that this is something we can leverage

and, and. That's where excitement comes from. It's like, oh, there's benefit, there's value to be extracted from this thing that I can actively participate in to, you know, in, in my way to make it better. And I think a lot of times though, it's, it's a bit overwhelming for firms to think about, oh my gosh. Like getting this thing up to speed so that it can be leverageable is one of those things that is overwhelming and it's like, oh my gosh, we're gonna have to just, just like, this is another job.

And I'm curious, you know, you said you've been doing this now for a while.

Can you just kind of describe that, what that process was like? Was everybody excited about it from the beginning? Like obviously now it's just like a well-oiled machine, right?

let's just

tell it what, how it is like that.

That's really cool that you've got to that point. And you can tell that success story, but

what was that journey like for the firm?

Katie Robinson: It was an interesting one. Uh, so this, this really gets into the, the creation of our data manager program that we have. And, um, we started these talks, gosh, probably about 2008, um, or. management was kind of a buzz word, Um, at LS3P at that point, but we, really did not know what it was. Um, but we, we knew we had a problem with not having accessible data from our, our projects. Um, the, the knowledge part of knowledge management came a little bit later. Uh, but we started with the data collection, um, because it was, in my opinion, in my naive opinion at the time, it was the easiest to tackle. And now as I talk to some firms who are really struggling with project data, I'm like, oh wait, that, that actually probably was hard at the time, but, um, I was just so invested 'cause we needed it for marketing. so the first thing that, um, I think overwhelms people is the concept that this has to be owned by one group. And it's not successful if it's owned by one group. Uh, so if I take just our centralized database, we do use Del Tech Vantage Point as our, our centralized database. I am one of the few that actually do really like Del Tech.

And I, I think that if used properly, it's a good tool. Sorry, Del Tech. Um, um, basically we gathered everybody at, on the onset that we thought this data could benefit. And it wasn't just marketing and it wasn't just technology and it wasn't just the practice team members, it was hr, it was finance, it was legal. Um, we thought about every single way we have to report on our data through industry surveys, marketing proposals, um, doing recruiting, financials, everything. And we gathered those individuals together. And we made sure that we took a look at what are we asking people to collect and if we weren't gonna report on it, it didn't matter. so we were really able to streamline the process having that engagement in the first, it started to create this excitement amongst multiple groups within the firm, not just those of us who are hands in every day trying to make the database work for us, it really

Christopher Parsons: Katie, can I interrupt you for a second? Like, just give us a sense of like, what kind of data are you talking about? Like what are the data points that matter? Like for, for these reporting?

Katie Robinson: sure. We started with project data. So think about your typical things that come up in a marketing proposal. You know, construction size, construction cost, Cost per square. Put the components within a project.

Um, is, does it have a lead accreditation? Um, anything that you would need to report on from a a marketing standpoint, um, you know, what, what sector is it in?

Which seems pretty, pretty easy, but sometimes that project, that that information was missing as well. Um, who is the client? Um, how many projects have we done with that client? so really just anything and everything that you can think of in terms of project specifics. We wanted to make sure that we were collecting if we were going to use it. So. We had all of our friends in a room, we got, we really started to see some, some interest in this of, oh, this could make my life easier. I really like this.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: and then we, we tested it to see would this be successful. Um, so instead of up with a concept and making it totally perfect, before we, we rolled it out to

the whole firm, we wanted to make sure that we tested it with a small group, um, of folks. At that time, we also thought, oh, well, project managers easy. They know all this information.

They have tons of time. They'll be able just to throw this in the database.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Katie Robinson: that got some chuckles, but I will actually say for, for a couple years we operated that way where project managers were ultimately responsible.

They put in the, the project data, and we did make progress. It was really slow progress, but we did make some, and we made enough to show what. Impact, impact having data could have on, on all of those different areas of the firm. But then we knew we were growing and something needed to change. And that's when we came up with the idea of let's utilize some of our less seasoned team members, our emerging professionals. Um, we called them interns at the time. We now call them emerging pro professionals, uh, to help gather this data. So that's when we truly rolled out the data manager program. And this was in 2013 where we had these individuals collecting the project data alongside of the project manager. Um, so the cool thing that we saw throughout this process too is it became this kind of, um, mentorship program as well, uh, because they did have that access to the project manager.

They were talking about things like cost per square foot, um. were getting to know owner agreements and consultant agreements, um, on a more detailed level than they had access to before. So that was a really cool outcome that we really didn't anticipate, uh, when we first thought of tapping these individuals on the shoulder. Um, and, uh, we again started small. We started with just one of our sectors. We are in 13 different market sectors at LS3P, everything but single family. And we started with K 12 and, uh, we, we went from there and we tested it. We ran reports before and after to show the impact of the data. And we celebrated it.

We celebrated what these individuals were doing. Uh, we tracked their time separately. It was not charged to the the project. Uh, so we were able to see how much time is this really taking for individuals to have this type of impact on, on data collection. And then we provided a lot of training, uh, to them just to make sure that, um, it was kept in the forefront of their mind, the importance of doing this throughout the life of the project.

Um, and then the conclusion of the project. And it really, I, I hate to say it this way 'cause I know so many firms are struggling. It wasn't that hard. really wasn't to, to launch and to get people's buy-in on it.

Christopher Parsons: The hard part was disassociated, like moving beyond the mental block, that this has to be the project manager 'cause they're closest to it and realizing somebody else could do it

with help.

Katie Robinson: Exactly.

Christopher Parsons: Can you talk about a day in the life of a data manager, like, so I'm an emerging professional, you've asked me to do this thing.

Like, do I do this check in once a week? Do I checking in at project milestones? Like when am I kind of working with my project manager to capture data?

Katie Robinson: Sure. It's mostly in project milestones and, um, it's important to note these individuals are, are, um, aspiring architects or interior designers or planners. Um, they're not going into data analysis and data?

science and, and all of that loveliness. They really are, you know, on the path to become licensed or, or designers within the firm. this is just a project role. On the project. Um, so I think that's important to, to clarify, it's not an overhead position. Um, so you know, you have your principal in charge, you have your project manager, you have your project architect, you have your data manager. Um, they could be doing other things on the project.

Um, hopefully they are doing other things on the project because we want them knowledgeable about the project and engaged in it. Uh, but what we found is, um, it roughly takes our data managers 20 to 30 hours a year all of the data on their projects. So normally that's anywhere from five to 10 projects per per data manager. So the lift is really not

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: Um, do one really big push a year where we take a look at all projects that closed in the previous year, and we do an analysis of them. How much project data are we missing that we didn't capture? And we tap the data managers on the shoulder to just review 'em, re review your projects, make sure we have all the data in them so we can just fully close out those projects. Um, and that time takes a little bit more time, but that's combined in that 20 to 30 hours a year, um, time. So it's really not adding a lot to to overhead.

Christopher Parsons: So the benefit to, uh, a data manager, I think you said, is they'll be asked to collect data points perhaps that they don't fully understand, so then they can spend time with the project manager or project architect kind of

explaining like what these data points are, what the ranges are, like, is this typical, is this atypical?

That kind of thing.

Right. What's the benefit to like, like let's look at some other people, like what's the benefit of the data manager program to project managers or to principals, or to marketing or to insurance? Like you said, people benefit, like how By having better data.

Katie Robinson: Well, I started out from some, a selfish standpoint of marketing. Uh, so essentially within the first five years of having the data manager program, we saw about an 80% reduction in time to collect information for proposals. because we didn't have to track down project data.

Um, we were able to do project sheets and um, you know, government forms like SF three 30 much quicker because we had all of the

information that we needed to put them together.

It's not perfect. Sometimes we still do have to tap people on the shoulder. Um, but the good thing is it's now a partner. So if marketing finds data on a project that is not in the database the conclusion of our, um, proposal that we're doing, one of the, um, things that we do, the task at the end of a proposal is go and look and see if we collected any data.

And if so, go put it in the project record. So it, it's not just solely on the data manager to do this. It's a team effort between multiple groups in the firm. So marketing has definitely benefited. Uh, the really cool thing that we have seen in the past, really five years or so, is we have started to really embrace Power BI for data visualization. And at first we did this just for our monthly financials. You know, we just wanted a, an easier way to do monthly financials. But then we started to look at all the project data that we had and we're like, wait a minute. There's something to this, we could do a lot more because we have such, such substantial project data. So we have a, a huge strategic reporting app that combines multiple power BI reports from financials to projections, to a list of our projects who worked on what, how many hours, uh, the team has spent on the projects, really being able to dive down into what makes a project successful. Um, and we are able to do that because we can slice and dice our, our projects a variety of ways because we have that information in the database.

Christopher Parsons: How much, what was the, um, that is nice. Um, I would assume you didn't have that to kind of like, it feels like, um,

correct me if I'm wrong, but like when you wanna get a change like this made, you have to kind of paint a vision of what the future looks like so you can work backwards to like, designing the program.

and so like, I'm sure you, what did you show project managers or leadership or whatever, like what was the thing that had them say like, okay, I get it.

Let's invest so that we can capture better project data. Like if you can think back to that.

Katie Robinson: Mm-hmm. Uh, the main thing was project managers were equally as frustrated as marketing at the onset.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: didn't like having to go and ask them the same questions over and over. They didn't like having to answer the same questions over and over. So it was really easy to show, and again, we use K 12 as as an example, so we could show the difference that even just responding to the amount of experience that would qualify us for this pursuit, we were chasing

from, you know, we have. Eight projects that qualify to, oh wait, we actually had 50 that qualified, but we would've only have eight in our proposal had we not known about these other ones.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: So just showing that example, it really was easy to get buy-in and again, it's such an easy lift, um, that we're asking of our data managers and they're already on the project and familiar with it

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Katie Robinson: wasn't that difficult to have buy-in. It also really helps that the business teams at LS three

P are fully together. Uh, we, the leaders of those teams, we meet once a month. Um, I can tell you what legal, hr, technology, all of them are working on finance. versa. So

it was really easy to see the impact that this has on a variety of different levels of the firm, and then they could celebrate it as well.

So for example, project managers used to have to look at this huge Excel spreadsheet before professional liability insurance renewal application went out huge. had to go through every single project line item just to make sure we had proper coverage for all of our, all of the, the projects that we were, um, designing. And it was painstaking because it just took them so long. It's now a report

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: it's part of the data manager process, we

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Katie Robinson: this information.

Christopher Parsons: It's a byproduct now of, yeah.

Katie Robinson: Right. So because they're

Christopher Parsons: Hmm

Katie Robinson: of this, they're seeing that, wow, I have a lot more time to, to invest in project management and being innovative and even design.

Christopher Parsons: It feels like you,

Evan Troxel: that that, there would

Christopher Parsons: go ahead.

Evan Troxel: be lower

stress, like the

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: of mind of knowing you're collecting

that along the way is, is

incredibly less stressful on

somebody's, you know, day to

day because they know, like it's, it's happening in the background, but those workflows, those standard, those becoming standards in the process is a huge part of that. To ultimately, I, I

would imagine what feels like a superpower when

the report shows up and it's like, oh my gosh. Like, because we really can leverage this information.

the whole team is making sure happens in the background. And then it's like you get to the point where you have this superpower and you can't imagine not having that superpower.

Christopher Parsons: Hm.

Evan Troxel: And, And, it, it frees you up to look at, oh, how else can we leverage this? Where else can we take this? And the value probably gets kind of exponential at some, at some point.

Katie Robinson: And then taking it a step further into, um, of your firm. You know, think about, um, I love doing this type of project and that's the only type of project that I wanna do. And if

you don't have any data behind that project, you may find out that type of project's not profitable. But if I

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: do it, what is it gonna take to make it profitable? use all of this project data to not just projects into, these are the overarching sectors they're in, in sub-sectors, but this is the individual project type.

Christopher Parsons: Hm.

Katie Robinson: if we love doing this project type, I'm able to take a look at the project data and say, okay.

When we do this type of building in higher ed, we kill it on profit.

We're doing great, we're doing really great design. It's, it's really from a number standpoint solid, but when we do the same type of project in K 12, we're losing money on it. So

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: what are we doing

differently? so that's when you can take the the hardened facts data then combine it with a little bit of the knowledge that doesn't fit into a beautiful field in the database to find out the why behind the data.

And that's one thing that

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Katie Robinson: stress a lot at LS3P, is that data is not

knowledge. Data supports knowledge. So while we do have this wonderful strategic reporting app that provides you with limitless data, is something behind that data driving it. And that's

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Katie Robinson: important to, to remember as well.

So. Being able to roll out, not just, these are great reports and this is how you can utilize the data, but we're also focusing on the why. Um, it, it just helps everybody truly understand what we're trying to do.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Just to tag onto that, we had a CFO at our firm who made an really interesting point. Uh, several times. It wasn't just once because you can't just say something once and have it stick. And that was like, okay, there's projects like the ones you just talked about where it's like, okay, we're not profitable, but the why to get into the knowledge versus data, you know, knowledge, data, knowledge, wisdom, like sits in there somewhere too.

Like there's different versions of, of these things. And, um, he, he said so poignantly one time, he's like, you don't always do a project because you're because it makes you profitable. There are other really valuable reasons for a firm to possibly do projects. And it's usually in conversations that happen beyond those data points.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: and, but if you, you kind of have to have the data points to, to even have that conversation so that we can say, well, are there other reasons we might wanna do this kind of a project? Right. Maybe you can use it.

As a stepping stone to get somewhere else, right? But then you have, you actually have those reasons kind of codified into the system so that when somebody asks that question later,

well here's the, we actually know why.

We actually do know why we chose to do it, and it led to this, and, and you can actually point it all of those things because you have a way to track and

codify all of those things.

Katie Robinson: Absolutely.

Christopher Parsons: What's, um, what's next for project data? Katie, you're always, I know you know this, as long as I've known you, you're always like three or four steps ahead. So like, where do you see this all going?

Katie Robinson: Well, we're, we're at a really fun time with LS3P right now because we are in, um, the final year of our current strategic plan, and we are working on the strategic plan that will launch in January and take us through

1. So we're, we're kind of like middle ground right now. We still have some

initiatives that we're completing and then we're looking

ahead. and this isn't a knowledge management strategic plan.

This is a, a firm-wide strategic plan. And what's really cool about being on the committee, putting this together is. Every time we're talking about initiatives and things like that, I'm like, oh, yep. My teams marketing and knowledge management are, are gonna touch that. We're gonna be involved in that. So, um, that's really cool to see. we have a big focus on the practice side of our firm. Um, in this strategic plan, uh, we have grown considerably over the last five years. Um, we sit at 12 offices right now and about 500 team members. Um, and we've realized that we need to, to tighten up some of our, our processes that we have. So we're relying heavily on the, the data knowledge that we've, we've collected through, through that. Um, but we're, we also see the data manager program, um, make it a little bit of a facelift. Um, so we're,

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: at what other types of project roles could we put into place that can be as successful as the data manager role. Uh, for example, a design lead, um, which it seems like, uh, we need that, but we really haven't implemented using fields like that. a green data manager. Uh, and so we've, we've really held back of pushing our data managers to collect a lot of sustainability data because when you start talking to sustainability folks, wow, that is a lot of data that they can collect. And so we didn't want the program to be completely overwhelming. Well, we do report, um, the DDX to the, um, AI 2030, uh, challenge. We do all of that reporting. So the green data manager that we hope to roll out with our next strategic plan will be really focused in on that. Um, you know, are we going after and um, certification for this project? Um, how can we just have best practices and sustainability?

What all data do we need to be collecting? So that's gonna be separate from our data managers. Um, but equally it's important. Um, things like technical leads on projects where we can just establish that more. then the really exciting thing, not that all of that isn't exciting, is we are really leaning into what can we automate with what we already have.

So we have great Revit models, there's a lot of data. models. Uh, so we have just started flirting with how can we harness that data? Um, what does it look like, uh, what type of data lake do we need to store this in? And then once we have all of this data, are we gonna be able to utilize Power BI to pull from, from these huge data sources? Um, or are we gonna have to develop something in-house or look for another application? Um, so looking at what is the capabilities of, of pulling that data. And yes, there's a lot of AI tools out there as well that we're looking at, but what are those capabilities and does that remove any of the responsibilities of the data manager? So we

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: some of that, that process. So that's the big focus with this next, uh, strategic planning process.

Evan Troxel: Chris, I, I want to, I want to segue back to you with a question because I, I bet you hear these kinds of things from Katie, like they're, they're thinking ahead and you create Synthesis, right? You have this internet platform where they're extracting stuff from. So, I mean, and we're gonna be talking about AI here, but, but Chris, like, what, what's, what kind of things are firing off? Over the past few years when you're hearing things like what Katie's talking about with where they want to go with their firm in this way and how, how do those things then make their way back into Synthesis?

Christopher Parsons: Oh man, I'll try and be concise. Um, I think ai, so we call this KM 3.0 because we think it's a third wave of knowledge management. I think this wave, more than any time I've been in working in knowledge management when I was 25 years, I have never seen the light bulbs go on as widely distributed and stay on in terms of why firm wide data and knowledge management.

High quality firm-wide data and knowledge is, is really important because I think what

AI has done, and I think to some degree to Katie's point, like Power BI and visualization was maybe like a 0.5 along that way is, um, we actually, we had a client who would make these fake Power BI reports

showing them ways they could slice and dice their firm's project data.

And the partners lost their minds. And so did the project manager were like, this is amazing.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Christopher Parsons: like, cool, now we need to go capture the data to make this real. You know, like, and they like pulled the rug, you know, and it was great. And it actually worked and it like catalyzed, you know, this change in terms of like, 'cause people saw the value and then they could work towards it and I think, yeah.

Evan Troxel: you asked the question about like the vision, like sometimes people need to see

Christopher Parsons: yes.

Evan Troxel: and be like that. Oh, oh my gosh. Oh yes. I want to go there.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: opened the door. Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: And I think the same thing. So with ai, and maybe this is a good segue 'cause Katie and I have been working on, uh, kind of like thinking about this for marketing, but more broadly together in a, in a working group, uh, people start doing some queries, whether it's Synthesis, ai, search, or another platform.

And they see the promise, but then immediately their mind goes to like, yeah, but we don't have the data to back this up. Like, I can't, I can ask this question, I'm not gonna get good answers. And so, but I think what you've seen is subject matter experts, more senior people, like people who had kind of been on the sidelines a little bit in terms of contributing, seeing the value and like getting into the conversation.

I think that's a kind of general trend we've seen. Katie, does that, does that resonate with you?

Katie Robinson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and I, you know, since we're talking about Synthesis, um, this platform really. it's, it's almost like we didn't know we needed it until we got it. And then we were like, why didn't we have this before?

Evan Troxel: What, what us so long? Yeah, totally.

Katie Robinson: long? And yes, Chris knows that whole story, but, um, know, when you have, you have a lot of, of project data, and we also were very fortunate we, we had an intranet.

Um, it was, it was homegrown. It, it worked. Um, it, but it had a lot of great

resources on

it. so we were in a really good position, um, moving into launching Synthesis because we knew that that information was already scrubbed. Um, we, we made sure that it was very limited of who could put information into our old internet. Um, so we knew that it was, it was pretty solid going into it. What we hadn't anticipated was the impact that those resources that were developed over years and years and years, 60 some odd years of the firm, coupled with being able to integrate the project data from Del Tech as well as the project imagery from Open Asset, which is con, also controlled by my knowledge management team. Having all of those filter in and then just layering on other technologies that we use as well, like Zendesk for our IT support tickets, and seeing it all in a visual format come together was just. It, it changed how we, how we operate as a firm in terms of, of being able to share resources and communicate with each other and celebrate one another.

It was just really cool to see how all of that came together. Um, because we, we knew about it. We just didn't really know the, knew the impact that having something like that would, would have on our firm. then when Synthesis AI was kind of rolled out with a more advanced search summary, that has been just game changer now individuals are able to just type in a question. Into Synthesis and have a full summary spit out, where then they can take a look at where the different items from the summary came from. And from a knowledge management standpoint and marketing standpoint, it's really interesting to look at the ratings that people are giving of those search summaries because it's allowing us to say, Hmm, we missed the mark with this resource.

We actually thought that it was, it was pretty, pretty well defined, but maybe we need to tweak it to add this, this, and this to it, or, that didn't come up in a search at all. I want, I wonder why we thought it was in there. Um, so it, it's allowed us to. Make our resources better and then add new ones.

And then from a marketing standpoint, it gives us some great ideas of, oh, we should really make this an internal marketing piece because everybody in the firm should know about this, and this person was searching it, or, wow, our clients would really like to know that. Let's make that into an external marketing piece. So it's really cool how not only, um, Synthesis came together to bring all of these resources that we had, um, all in one place, but then also the advanced search makes it easier to find. And then we have those, that feedback from our team members of how can we continuously improve what we're doing.

Christopher Parsons: I think

Evan Troxel: there's like

Christopher Parsons: what

Evan Troxel: of ui, ux, search. Training.

Christopher Parsons: culture?

Evan Troxel: I mean, think

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: years of what, like give, give your data manager who wasn't called a data manager, a, they need to find something about a project. How difficult was it for them to actually get in to a Del Tech system and find information?

They probably had to ask someone else to do it,

who didn't have time to

do it and didn't want to train someone to do it. Democratizing access alone is just this crazy like now that people have. Again, it's a superpower that now, now that we have it, it's like, okay, table stakes. Okay, everybody's, but to that point was. a difficult time. Let's just put it that way. Right, Chris? So, I mean, now, now with, with a very

simple UI in Synthesis, like people have access, like, like you've taken all these pieces that Katie just talked about and pulled them together into what, what a lot of people talk as a single source of truth, right?

And, and, and knowing where to go and knowing that it doesn't even take training. Like you already know how to use it.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: ask a question. I think that, that, like, let's just be honest like that, that's pretty powerful. And, and also it's like something that we just kind of take for granted.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah. I think what's really interesting about it beyond one, one more layer to that, that I think we've learned by watching Katie and and teams, um, in our community is that by having all that content in one place, you can, like, imagine I'm a marketer on Katie's team and I'm trying to. A blog post or a social media post about our approach to community engagement or how we're thinking about mass timber or, you know, whatever the topic I wanna write about is, um, if I do a search on, on Frank, which is what, uh, LS, RP calls Synthesis it, of course it's gonna search our marketing boilerplate and our proposals and that kind of stuff.

But it's also searching like design critiques, you know, and learning and development sessions or, you know, all kinds of, a range of, of areas. So as, um, it's, you're kind of de-siloing everybody in a way. Like I, I, I'm like trying to accomplish a marketing role, but I'm not limiting myself to like, marketing data in order to answer this question.

And that's something that I'll be honest, like you can design a system, have all these great ideas, but you don't necessarily see all the things that are gonna happen with it. And like, that's one of the things that's been exciting to me is, I mean, I empathize 'cause I do marketing for us and I sat between marketing and it, I mean, sorry, marketing and the principles in both firms I work with and it's like.

It's hard to get information as a marketer. People are busy working on projects. Like sometimes they're sharing stuff more outside the company than they're sharing inside the company. You know? 'cause that's where the money comes from.

Right. But this opportunity to be able to, like as a marketer, tap into

knowledge from across the org.

Like, I don't know, Katie. It's cool, right? Like it's helpful.

Katie Robinson: Oh, it's, it's tremendously helpful. And you're right. Before we had a resource like this, we would go to our text library or we would say, okay, well this person did a presentation on this, so they. It would probably be a good resource. And then they're busy on, you know,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: projects. so it really was hard getting information and, um, I'm not saying this is the magic button, and now like marketing never has to go to anybody because part of our job is, you know, our first and foremost clients are the practice team members. Um, we have to make sure that we service them and give them everything that they need. Um, so we're still working out the kinks in this of what other types of AI tools could we bring into the conversations, um, to, to help capture that knowledge, especially if we need things for like a, a proposal submittal that we're putting together. What else can we use, uh, above and beyond what we're able to find, um, in Synthesis, and then how do we get it in there once we use it and find it. Uh, so it's, it's, it's a great addition to the resource.

Christopher Parsons: One thing, Evan too is people, I mean, I don't know that this is true, Katie, so you, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think people are either starting new kind of programs or series now that they understand. What's possible and a, a program I'm looking at at LS3P is expert hours for getting experts, interviewing other experts to share knowledge.

I think primarily for learning and development and growth, engagement, purpose. But I know you have an ulterior motive, Katie, too. It's like, this is great for marketing to hear, like getting people on tape recorded, talking about like their expertise. Like what better resource could a marketer have, but also what better resource could an emerging professional tap into?

So I wonder, I hope I didn't steal all of it, but like, I, I wonder if you can talk about expert hours, like how it works. It's a really, really, I think, cleverly designed program, especially a good program for this AI era,

you know, too, because you're trying to capture knowledge that AI can consume, not just that humans can consume.

Katie Robinson: Uh, absolutely. Uh, so our expert hours, um, they're very easy to do. Um, I would probably wager a guess at the majority of, of architecture and engineering firms as well as other industries do these all the time. You know, you're, you're putting someone in front of a group of people and letting them ask questions to them.

And we've done this throughout the history of, of LS3P, but we've never really formalized the process. Uh, so starting this year. Uh, we decided, let's, let's really start, um, formalizing this process marketing led the, the initial expert hours, uh, especially honing in on our major sectors like, um, commercial higher ed, K 12, healthcare. How can we have really casual conversations open to anyone in the firm, uh, with our subject matter experts in these areas? Um, so they're really easy. They're over lunchtime, so the majority of people are just having their lunch and everybody in the firm is invited to attend. And we have one, maybe two, um, experts who are um, just asked questions. Uh, normally we have a to 10 minute conversation prior to the, the expert hour with the expert just saying, Hey, that you hope people ask, um, we know this about you. Because what we quickly discovered is a lot of people don't know what they know, so they don't have to tell you what they know. if we were trying to like work out, if they could just ask you these things, what do you hope they ask? Um, and then we had a couple casual conversations with individuals who worked with them saying, what do you consider them an expert on? And it's really

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: that the two lists don't necessarily match, um, which is really fun. Um, and then we just gather everybody together on a teams call and we hit record uh, marketing facilitates and we'll ask a couple of primer questions and then we open it up and it is a. Amazing. The type of questions that not only come, we

at first thought most of the questions would come from emerging professionals, because to be honest, this is kind of our way of doing forced mentorship. but we've quickly found that some of the questions were coming from people in senior positions of the firm too. Uh, and the questions range from really specific technical questions to questions about where do you find inspiration for your designs, to how do you balance everything? You know, you, you're, you, you're doing

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: projects at home.

We know you have four kids too. Like how, what's your secret? So it, there's nothing's off limits. Um, you just can ask any question. And so we recorded these now in the past, before we had Frank, uh, we would record these and we would store them on our various internet channels. And it was lovely if people wanted to go back and watch the whole

hour long, you know, expert hour. they really didn't do that,

Evan Troxel: didn't happen.

Katie Robinson: right? The analytics were showing people weren't really clicking on those and

Evan Troxel: Uh.

Katie Robinson: them from years ago. Now all we have to do is upload that ex expert hour onto Synthesis, and it's searchable. So what we started to see was we would search things, um, from a marketing perspective in Synthesis, and

all of a sudden some of the search results are coming from these expert hours. And we're like, okay, that's,

that's pretty cool because now we can tap that person on the shoulder too to help contribute to this article we're

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: or whatever the piece would be. But we took it one step further as well, because we thought we're, we're asking people to give their time. Putting 'em on the internet is great, but what else can we really get from these, these conversations? So after the expert hours, marketing takes the transcript and we use Microsoft copilot, and we ask it as many questions about that transcript as we can think. We ask it based on the subject matter expert in this transcript, what internal resources could be developed based on their knowledge.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: ask them what, um, what conferences in the southeast region, um, that are upcoming would be good for this person to be a presenter at. And

Christopher Parsons: Hm.

Katie Robinson: spit out the conferences, the upcoming dates, how you become a presenter, all of that loveliness. We ask about podcasts. We ask about, you know, external, um, publications that would

be good for this individual to be published in. Um, and then we also ask what targeted marketing campaigns could we develop based on this expertise in this transcript?

Um, what case studies or research papers could be developed. So we really just think about. Every single thing we could possibly get from the knowledge that was shared. and then how are we gonna put that into action? And it's just really cool to see what some of the results are. Um, and, and then we get to go back to those experts and engage them in more conversations. Um, so it's, it really has been a, a impact for a really small lift.

Christopher Parsons: That's my favorite kind of knowledge management initiative is the one you do one thing and it has like five different, 10 different impacts. It's,

it's, I guess you could say return on knowledge instead of return on investment. Right? It's like you get like all this, like this bang for your buck. I'm, I'm curious how you think about like,

in just like the logistics of programming this, like which expert do you ask next?

How do you figure out who to go to? Like, do you have a backlog? Like, just, just a little bit on the mechanics of like, how do you, how do you, um, run this program?

Katie Robinson: Sure. I think it's important to remember that, um. You don't have to be the CEO to be an expert at something. So, we're really intentional of making sure that our, our, um, expert, our guests aren't just people in top leadership positions, um, because everybody has something to contribute. so really we started with those major sectors of ours and the marketing managers over those sectors kind of identified, these are the key people I want to have first, um, as, as guests in these expert hours. But then we did something, um, a little bit different as well. We have an annual shareholders meeting every year, and we collect all of the shareholders in one location and roughly about, um, a hundred, 120 people. And we talk a lot about the importance of sharing knowledge and making sure that you're, you're passing on, uh, you know, your knowledge to the next generation. Um, and since. Marketing and knowledge management were both under my umbrella. I took a full advantage. I actually have them right here, full advantage of, um, the name tags, um, that were on our shareholders, um, name tags. And on the back it said, just ask me about. It was 1, 2, 3. So before the shareholders could leave the annual shareholders meeting, they had to take their name tag out, which we recycle anyway.

And they had to write three things that they hope that people would ask them about. Um, and we got about 85% of shareholders participate in it. So that's kind of our bank of stuff.

Christopher Parsons: Wow.

Katie Robinson: Obviously we're not gonna do expert hours individual with all those, could you, you just imagine that nobody would have time for lunch anymore.

'cause we would have one every single day. Um, but the really cool thing is the knowledge management team is going to take those and say, what groupings could we do

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: Maybe our expert hours turn into panel discussions as

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: instead of just one singular expert.

Um, so that's another way that we're collecting this. then we just have people volunteer stuff, um, after an expert hour has. Has been, um, done with the firm, have people say, gosh, I wish people would ask me about this. And we're like, okay, we're gonna

write that down. So it's, it's really become organic of, of

who we're bringing in to do these, these conversations.

Christopher Parsons: Very cool. Um, you've said knowledge management teams several times. I wonder, um, you know, in my experience in the industry, you've got firms that will be listening to this who haven't heard of the term knowledge management all the way through firms that have knowledge management teams and everything in between.

So

what's the structure of your knowledge management team? And maybe as a kind of a second part of that,

how did it started with zero,

right? And now you have a team. So like, how did you build it? What roles, like when did you decide to make it official versus kind of doing it under the radar? I, I think that'd be kind of helpful.

Katie Robinson: Yeah. We, um. We, I would love to say that I rolled it out and I had this, you know, fantastic teams I have now, right from the onset, but that's not realistic, I don't think for any firm to do. at first the, the knowledge management team, quite honestly started with myself and the data managers. so it, it really did start with that data collection, um, process.

Now they weren't full-time team members. I was just borrowing some of their time. But they contributed to us being able to show the importance of, of, um, of, of true knowledge management team. We started just using the verbiage of knowledge management when I would give my, my marketing presentations to the firm or, or the shareholder groups and things like that. Um, so again, kind of, kind of just organic and

Christopher Parsons: Like maybe how long ago Katie

Katie Robinson: oh.

Christopher Parsons: are we in time?

Katie Robinson: Gosh, probably about 2015.

Christopher Parsons: Okay.

Katie Robinson: would just start dropping the, the knowledge management word a lot and, and it kind of just stuck. Um, whenever we were talking about our intranet, that was kind of knowledge management, but we would talk about sharing knowledge.

So we would just

make sure that we use that a lot.

Um, and then really it was, um, when we really started

to embrace Power bi, which was about five or six years ago, that's when my team really started to be formed. Um,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: we knew we needed people full-time. This wasn't just a part-time, I'm gonna come in and do data analysis and visualization, you know, 20 hours a week.

We needed someone full-time to do that.

Uh, and then we started seeing what all we could do. With that type of analysis then layering on the, the other aspects of knowledge management.

Um, we, the knowledge management team, we do oversee Dell Tech vantage point. Um, we don't own it because no firm, no group within the firm owns it, but we oversee, um, you know, which fields are created and you know, what are the options in each field and things like that. And then we also oversee our digital asset management with open asset in, in knowledge management. So we knew we needed team members to help, um, build that up as well. So my knowledge management team though, as, as a whole, I have a fantastic manager, uh, who, who helps run the day-to-day operations of knowledge management to data analyst and then a knowledge management coordinator who focuses on, on open assets.

So it's a small team, but then we have about 120 data managers throughout the firm. Helping and pushing that. Um, and then also other groups in the firm helping to really push the collection of knowledge through expert hours and, and things like that. So it's a small team, but we can, we're able to make a really big impact, um, and with resources now where it's, it's super visual, like Synthesis and people can see, oh, that's, that's how everything comes together.

That's really cool. It helps to set the stage for what's next. You know, if we had a couple more team members, what could we do? Or if we had better processes, maybe we don't need to add more team members. Um, so let's look at what can we automate and, um, you know, how can we build from there as well? So it's not, it's not exactly size of your team that's gonna make the biggest impact.

Um, there's, there's ways to, even with just a singular person focusing on knowledge management to make a huge impact for a firm.

Christopher Parsons: Just orchestrating other people like you were doing in the beginning. I think what's really important about the, what you just shared, to put a finder point on it is you have a series of creating value and then asking for resources after creating value

versus I can't do anything until I have resources.

Right? Which sometimes I think firms, and maybe I could say like if I'm sitting listening to this watching or listening to this presentation, I'm like, well, I can't do what LS3P is doing until I have a team. And I just wanted people to hear that, like, that's not the way that KM was built at LS3P.

It was like, do stuff first.

Right.

Katie Robinson: Now, and nor is it the way that marketing was built LS3P.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: the need for something, you show how it could be successful, and then you ask for the resources. Um, it's a lot easier to sell that way.

Evan Troxel: Can, can I ask a quick question here, and maybe this, there's not a quick answer to this, but the, the, thing that you just described was a process where you took steps over time People. I think a lot of times when a, when there's a big initiative like this kind of on the table and discussions around it, it's like, well, what's the ROI of that?

And I know that's really, really hard to measure, and at the same time it's like, well, it's kind of obvious. So, um, I'm just curious if, if you were to, to do it over again today or, or give advice to people who don't, to firms that don't have this in place, and what would you say to them? Because you did the slow and steady, you, you showed the value and then you built, like you did it that way because that's how you had to do it.

But you're, we're we're talking over 10 years ago that this all kind of started, right? So

things are different now, I think. Right. So what, what would you say to firms who are just starting to understand that like there's this whole world of knowledge management and how it can be leveraged and, and that there's huge re returns on the investment, but again, you have to do the investment.

Like what would you say to them?

Katie Robinson: I would say you're really lucky to have all the technology that we didn't have back then first

Christopher Parsons: So true. Oh my gosh.

Evan Troxel: You waited long enough and

Christopher Parsons: Oh my gosh. great. timing.

Katie Robinson: enough. Um, but really it's, it's still, I think the same message is, um. There is something you want to make better. It may not be broken completely, but there's something you wanna solve. maybe it's not

having the project data, maybe

it's um,

what happens

when all these people retire and, and you know, how is the firm gonna function?

We need the knowledge in their heads. It can be anything but just starting small and understanding that, um, I still think you have to look at, this is where I wanna go and what are the really small steps that I can take to get here. I think a lot of the times. We try to perfect something before we launch it. And especially something like knowledge management program in your firm is never going to be perfect because it should continue to evolve and grow. And if you wait for perfection, you're

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: to launch it. So what are even just the three smallest things that you feel like you can wrap your hands around? And then the most important thing is it takes everybody in leadership believing in that thing. Um, so if it's project data. You need the CEO to be talking about how important it is to have

project data. Every single person in leadership has to talk about how important it's to have project data. And that might take a complete internal rebranding because I like most firms, when people thought about our database, it was like, oh my God, that's where I had to go do my time sheets.

And everybody

Christopher Parsons: Mm.

Katie Robinson: doing time sheets. So it took some change management of, no,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: a really cool source that can do other things besides just just time sheets. But I think if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change the fact that you started with, this is my end goal and this is how I know I need to

get to this end goal.

And I'm okay if just do these three steps right now, that it's gonna keep building. Um. And then it's just easier to, uh, it's easier to sell that way, and it's also not so overwhelming.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Christopher Parsons: Evan, I think I would, um, I would kind of point out some things in Katie's story just to, um, to answer your question, but like on, like, if I were thinking about like what did I, what would I advise somebody based on what I've watched Katie do? Um, I think one thing would be. Katie Acts is what we call an executive sponsor in knowledge management.

So Katie knows she's in the group writing the strategic plan, like she's involved with the principal, she is a C-level person, wasn't always right, but understands what's important to the leadership and tries to solve those problems versus doing something cool with technology or like doing a knowledge management science experiment.

Like I think that's really important for building credibility. And I think to your point Katie, like find something that the CEO and the leadership will get behind. You don't always have to, it's even easier if there's something that they're already have said, this is important, like, go help 'em solve that problem.

You know, like that's, that's a really easy thing. And the other thing I really noticed, um, the two big things we talked about at LSVP today from a like a program perspective, were the data managers and expert hours.

Those are very light technology, touch knowledge management projects. Like I always talk about KM being people, process technology and culture.

Like that's processy culture, people heavy stuff, light on technology. And I think the really impactful stuff in KM does that,

um, as well.

Evan Troxel: I think what's super cool about this whole idea of being able to get at all, you know, acro cut across all of these different pieces that kind of form the puzzle of LS3P and this idea of expert hours. And, and you mentioned something earlier in your conversation where you, you mentioned that. You still have to go to the project managers or the principals on projects and ask them a few things because the data isn't everything. Right. And one of my favorite questions to ask clients when I would go talk to them about on a project was, tell me something about you and your organization that's not on the website.

And that's basically for, for you, that's like, tell me something about the project that's not in the database. Right? Something that's not been captured. And those stories can be incredible and those stories now can be captured and people can access that information. And it doesn't like, you know, it's like a podcast.

It's like, oh, people are gonna in listen to interesting stories. And that's where interesting stories are because you were able to solve a problem for that customer. And that applies to other projects. It or it will apply to other projects, or that thinking can apply or the way we, we solve that detailing problem or what, you know, there's gonna be site context issues, there's gonna be money issues, there's gonna be client, you know, there's, there's red tape here and there and you gotta deal with 30 different people and go through all these different, like, those, those are the kinds of things that actually matter to developing a pro, uh, a practice over time. And those younger individuals who haven't been doing it forever. And how difficult is it to get them to be able to sit down with somebody and, and just have a conversation for an hour? Super difficult. So you guys are doing it in public and I think that's so, such an incredible insight to take away from this conversation today.

And like you said, the lift is not difficult to do that. You just, you're just facilitating that to actually happen

and for everybody's benefit. And I think,

you know, just asking those kinds of questions like what else is there that, that is not.

the thing that we already have, and those are the stories.

I think that just hit harder when it comes down to it.

Katie Robinson: They, they really are. And then, you know, it.

it, in terms of looking towards the future too, and really leaning into the, the process that we've taken with expert hours, um, we wanna start looking at, at the project level. So at the onset of a project, could a member of marketing or a member of knowledge management just pop on the phone with the project team and just say, what's the big idea of this project?

Um,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: what

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: is there, uh, one. Negative research you hope to do in the life of this project. Um, you know, what innovation do you, do you hope to pull from this project? Just talking through the big idea and then do the same at the conclusion of the project. And again, do it on teams and record it and compare the transcripts to be able to not only

develop the narrative of the project from a marketing standpoint, think about how easy, how much easier it'll be to do a design award package.

And, um, you know, just so many things could benefit from those stories. But then also you get into the lessons learned. Um.

Christopher Parsons: Absolutely. Yeah,

Katie Robinson: And, and those can be positive too. I think a lot of

Christopher Parsons: correct.

Katie Robinson: about

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Katie Robinson: learned, it's like, oh, we're never gonna

Evan Troxel: Right.

Katie Robinson: But there's a lot of positive lessons that we could share with one another as well.

So if we are able to marry those two conversations that took, you know, maybe a 20 minute phone call, you know, both times at the onset and conclusion of her project.

And again, throw them onto a platform like Synthesis.

So when Project Advanced Search

is, is turned on in Synthesis, um, which I'm

really excited about, you can pull the project data, but it also can pull some from these recordings where it gives you

Christopher Parsons: Yep.

Katie Robinson: the story. so it's it's gonna be so amazing to see how we can continue to evolve these expert hours to also just project team discussions and things like that.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Asking, so asking somebody to write in a structured way for a submittal, for an award or something. Oh my god. No. Like I'll avoid that as much as possible. Thank you very

much. And, and, oh, you mean I can just sit down and have a conversa? Like there's no structure to it. Like what con what, what's in there?

Let's dig around. But like you said, people, and Chris has said this too, people don't know what they know, what they don't know, what they're, what they're an expert on. And, and there's a lot of really cool, again, just going back to the storytelling side of things, that just comes out through natural conversation that's so valuable and now you have access to it later and you can pull those bits of information for like super.

You leverage that information like crazy. Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: I'm writing about, um, I'm, I've started a new newsletter. I'm saying this kind of for your audience, but also this is for you, Katie, too. Um, the Smarter By Design newsletter. I started in May, kind of profiling some of these great KM programs. The one I'm writing about for mid-August is about Arup and they have a program called Knowledge Reviews.

And I don't know Katie, if you've seen Andrew's talk or not, but it's this very simple process, a couple touch points to extract positive and negative lessons through the journey of a project. And again, it's one of these process, low tech, high impact things that I think people, so maybe we can link to it in the show notes.

Evan, this, um, talk from Andrew at Arup. Um, one thing I wanna just circle back with expert hours, just to underscore something you said, Evan, I was in a presentation several years ago, actually, I was in multiple presentations where I learned the same lesson. One of them was from like one of the big insurance providers, Excel or someone like that.

And they were looking across claims across like dozens or hundreds of AEC firms and like what's at the root of like these claims? And it's very rarely technical, like somebody did the wrong. You know, uh, didn't follow the code, right? Or installed something wrong. It was the design. It is like 98% communications.

Um, somebody didn't say the right thing to the right other party or they misconstrued it or they didn't get back to them, or they were ambiguous. And I think when, I'm guessing some of these things, like you mentioned the thing about like how do you manage life balance with four kids, but I'm guessing there's like, how do you manage difficult conversations with clients?

How do you manage and whoever on the party that will get back to you or is part of this collaborative team? And I, I think that those deep smarts that, like people that have been successful as designers or engineers,

they don't even know how they do that. It's just so intuitive for them. And so to hear those stories of like,

like, this was a really tough project and here's how we got through it.

Like it wasn't like that's how we figured out what material to use or how to size the beams. It was,

oh man, stuff went sideways and here's how we put it back on track.

Evan Troxel: And to your point, if you asked me how do you have difficult conversations around X, Y, z subject, I, I don't know. Well, how did it actually play out on this

Christopher Parsons: Yeah. The last time you had a difficult conversation, take me through it.

Evan Troxel: about

Christopher Parsons: Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Easy. Right. And, and, and then you can use that information for, to impact everybody else in the firm.

That's fantastic. Yeah.

Katie Robinson: well in in today's world

too, where, you know, some of our team members are remote, some are hybrid. you know, when I was growing up in LS

three P, I heard those

conversations. 'cause we all sat

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: So I heard this

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: manager talking on The phone to a client. and while it was one sided, although we did have a couple project managers who really liked to use speakerphone, but most of it was just one sided.

You got that sense of, oh, oh wow, they're doing a really great job. And then they're off the phone, I could go over and say, just curious, but what was

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: What you can

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: me? Because that was really interesting hearing how you

did this with.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: members that are are remote or even hybrid, they, they don't have as much as that connectivity to just have that in-person learning necessarily.

So to be able to ask those questions and post them in an area that people can, can engage with them, um, is so

helpful.

Christopher Parsons: You said the word I wanted to close with you said learning and you know,

selfishly people know we're building a learning management system. So that's part of my question, but the majority of my question is

how do you see the kind of knowledge management and learning and development worlds at LS3P coming together?

Like, what are, what are your thoughts about like what learning and development looks like for you guys going forward?

Katie Robinson: Uh, that is really timely to ask that question. Uh, we are knee deep in it right now because we are incredibly excited about, um, Synthesis rolling out their learning management system. We also just hired an extraordinary individual to lead our learning and development, uh, program here at LS3P, so we are having. All of those conversations right now of what does learning look like? How are we going to share, um, how are we going to create a community of learning instead of just, here's a class, go and take it. But a place where people can go enroll in a course, have dialogue together, um,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: and, and learn that way. Um, we're also playing around with a software that creates some learning using avatars, which I have a love hate relationship with, um, right now.

But, um, you know, one benefit is helping us to establish curriculum.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: and, how can you say more? With less, um, with less time.

Uh, because that's, that's another concern of ours is we, we really want to develop this learning and development program, but we also want the firm to make a commitment to allowing team members time dive

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: learning and development.

Um, and I'm really pleased that that's also a huge focus of our next strategic plan is being very, very thoughtful of we're rolling out all of these initiatives that are gonna better the firm, but people need time to do them. So we have to make sure that we have that commitment, um, ready. Um, so we've been playing hard in, in different ways.

Um, prepping for this learning management

system to to roll out. Um, but it is going to be a huge focus of ours, um, especially throughout the next five years. Strategic plan.

Evan Troxel: Can you just talk about why real quick? Because the, I

Christopher Parsons: hmm.

Evan Troxel: of a lot of reasons why this would be really important. I mean,

retention of employees, getting their professional development at the office and not having to find it elsewhere.

you know, making it really clear about steps to achieve your next position.

I mean, there's, there's a lot of reasons, right? So can you just kinda give some of the whys at LS3P why, why you're going again through a big investment to make that happen?

Katie Robinson: You hit

on the major ones, right? Our, our most important, um, part of our firm is our people. we don't want people to, to come and join us for a couple years and then leave. We want them to see that they can spend their entire career at L LS3P. so how are we gonna make that happen?

Um, what resources are we gonna put in place in order to be able to let them grow their career within LS3P? But then also it's important for just the evolution of our firm. You know what, if we had the same project management training that we had 10 years ago, and we were like,

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Katie Robinson: killer.

We're just gonna keep doing that and we're not gonna really invest in, in updating our project manager training. Well, project management has changed. Um, you know, there's, there's a lot of automation now, a lot of other resources available. So that would fail if we didn't keep that at the forefront. So not only the time to attend these learning sessions, but the time needed for our subject matter

experts to contribute to building them. Um, because that's also a thoughtful process. Um, you, you, you want those subject matter experts leading these training sessions. You don't want a, you know, someone who is, uh, just, um, from outside of our industry coming and trying to teach you how to do project management.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Katie Robinson: Um, so that commitment is, is really important.

Um, you

know, we hope it does

help with recruitment and retention, but also at the end of the day, it's is the right thing to do for our team members.

Evan Troxel: One of my favorite sayings was, was whenever there was pushback against training, it was like, oh no, we can't do that training because what if they take that somewhere else

at some other firm and, and go use it there? It's such a, a naive thing to say, but it's like, but then the, the comeback is, well, what if we don't and they stay right.

So, uh, there, there's always, it's a double-edged sword. And, and I know we're wrapping up, but Katie, you know, I have a, I, I mentioned to you before we started recording, some of my favorite people work at S3 P. You're now on the list and I, I think one of the things that, that really impresses me about those of you that I know at S3 P is, man, like the level of caring the bigger picture of LS3P.

It's not just your role in your slice of what's going on at LS3P. So I mentioned Daryl and Ruth, uh, earlier, who are in your digital. Uh, practice technology department, and, and I, I love every time I get together with them and, and I, it's great to see that it's, it's beyond their department, right?

It's, it's also I'm seeing here in marketing. So thank you so much for what you brought to the conversation today and your willingness to share it with other firms who are like, how do we do this? I think this is the kind of thing, and Chris, for facilitating all of this to actually make it happen is, is something that is better for the profession, and I hope others are taking notice of that and, and can also contribute in these ways because it's, it's really impactful overall.

Thank you.

Katie Robinson: Thank you.

Christopher Parsons: I would say I, I would echo what Evan's saying and go maybe further. Um, one of my favorite things in the world is the Eisenhower Matrix, which basically puts on two axes important and not important and non-urgent. And urgent.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Christopher Parsons: a lot of the stuff you talked about today, Katie falls in the, the quadrant of important but not urgent.

And in my view, that's like where knowledge management lives and thrives. It's um, if you think back all the way back to the data manager program, and I was thinking while you were talking, it's like we're gonna have this conversation about this project data either under duress. The insurance reports due or because the proposals due, or we can have it now, you know, while birds are chirping outside and everybody's like, breathing easy and, but it's like, but it's not urgent to have it now.

So, you know, it's like that trade off. And I think what Evan was getting at is a word I love for km, which is stewardship.

And it feels like the people I've met at LS3P are stewards of the organization. And when you feel invested like that, like knowledge management, I think is directly correlated to a feeling of stewardship because it is that important non urgent stuff.

So I hope people took away that from you in, in this conversation as well.

Katie Robinson: That's great. well.

caring and stewardship are two of our core values at S3 P, so

Christopher Parsons: Are you serious? That's so funny.

Katie Robinson: so hopefully

Christopher Parsons: Can we talk

Katie Robinson: into that.

Christopher Parsons: Caring is such the other word that like, oh my gosh, if the world, if more people in the world cared more. Well anyway, I could get hall on a, on a sidetrack on that, but like, let's not do that. That's a whole nother episode. Um. Katie, thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here.

Katie Robinson: Thank you.

​