Cross-Department Training

After spending three decades in the aerospace industry, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for different sectors to learn from each other. We no longer can afford to stay stuck in our own bubbles. Take the aerospace industry, for example. They’ve been looking at how car manufacturers automate their factories to improve their own processes. And those racing teams? Their ability to prototype quickly and develop at a breakneck pace is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development. It’s all about breaking down those silos and embracing new ideas from wherever we can find them. When I was leading the Scorpion Jet program, our rapid development – less than two years to develop a new aircraft – caught the attention of a company known for razors and electric shavers. They reached out to us, intrigued by our ability to iterate so quickly, telling me "you developed a new jet faster than we can develop new razors..." They wanted to learn how we managed to streamline our processes. It was quite an unexpected and fascinating experience that underscored the value of looking beyond one’s own industry can lead to significant improvements and efficiencies, even in fields as seemingly unrelated as aerospace and consumer electronics. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s more important than ever for industries to break out of their silos and look to other sectors for fresh ideas and processes. This kind of cross-industry learning not only fosters innovation but also helps stay competitive in a rapidly changing market. For instance, the aerospace industry has been taking cues from car manufacturers to improve factory automation. And the automotive companies are adopting aerospace processes for systems engineering. Meanwhile, both sectors are picking up tips from tech giants like Apple and Google to boost their electronics and software development. And at Siemens, we partner with racing teams. Why? Because their knack for rapid prototyping and fast-paced development is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development cycles. This cross-pollination of ideas is crucial as industries evolve and integrate more advanced technologies. By exploring best practices from other industries, companies can find innovative new ways to improve their processes and products. After all, how can someone think outside the box, if they are only looking in the box? If you are interested in learning more, I suggest checking out this article by my colleagues Todd Tuthill and Nand Kochhar where they take a closer look at how cross-industry learning are key to developing advanced air mobility solutions. https://lnkd.in/dK3U6pJf

Most changemakers stall progress because we over-index on one trait: Boldness or Empathy. Very early in my career, I leaned heavily toward boldness — partly out of fear that work wouldn’t get done well. I pushed for higher standards. I intervened quickly when quality slipped. In one case, I escalated directly to a vendor’s Managing Director to address recurring performance gaps. My intention was improvement. But the team felt exposed. I had broken hierarchy. We finished the work — but it didn’t feel right. Most leadership friction happens because we over-index on one and neglect the other. My own experience and observations across industries formed a simple Boldness-Empathy model I now use when coaching cross-function teams: 1️⃣ Low Boldness / Low Empathy — The Bystander Avoids tension. Avoids progress. Lets mediocrity thrive. 2️⃣ High Boldness / Low Empathy — The Bulldozer Drives standards. Challenges norms. Damages trust. 3️⃣ Low Boldness / High Empathy — The Protector Over-relates to context. Preserves peace at the cost of progress. Struggles to execute change. 4️⃣ High Boldness / High Empathy — The Leader Sets high standards. Protects dignity. Challenges and cares at the same time. Boldness without empathy smacks like judgment. Empathy without boldness breeds hesitation. Sustainable change requires both — it’s the best way to mobilise people. Raise the bar. Respect the person. When I coach people facing logjams now, I ask two questions: • How clear are we about the standard? • How thoughtful are we about how it lands? The intersection is where influence lives.

"If Joe picks this task up, it will take 8 hours, if someone else picks it up, it will take 8 days." What do you think happened? Joe always picked up this kind of work. Doing these tasks reinforced his expertise even further. We ensured that in the future, he would be our best bet to pick up these tasks again. And it ensured everyone in the team was dependent on Joe. And then Joe took some holidays, and the team's productivity dropped. There also was a production issue we really struggled to fix without Joe. He was the bottleneck that prevented the team from moving faster or being able to solve any issues. So, after the holidays, we changed our approach: if there was a task that was perfect for Joe, we did not allow him to pick it up. He had to support whoever was picking it up. We accepted that it would go much slower because we wanted to make the team more resilient for the future. We went slower for many weeks, but after a few months, it paid off. Whenever Joe was on holidays, we could still be productive, and we would also be confident that we could fix any production issues. The team was also more productive than ever before. The moral of the story: sometimes, what seems fast is actually the slow approach. It depends on whether you take the short or long-term perspective. You should always keep in mind that everyone will leave the company at some point. Do you want to be ready before they leave, or do you want to rush to transfer knowledge when it could already be too late?

Knowledge and expertise are human. Yet used well, AI can assist people in acquiring knowledge, transfering expertise from experienced seniors to juniors, and developing true organizational intelligence. The intent must be not just to capture and institutionalize knowledge, but to enable the flows of human to human knowledge that are at the heart of all expertise development and the foundation of a dynamic, flourishing organization. This compact report provides a framework and distills some of the most useful approaches used by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Wärtsilä Morgan Stanley IBM Siemens Unilever Bank of America Moderna for others to learn from. The 8 techniques: 1️⃣ Knowledge Extraction and Codification AI draws tacit expertise out of people through interviews, walkthroughs, and conversation, then structures it into searchable assets that capture both actions and underlying reasoning. 2️⃣ Iterative Expert Encoding AI progressively absorbs experts’ knowledge and decision patterns over time so non-specialists can be guided through complex decisions without needing constant direct expert input. 3️⃣ Conversational Knowledge Repository AI makes organizational knowledge accessible in plain language by synthesizing information across documents, policies, past decisions, and expert outputs. 4️⃣ Knowledge Discovery AI maps who knows what across the organization by analyzing signals such as work patterns and outputs, revealing expertise, risks, concentrations, and gaps. 5️⃣ Knowledge Routing AI delivers the right expertise, content, or expert connection at the point of need without employees having to know where to look or whom to ask. 6️⃣ Augmented Mentoring and Tandem Learning AI strengthens learning relationships by pairing more and less experienced employees, surfacing timely content, and making the exchange more productive. 7️⃣ Simulation and Experiential Practice AI compresses the learning curve by creating realistic practice environments where people can build judgment, pattern recognition, and confidence before real-world consequences apply. 8️⃣ Expertise Extension AI enables domain-adjacent employees to perform work that once required deeper specialist expertise, while still relying on human judgment and foundational knowledge. Lots more useful content coming, follow to keep on the edge of how AI can amplify organizational success. 🙂

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗜𝗰𝗲𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗴? 𝟳𝟬% of all the knowledge which you accumulate in any organisation. The implicit and tacit knowledge, the why and how which drives actions and decisions and is lost when employees leave. Only 𝟯𝟬% of what we truly know is captured in documents, data, facts and figures. I recently wrote about the challenge of retaining knowledge in Procurement teams, particularly in times of high fluctuation. Left unaddressed, it's causing productivity leakage and lowering employee morale. But not all knowledge is of the same kind. And not all can be harvested the same way. 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟯 𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀: 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁: The "What" is known and documented (e.g., SOPs, processes, spend reports). 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁: The "How" of actionable insights, often unspoken but transferable (e.g., negotiation tactics, best practices). 𝗧𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁: The "Why," deeply embedded in experience and values, hard to express but crucial (e.g., personal insights about market trends or suppliers). 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴. Turning experience into tangible, documented information and data points is like reverse engineering and is often resisted by knowledge owners when it comes to sharing. Technologies, such as Knowledge Graphs, Ontologies, and AI assistants, can collaborate with employees to harvest knowledge at the source, whether from structured data (files, tables, logs) or unstructured data (voice, audio, video, documents). This can help to reduce the burden of knowledge capture, centralise its management and make it accessible for everyone. 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗵𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆. 𝗜𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀. Here are some practical tips to kickstart knowledge sharing to surface tacit and implicit knowledge: ▪️𝗕𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗯𝗮𝗴 𝗹𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 where category teams share use cases and insights ▪️𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 captured in documents and support tickets ▪️𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝘁 sessions to review project outcomes post-mortem ▪️𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 & 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘀 used for knowledge dissemination ▪️𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 to skill-up new people in a role ❓What kind of knowledge assets are most valuable in Procurement? ❓How is your company tapping into your submerged knowledge #knowledgemanagement #procurement #lessonslearnt #artificialintelligence

He told me about it like he was confessing a crime. "I gave her the role. I thought she was ready. I didn't think she needed anything else." She wasn't ready. Not because she lacked intelligence. Not because she lacked ambition. Because nobody had helped her see what the role would actually demand of her — before it demanded it. Month fourteen. She resigned. The CHRO spent the next six months calculating the damage. Recruitment. Onboarding lag. Team disruption. Board confidence. ₹14 crore. A six-month coaching engagement would have cost ₹6-8 lakhs. He knew that number. That's what made it a confession. This is not an outlier story. It is the defining failure mode of Indian corporate leadership development — quiet, repeated, expensive, and entirely preventable. We are producing managers at scale. We are not producing leaders equipped for complexity. And complexity is not coming. It's already here. GCCs where authority is earned, not assigned. Four generations in one org chart, each with a different psychological contract. Boards asking ESG questions that no P&L ever prepared anyone to answer. Into this, we deploy coaching models built for a different human in a different culture. GROW. Co-Active. Solutions-Focused. Frameworks designed for individualist, low-context environments. Dropped into organisations where the family system votes on career decisions. Where hierarchy-deference gets misread as dysfunction. Where a shame-sensitive professional shuts down the moment feedback lands as a personal verdict. The model doesn't fit the field. Then we call it a coaching problem. Nine years. 180+ leaders coached across Indian corporations. Median time to next promotion: 5.8 months — against a sector benchmark of 12 to 18. Aggregate compensation added across the client pool: ₹32 crore. Repeat-client ratio: 92%. These numbers exist because of one reframe. The Western coach asks: *Who are you?* The Indian leader needs to be asked: *What does this role demand of you — right now, in this system, at this stage — and where are you not yet that?* That is not a coaching question. That is a dharma question. And it unlocks something no imported framework ever reached. Every CHRO who has ever said "she just wasn't ready" — I want to ask you one thing. Did she know what ready looked like before the role began? Or did you find out together — at ₹14 crore a lesson? #ExecutiveCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #IndianCorporate #OrganisationalPhysics

#ThrivingToGetWorkDone Post 6 of 9: Fostering Collaboration and Teamwork: Breaking Down Silos Fostering collaboration and teamwork is essential in a complex environment like a hospital, where departments must work together seamlessly to provide the best patient care. Here are two short use cases on how to activate this skill in routine work within the hospital industry: Use Case 1: Collaborating Across Departments for a Multidisciplinary Care Plan You’re involved in creating a multidisciplinary care plan for patients with chronic illnesses. This requires input from various departments, including Cardiology, Nutrition, and Physical Therapy. To foster collaboration, you suggest, “Let’s schedule regular multidisciplinary team meetings where each department can share their insights and updates on patient progress. We’ll use these sessions to ensure that our care plans are fully integrated and that we’re all working towards the same patient outcomes.” By bringing everyone together, you break down silos and ensure that each department’s expertise is utilized, leading to better patient care. Use Case 2: Enhancing Collaboration in a Quality Improvement Project In another scenario, you’re working on a quality improvement project aimed at reducing hospital readmission rates. You notice that different departments, such as Discharge Planning, Pharmacy, and Home Health, are working in isolation. You propose a more collaborative approach: “Let’s form a cross-departmental task force to tackle this issue. We’ll meet bi-weekly to share data, discuss challenges, and develop integrated strategies to reduce readmissions. By working together, we can identify gaps in our processes and ensure a smoother transition for patients after discharge.” This approach not only fosters teamwork but also leads to more comprehensive solutions. #My2Cents: Collaboration is the cornerstone of success in any complex organization. By fostering teamwork and breaking down silos, we can leverage the full spectrum of our collective expertise, leading to better outcomes for our patients and our hospital. These posts aim to invoke a better overall environment by sharing practical ways to enhance workplace collaboration and productivity. What strategies have you used to foster collaboration in your workplace? Share your experiences in the comments! #Leadership #Teamwork #WorkplaceCulture #Collaboration #HealthcareLeadership #ThrivingAtWork #HospitalAdministration #PatientCare

Meetings cut in half. Escalations down 75%. No new tools required. A cross-functional marketing team at a major global retailer was drowning: only 22% thought their meetings were a good use of time, and just 39% understood the metrics they were being evaluated against. No calendar audit fixed it. What did? Getting their team working norms aligned, starting with cross-functional goals. With help from Sacha Connor at Virtual Work Insider, the team worked through five intensive 90-minute sessions over two months. Three focus areas made the difference: 🔹 Align goals before anything else. They mapped KPIs side by side and found one function's top priority barely registered for the other. They worked to get aligned, and shared understanding of team metrics went from 39% to 83%. 🔹 Clarify decision rights first. Designated points of contact absorbed a brutal 15:1 staffing ratio, without adding headcount. It also cut down on meetings ("where are we on X") and reduced escalations by 75%! 🔹 Create norms for communication. One rule on Teams: drop an eyeball emoji to acknowledge you've seen a message. Information-flow effectiveness jumped from 41% to 83%. As Sacha put it about Team Working Agreements: most companies put a toolkit on the intranet, maybe a couple teams download it, work through the logistics and call it done. It's not. Three-quarters of teams have never established formal norms. If you're about to layer AI on top of that foundation, you're building on sand. 👉 Full case study in today's newsletter, linked in comments What's actually standing in the way of your team doing this work? #Meetings #Management #AI

In so many organisations, so many people have so many ideas, skills and knowledge sets that could be of incredible value but their voices so often go unheard, because they work in a team or department that isn’t leading on the challenge, or their job description is only accessing 10% of their experience, expertise and interest. It is why it is so important to get people to work across teams and to broker and to catalyse that. The U.S. military have liaison officers who facilitate communication between elements of the organisation to ensure mutual understanding and unity of purpose and action. Liaison is the most commonly employed technique for establishing and maintaining close, continuous, physical communication between commands. It ensures that leaders and teams have a real time awareness of talent and expertise, wherever it may be, so that it can be deployed quickly and with immediate impact. Maybe, create a centralised information centre, where people can see what is going on where in the organisation, and can contribute through online portals to offer support and ideas. Increasingly, organisations are holding hackathons, during working hours for people to meet in open spaces, shares ideas and challenges, in order to form working groups and focused teams. I often advise clients to build work exchanges into their professional development cycles, so that people get the chance to experience other roles and responsibilities within the organisation, not only to build empathy but to foster new relationships and opportunities for information and idea exchanges. Start to see roles as missions rather than fixed job descriptions, so that colleagues can move when appropriate but always have a home base to return to.   Make sure that leaders at all levels are not only held to account for planning, strategy, vision, culture and performance but for cross-team collaboration. It is too easy for leaders to role model the silo-ing and cross departmental blame shifting that can so easily poison an organisation’s collegiate potential.  

There’s something almost magical about watching an idea come alive on a big board or wall. I first experienced this in a workshop many years ago, when instead of PowerPoint slides and endless talking, a facilitator picked up a pen and began sketching what we were saying. Within minutes, the noise in the room turned into clarity. Arguments softened. Ideas grew. Patterns emerged. Suddenly, we weren’t just talking at each other, we were thinking together. That’s the power of graphical facilitation. I've found that visuals create shared understanding. When people see their ideas drawn out, it feels tangible, real, and owned. Visuals cut through complexity. A messy conversation can be captured into a simple diagram that shows how the pieces fit together. Visuals open space for creativity. They invite people to build, adapt, and challenge without getting lost in jargon. It’s not about art. Stick figures and simple shapes are enough. It’s about capturing meaning, making the invisible visible. Here’s where leadership comes in. Graphical facilitation is really powerful when you combine it with the right questions. imagine a leader asking: “What does success look like for us?” and the group sketch the answers into a shared picture. “Where are the bottlenecks in our system?” and mapping them visually with the team. “If this project were a journey, where are we on the map?” and drawing a road with milestones. "What do our customers really experience?" and mapping out the end to end customer journey. This simple combination does something slides never can: it invites people in. It shows them their voice matters, that leadership is not about having the answer but creating the conditions for the best answers to emerge. Try this to get started...: 1. Grab a flipchart or whiteboard. The bigger, the better. 2. Frame a powerful question. Something open, generative, and focused on possibilities. 3. Draw as you listen. Use arrows, boxes, circles, stick people nothing fancy. Capture the flow of ideas. 4. Step back together. Ask: “What do we notice?” or “What stands out?” This is where new insights often spark. 5. Co-create the next step. The group’s picture becomes the group’s plan. In times of complexity, speed, and change, leaders can no longer rely on being the person with the answer. The role has shifted: leaders must become facilitators of thinking, collaboration, and creativity. Graphical facilitation is a leadership skill for the future. It's a way to make ideas visible, align people quickly, and engage teams in solving problems together. And here’s the truth: once people have seen their ideas come to life on the wall, they rarely forget it. It creates ownership, energy, and momentum that words alone can’t achieve. If you want better collaboration, don’t just talk at your team. Draw with them. Ask the right questions. Sketch the answers. Make the invisible visible. You’ll be surprised at what emerges when the pens are in play!