--- title: "Rediscovering lost knowledge" episode: 40 date: 2021-08-12 guest: "Peter Edge" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/40-rediscovering-lost-knowledge audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-040/audio.mp3 --- # Rediscovering lost knowledge Peter Edge joins Joanne Lockwood to explore what happens when organisations fail to notice, capture, and transfer the expertise that keeps work moving. Using stories from policing, education, the NHS and specialist manufacturing, Peter illustrates how “lost knowledge” isn’t abstract—it shows up as cost, disrupted performance, demoralised teams, and repeated onboarding that drains leaders’ time. They discuss why knowledge often walks out of the door unnoticed: leaders who don’t listen, cultures that treat people as replaceable cogs, appraisal and performance systems that miss real contribution, and environments where people hoard expertise because they don’t feel trusted or safe. The conversation connects knowledge retention to staff retention, succession planning, and the practical discipline of identifying single points of failure through simple risk assessment. The episode also touches on how COVID and remote/hybrid work changed informal learning and “water-cooler” mentoring, and how organisations might rethink communication, trust, and flexibility so that learning and connection aren’t dependent on being in an office. Throughout, the focus remains on building workplace systems that recognise value, support progression, and prevent critical expertise from disappearing. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Podcast explores rediscovering knowledge with Peter Edge. - 03:26 — Capturing and preserving valuable, lost specialist knowledge. - 06:28 — Met Police losing detectives prompts knowledge management focus. - 10:24 — Frequent recruitment impacts productivity and organisational performance. - 12:39 — Manager seeks Joe's secret for organisational improvement. - 18:40 — Organisations undervalue individual creativity; see workers as cogs. - 19:40 — Leaders must actively listen and understand staff. - 24:09 — Business closed due to obsolete product component. - 28:02 — Knowledge mismanagement leads to organisational inefficiency. - 29:50 — High turnover demoralises nursery manager and staff. - 33:25 — Assess HR strategies to retain essential employees. - 38:44 — Cultural survival through myth and storytelling. - 42:05 — COVID reduced essential physical contact and communication. - 44:18 — Socialisation locally, not office; empower life's control. - 48:17 — Treat adults like adults; foster entrepreneurial spirit. - 51:25 — Valuing people, culture of belonging, asynchronous communication. - 56:36 — Consider displacements and ensure inclusive future work. - 58:05 — Contact via LinkedIn, email, or Camino podcasts. ## Key takeaways - The concept of knowledge extinction in organisations, akin to the extinction of animals, and the cyclical nature of losing and rediscovering valuable information. - How high staff turnover, exacerbated by cultural issues and the COVID-19 pandemic, can demoralise a team and drain resources through constant onboarding. - The necessity of recognising employee ambitions and offering progression opportunities as a means to retain talent and prevent knowledge drain. - The importance of succession planning and risk assessment in mitigating the impact of losing key staff members who have significant organisational knowledge. - Effective leadership practices that ensure knowledge is distributed within the team to prevent dependence on a single expert and promote overall team growth. - The benefits of dynamic risk management for assessing the risks associated with losing crucial personnel and ensuring organisation-wide continuity. - Strategies for evolving work cultures to trust and empower employees, focusing on outcomes and real value, rather than rigid adherence to schedules. ## FAQs ### What is the main theme of Episode 40 of The Inclusion Bites Podcast? The main theme of Episode 40, titled "Rediscovering Lost Knowledge," is the cyclical loss and rediscovery of knowledge within organisations. The episode discusses how organisations can better appreciate, capture, and retain valuable knowledge to prevent time and cost losses and manage business impacts more effectively. ### What does Peter Edge mean by "knowledge extinction"? Peter Edge refers to "knowledge extinction" as the concept that important knowledge within organisations can be lost, much like how species can go extinct. This typically happens due to high staff turnover, lack of proper documentation, or failure to share expertise. Peter highlights the need for organisations to actively work on retaining and spreading knowledge to avoid long-term negative impacts. ### How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted staff turnover, according to Joanne Lockwood? Joanne Lockwood shares an anecdote about her daughter's experience managing a playgroup with high staff turnover. This turnover has been exacerbated by cultural issues within the organisation and the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it challenging to onboard new staff and manage effectively. ### What strategies does Peter Edge suggest to break the cycle of high staff turnover? Peter Edge suggests organisations conduct risk assessments and succession planning to understand employees' future plans and identify risk factors related to their potential departure. This proactive approach helps in retaining valuable knowledge and preventing repeated resource expenditure on training new staff. ### Why is employee recognition and career progression important for retention? Recognising employee ambitions and offering progression opportunities are crucial for retention because it prevents talented employees from leaving for better prospects elsewhere. Providing career growth pathways helps in maintaining a motivated and loyal workforce. ### What are the consequences of not sharing knowledge effectively within an organisation? When knowledge is not effectively shared, it leads to over-reliance on single individuals deemed as experts. This hinders others' learning and development, creating a knowledge bottleneck and leaving the organisation vulnerable if the expert leaves. ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation about the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You'll be able to catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify, and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf, and let's get going. Today is episode 40 with the title, rediscovering lost knowledge. And I have the absolute honor and privilege to be joined by Peter Edge. Peter described himself who is someone who is a former senior investigating officer for Merseyside Police, a professional speaker with over 40 years experience speaking before dinner on the subject of lost knowledge to customer service and after dinner on the lighter side of policing the inner city. It'd be interesting to find out what the lighter side is. When I asked Peter to describe his suit, he said he's walked the Camino to Santiago 3 times by 3 different routes. Hello, Peter. Welcome to the show. Hello, Jo. I'm it's Peter Edge: it's an absolute pleasure to be here, I have to say. I've been looking forward to it for quite a while. So Yeah. Joanne Lockwood: We've we've talked about it, and finally, we've got together. Got our diaries lined up in the end, didn't we? Yeah. It's pretty difficult, which which Peter Edge: you wouldn't believe really, would you, in this current climate? You'd think everyone would have all the time in the world, but it's so difficult to to to actually find the right time that coincides. Jo You spend a lot of time washing your hair for white hair. Yeah. That doesn't work too well on a podcast, does it really? Just for the benefit of your listeners. No. There's not that much hair on my head. There used to be a long time ago, but there's not been that much there for about the last 30 years. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So, yeah, washing my hair and all that all that, that hysteria about finally being able to go to the hairdressers that people were experiencing towards the end of lockdown was unfortunately lost on me. A quick robot with some wet and dry sandpaper, and I'm I'm usually good for the solution. It is. Joanne Lockwood: You're probably gonna tell me you won't worry about the nail bars and having your nails done either. What would yeah. Sausage Peter Edge: rate. Sausage rate. Joking. Yeah. Yeah. I'm afraid, yeah, a a long time ago, I stopped looking in the mirror and thinking, oh, you look good. Nowadays, I just look away. I don't I don't I don't bother. It doesn't it doesn't appeal to you. The mirror, make sure that you you can see the breath marks on the Joanne Lockwood: mirror still. Yeah. Yeah. You look good. I'm still breathing. Yes. Yeah. Peter Edge: That's that's nice. Thing I check each day. And then as far as I'm concerned, that's a winner. I'm on it for on it for the rest of the day then. Yeah. So I can live with that. That'll do. Joanne Lockwood: Another day done. Brilliant. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Okay. So tell me, we talked about earlier, you talked about this rediscovering lost knowledge. So talk to me about this lost knowledge you talk about. Well, Peter Edge: I don't know whether it's Jo much about rediscovering it. It's more about capturing and and retaining lost knowledge. And it's something I I I became interested in some years ago, not least of which because I I I thought to myself, here we all are as as probably the most sophisticated animal on the planet, and we are accumulating knowledge. Plug a USB stick into your left ear hole and download it. And, you know, what happens to it all? And particularly, what happens to specialist knowledge or, you know, really valuable knowledge that really, really makes a difference? What do we do with it? And we don't seem to to to to value it to the extent that we're we're gonna do it do anything proactive to to to save it or retain it. And and there were 22 little things which really, really got me going, one of which was a conversation with a really good friend of mine, called Jed, who was a was a teacher. And he was he came late to teach him. You know, he did previously worked on the production line at Ford's. And he he took to teaching like a doctor Walter, and the kids loved him. The parents loved him. Everyone loved him. He was a great teacher. And just before he retired, couple of years ago now, he went in to see his head teacher, and his head said, you know what, Jed? If we could bottle what you have as a teacher, this wouldn't just be a good school. This would be an outstanding school. And then he let him walk away. And Jed left that school in possession of knowledge, wisdom, charisma, x fact, whatever you call it, that had the capability of taking that school from being good to outstanding. And he let it walk away. And I thought, like, you know, that's a hell of a waste. What a waste of knowledge. And then shortly after that, I opened this Jo many times one day, and and there was a a headline. This is the thing that struck me as a as a police officer of a of a certain vintage. And there was a picture I don't even remember the television series, you know, Life on Mars and then the subsequent one, Ashes to Ashes, which was set in the sort of late seventies, early eighties with all these archetypal detectives and, you know, big collars and flares and all that sort of stuff. But it was a picture from that television series, and it was, I think, Keeley Hawes and Philip Glynnister were 2 of the main characters sat on the bonnet of a, I don't know, Cortina or an Audi or something that'd been using as a police car. And the headline read, MET Stumped by Case of Disappearing CID. And the article was all about how the Metropolitan Police in London, you know, the biggest police force in the country, the most powerful police force probably in the world with, you know, with a global reach and with, you know, a national responsibility for the investigation of terrorism and various other types of crimes, were losing detectives, the then assistant commissioner of what had happened was that the the then assistant commissioner for for crime operations, Pat Gallant, had written to every detective due to retire in that year and said and implored them to stay to stay on and to act as mentors for junior detectives coming through. Now it it appealed to me because I know Pat Gallagher, and she she wouldn't implore anyone to do anything, really. So it came as a real surprise that, you know, in in this very short time window, she had realized, hang on. We're gonna lose all these people, and we haven't got the experience and the knowledge coming through to be replaced. So what are we gonna do? And so, you know, cobbled with the the story from my other friend, Jed, and this, it it just really got me thinking about, you know, what do businesses, what do organizations, what do bodies do to firstly, identify the value of knowledge in their organizations and then do something to, to to capture it or to to safeguard their organization against its loss. So that prompted me to do a lot of reading around the subject, and that prompted me then to to to come up with a a talk and and some various other things that I've done around the subject of lost knowledge with an overall framework of knowledge management, strategic knowledge management, risk assessments, preparation, all that sort of stuff. So so that's what I've been talking about recently and doing quite a bit of writing about as well. One, because it intrigued me, and 2, because I I hate waste. Any sort of waste, I hate. And and the idea that you can waste knowledge just it's it's sinful to to me. So does that does that put Joanne Lockwood: that You're so right. Yeah. That's next. Companies lose vast amounts of knowledge and experience. And when we're looking at, you know, building more inclusive cultures, when we talk about staff retention, when we talk about the business because actually value the staff retention in the lost knowledge, the retraining, the onboarding, the empty seat cost and the opportunity lost. Oh, yeah. People move on. And it is a real business expense that people really don't always quantify enough, don't understand that cost is lost knowledge. Peter Edge: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I did when I was reading around the subject, I read a report, and I think it was called pretty catchy title called The Cost of Brain Drain, which I think was done by Oxford Economics. And I think they surveyed across something like 5 sectors, so from retail through to legal. And they estimated, I think, that the average cost, average mind, of replacing a member of staff getting paid £25,000 a year. Salary was between £20,040,000. The lower end for retail, the higher end for for legal. And you think, hang on, 40 has about to replace someone. So that's, you know, all the different costs that you just described there. So, you know, the the recruitment costs, the retraining, the onboarding, the dip in productivity while they bring people up to speed. And there was quite a debate on on on the Internet connected to the to the reports, and people said, Jo, that's way too much. And then the more and more people came in, particularly people from, you know, established HR functions and some of the big hitters, it became quite clear that that, as an estimate, was was pretty conservative. And if you think about it as as an employer, as as an organization, and I I used this the the the other day, if that's happening to you time after time after time, then your your organizational performance is is gonna be on this roller coaster of, you know, dips in productivity while you retrain and recruit someone, dips in productivity while somebody else goes or you hadn't anticipated, and you get them retrained or you get somebody in or you get a temp. And who really wants to run an organization that's on a roller coaster of performance? Surely surely, your business trajectory should be smoother, slightly elevated, continuous improvement Jo you can plan, so you know and can predict where you're heading. But, no, organizations still seem to, not everyone, but still seem to have this, this this almost blind spot to to to knowledge and its value. And it all boils down to, for me, a reluctance or an inability perhaps sometimes to to recognize the value that individuals bring to the organization in terms of the knowledge that they have. And that comes down to leadership, it comes down to basic things like staff appraisal type reports, it comes down to performance measurements, you know, the sort of performance measures that the businesses use, what do they see as evidence of their success, and how do they tie that to individual employees and say, hang on. Hang on. Joe, get in here. Joe, do you realize you're brilliant at what you do? Why are you so much better than Peter? Where's the gap? Where's the gap in the knowledge? Where's the gap in in, you know, that x factor that you have that they don't? Because we we should. We've got a responsibility to use that. So we've not only got a responsibility to tell you that you're great at what you do, but as as your manager, as your leader, surely I've got a responsibility to find out why you're so good at what you do so that I can apply that knowledge to other employees in this organization for the overall benefit of the organization. Surely, that's what continuous improvement's about. But people don't. And, you know, they don't read the clues. And there are so many examples of this not knocking about. You know, I I use an example in in one of the talks of someone who who worked with my wife. Now my wife works for a clinical commissioning group, which is the, you know, the modern day iteration. It won't be around for much longer, I don't think, but of the primary care trust, so in the National Health Service. And she worked with someone who had worked with this particular group since its inception. So this person had seen it move from being a primary care trust through various, metamorphosis through to the clinical commissioning group. She had all the corporate memory, She had all the processes, all the people. She'd be in the journey all the way through. And she became, I suppose, a little bit dissatisfied or disillusioned or wanted to go somewhere else and started looking for a Jo, found a job, went to her bosses, her leaders in in this group and said, listen. I've got a new job. I'm quite happy to work my notice, whatever it was, a month, 3 months. But you might wanna put someone with me to, you know, to empty me out, to to to to shadow me in this next however many months and try and absorb all that and capture some of that accumulate. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much. And they never came back to her. And And she went back and said, remember, I'll I'll be going. It's it's only another it's only another 2 weeks now, and I'll I'll be out of here. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah. But they did nothing about it, and she left. And the next thing, immediately after she'd gone, you know, there's a knock on the door and, hi. Can you just tell me, who who did we go to for the maintenance contract on I don't know. She used to look after that. Oh, right. Somebody else had ring you know, who did the negotiations for the contract on such and such? No idea. She had all that. Oh, where do we get and it it was just one thing after another. And, you know, you okay. You perhaps don't measure the performance of an organization like that quite in the same way as you might have an organization that's making widgets and grommets. But, you know, their ability to to to perform and seamlessly and and in an upward trajectory was deeply affected just by this one person and this group. This one person was not at the top of the organization. This one person was way down in the in the organizational food chain, for one sort of a better expression, but their knowledge was absolutely vital, and nobody had recognized it despite all the clues, despite this person always coming and, like, sticking a post it note on the face of the boss saying, I'm important. No one acknowledged it. No one recognized it. Nobody took the time or made the efforts to capture the knowledge that she had. They walked out the door. And that's a sin. It really is. And you can almost understand why Joanne Lockwood: they walked out the door because they weren't being recognized for their their whole part of the bigger process. They weren't badly used. They weren't treated as an important component. Peter Edge: Yeah. And and that's one of the the the very points I make in in in the talk is that if you do recognize it really bothers me that that there is, there is a a a meaning attributed to that little sort of trite HR expression, reward and recognition. Reward and recognition is is about giving people, you know, a gold watch or a voucher for OZDA. It's not about saying to them, Joe, we recognize that, actually, if you didn't do what you do, this business would fall over. You're really good at what you do. That's recognition. And it bothers me that things like staff appraisal processes are so one-sided. They're things that we do to people. Whereas, for me, in this context of lost knowledge, it should be the other way around. It should be inviting in the a valuable employee and saying, how come you do so well? Tell tell us the organization so that we can capture it, as I said before, for the benefit of the organization. And actually telling someone that they're a key person, that they are valued, as you say, that might be the difference between them walking out the door and not. That might be the the difference between them sitting there and puffing out with pride in me. Oh, nobody's ever told me that before. I'm actually valued. And that, you know, it it it breeds loyalty. It breeds self esteem. It breeds cohesion in a team. Self respect you know, the the benefits of doing it are just immeasurable, but the downsides of not doing it are catastrophic potentially. So why aren't people doing it? That's the thing for me. Oh, and as Joanne Lockwood: as we as we know ourselves, the facts don't change people. We know this stuff. We don't address it, do we? And as you were talking, I was thinking, well, are we still living in a world, this command and control hierarchical infrastructure where everyone believes it's all process driven and everyone's just a part of a cog? But what the way that we're moving in workplace has become more complex, we've got more parts, more interactions, not just because of digital, it's because the way we're evolving as a society. And we're all becoming artists and specialists in our craft, and that craft may well be policy processing, it may be admin but it's still we're putting our own knowledge and skill into this, not just following a production on a process. I don't think organizations truly appreciate the artisan inside us, The creation we bring as an individual, they just see us as a cog, replaceable cog, and that's exactly what you're pointing out here as well. Peter Edge: Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, it dovetails so neatly with there was a piece I wrote some, like, probably years ago now on on on LinkedIn called lazy leaders leaders don't listen. And it's all about, if you're in a leadership role, you are obliged to proactively listen with all of your senses to what's going on around you. Because if you don't know your stuff, if you don't know what makes them tick, if you don't know and appreciate the contribution they make, you know, who oils the wheels, who do I rely on, who do we go to in a crisis, If you don't know those things, how are you ever going to protect the organization from losing the knowledge that those people hold? And so, you know, you you really do. You you you've got to let let well, get to know all of your people or as many as you can at a at a completely different level, you know, a level that that allows you to to sort of come into work and and look at Joe and say, I can tell right now. I know Joe so well. I can tell right now that something's not right. Joe, come on in. What's not right? Well, it's this. And when, you know, when when you get that sort of level, that sort of interaction, okay, you know, the person even if you work in a hierarchy, the person at the very top of the tree may not know that. But if the person further down who's managing the team or the person who's managing the manager of the team knows that, then at least there is a, you know, that there is a way of using that that that knowledge and that familiarity to to to make sure that you don't then lose the knowledge, that it doesn't walk out the door, that, you know, you Joanne you can turn it back on the organization for the benefit of the organization. That's that's that's what I'm getting at, really. But, of course, the one was you talked about artisan there. It's just it's really, really it it it rang home to me because it when I mentioned that I speak about this to anyone, anyone at all, Everyone's got an example of it. I was out for a walk a couple of weeks ago with a mate of mine and his son-in-law. I don't know his son-in-law particularly well, but he works in manufacturing, and and they they make electrical components. And I was talking about this. He says, god, you're so right. You know, we've we've got a fellow works for us. And he's the only person doing this particular job. Now they these people make specialist electrical components, for example, for wiring in space. So this one guy has been doing the same job for 40 years. Now that immediately should have hold the alarm bell. And if he falls over, that part of the business is gone. And it's not just gone for now. It's gone forever. But it's not even just about making the components. This guy weaves these these amazing cables, I think by Joanne, but he he weaves them Jo that they can withstand the temperatures in space because they get used in space. It really is rocket science. So he weaves these cables, but because he understands the process, he is also the only person that knows how to write the tender form. So when they're looking to win business, they rely on the sky to write the tender, to understand the market, to put the business cap. So you take that all all of that out of that manufacturing business, and it's a huge hole. And not only that, but it's, you know, it's a valuable piece of of manufacturing, the the the ability to to to complete as it which of which is gone. 1, you know, one of the guys I go out motorcycling with, he's the same. He's he's a he's an engineer who has a skill in what they call white meddling, and it's a dying skill. There's not that much call for it, but once it's gone, it's gone. And, again, the the sort of the the the waste of that is is is criminalized. Joanne Lockwood: Well, I knew a person in my network, this is probably 10, 15 years ago. And he was now doing a role completely different. I got to know him one day and I said, so what have you been doing? He said, well, I used to run my own multimillion pound manufacturing company supplying this product into this niche market for years. I was the only person that made this in the world as a niche product. I said, oh, what happened to that? He said, well, one of the key components of that product became obsolete and nobody in the world manufactured an equivalent component. We spent 5 years r and d trying to work around this product, this component, see if we Joanne reinvent it. And what we eventually had to do was say, there's only a 1,000 of these left in the world, and then we we close our business because they couldn't invent a a word about this this one component. And that's exactly if you can do that with a component, we don't see it with a person, don't we? And that's Absolutely. Yeah. There are r and d teams in electronics, and and they're all looking for different ways of Yeah. Working around when that transistor or resistors circuit chip goes out obsolete. We think about that, but we don't think about the people doing. No. No. And and, you know, Peter Edge: well, one of the other examples I I use, which is not in in such a sophisticated field, if you think back to the Roman Empire and the construction of the Colosseum, the Colosseum and, I think, is it the Pantheon, are 2 of the last constructions, and they are both still with us today, which used a material called concrete. There was nothing made of concrete from the end of the Roman Empire in about whatever it was, 467 or something, AD, I can't remember the date exactly, until about 1783, I think it was, when concrete was used to make the Eddystone Lighthouse. So for about, you know, 1200 years, concrete wasn't used. Why? Because someone lost the recipe. Someone in the Roman Empire lost the recipe for concrete. Now you think how many things were built, how many civilizations were built during that period, that 1200 year period, and think how different a lot of that might have been if concrete had been available and been used. But it wasn't. And and that's just one example. And and I but worldwide, that would have been amazing. You know, you think about the bridges that could have been made, you know, the the thoroughfares, the roads, the sea defenses, whatever. It might it might have changed the whole shape of the globe as we know. We just don't know. But but all because someone lost that little snippet of information, that little piece of knowledge that said, oh, actually, if you burn lime like this and you mix it with that and then you combine it with that and put it with this and put so much water and so much stone, it makes this really dead hard compound. But, no, gone. It's fascinating. It's absolutely fascinating. Isn't it? We're doing that now, aren't we? Joanne Lockwood: Even in the modern times, we're we're now devolving certain skills where lock tables, slide rules, I mean, just an example of that. If you showed a slide rule to a young person, they'd look at you like you were crazy. You calculate and even a slide rule that does log tables, what would you why would you want to do with logarithms and it's like, oh, that's because you add instead of multiply, it's a lot easier apparently And so we're losing the knowledge of those things that have been succeeded. Yeah. We're losing the ability to write. We're losing the ability to have conversations. We lose it because we're kind of re evolving ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. We just have maths. We don't do mental maths anymore, do we? It's I know. It's got a hair clip. There's Peter Edge: Jo need. There's there's no need. But but it's not just about it's not just, you know, what I talk about, it's not just about saving, if you like, excuse me, knowledge in danger of extinction. You know, I use extinction in the same context as I might with with animals. You know, this isn't something that's just dying out. I I I think my my my interest in it is is in how it gets lost from organizations, how it's not used and not maximized for the benefit of organizations, and how organizations and business go through this this cycle of losing it, rediscovering it, losing it, rediscovering it, retraining, reemploying, recruiting when when they don't really need to do all of that stuff or they could avoid a huge amount of the percentage of the cost of doing it and the time of doing it and the impact on their business of doing it by thinking about it beforehand and properly recognizing, properly appreciating what it means, who that knowledge is vested in, and doing something about it at the time. There you go. That's me. I was actually chatting to my daughter last night, and Joanne Lockwood: she my daughter is the manager of an early years, playgroup for children preschool. And she has a a really high staff turnover for various reasons. Some of it is the culture. Some of it is the the fact due to COVID, you could they used to do it on the on the job. You you come and try out for a week before you before you said, yeah, I like the job. So there's understanding what it's like. It's not it's not just babysitting on steroids. This is like proper childcare, the pause off schedule, this kind of thing. So it's not just babysitting. A lot of people come into this as a profession, not realizing the true depth of what it means to be an early years carer educator. And so what she's finding is is because she's the the manager of the of the of the nursery where she is, most of her a lot of her role is training and onboarding. So because she's got a high turnover staff, she's always onboarding. She's always going through the same process time and time again for people who often stay a week or 2 weeks. And for her, it's obviously distracting her from being a better manager and leader because she's so busy doing the training, but also is demoralizing her because she feels so thankless that she's not enjoying her role. So the knock on effect of this retention challenge, the knock on effect of this constant replacement, the knock on effect is you're demoralizing the people that are still there. You're also this is Groundhog Day again and again and again, which erodes the business's ability to move forward. And and that's where she's really getting frustrated with her job. And it struck me as you were talking that that is another side effect of this churn and turnover that people don't even always consider. Constant reinvention of the Peter Edge: wheel, you know, which is swallowing up resources, time. It's swallowing up goodwill and loyalty. It's it's it's swallowing up all the positivity out of people. It's it's a proper mood over, you know, just constantly redoing the same thing when all it needs, really. Well, not be maybe not all it needs, but but one other thing is someone just to break that cycle, step outside it, and think, hang on. We need to take a different look at this. Why do we keep going through this cycle of recruitments and retraining and loss when we should actually be looking at our people and risk assessing the likelihood of them going. That's one of the aspects of this. And people say, oh, how'd you do that? You know? Well, ask them for a start. You know? What are your plans for the next couple of years? Or, you know, you look at someone and and you you can you can make reasonable comparisons. You know? Well, actually, if you're a lazy leader that doesn't listen, you wouldn't know this. But if you've done your listening, if you've paid attention, you say, well, I know Joe and her husband have just moved into, 43 Crowley Drive because they were talking about it at the coffee machine the other day. They've got a whopping big mortgage, but they've said that's their forever house, not least of which because they're planning to have kids. They've got a great primary school around the corner, and they wanna stay there. And it's really handy for for Joe's work here at our business. Well, you know, there's a load of clues in there, isn't there? But this person is unlikely to want to move on. If, however, you look at Peter and you see that, actually, you look at his HR record and Peter's had 5 jobs in the last 6 years, Every time he's he's taken a slight increase in salary and he's taken a slight increase, he's got he's got a career in mind. This he's ambitious. Well, that might be the point at which you get Peter Joanne you say, Peter, what are your plans? I noticed this about you, but, you know, we we really value what you do here. We don't wanna lose you. Again, go back to that valuing and that self esteem and all that sort of stuff. Well, Peter might actually then say, well, I'll tell you what. If you don't want me to to go, the reason I'd go is because I, you know, I need to have an increment or I need to have a bit more responsibility. I need to have some progression, and this place doesn't offer me a progression. Okay. Well, that's when you start looking at your HR policies, your HR services, and and say, well, maybe we can offer you that progression. What would it take to keep you? Because we don't wanna lose you. Now I'm not saying you let everyone hold you to hostage hold hold you to ransom, sorry, but but there are things that you can do if you're looking, if you're listening, if you're properly thinking about risk assessments of the people that are gonna go. You know, risk assessments is, you know, risk equals, you know, probability by consequences. You know, so how likely is something gonna happen? How much damage is it gonna do to you? If you've got 20 people all doing the same job, the loss of one of them doesn't really mean an awful lot. If you've got one person like this guy weaving cables for space, one person doing one job, he's been doing it for 40 years, his departure is a significantly bigger risk to the organization. It's simple as that nice mere cat on the telly says. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I I mean, we we know that we should be doing succession planning. We know that we shouldn't because for the individual, yes, they may feel special. They're the only person. They may feel that give us an security. There's immense amount of pressure to be the only one. Yeah. Because, I mean, I I've been an example in my own career where I was always the one that people asked all the questions to rather rather than spend time investigating, spend time using their own brains, they knew that if they asked me the question, they get an answer and it would save them having to think about it. So the danger of that is you create this environment where nobody thinks, nobody investigates, nobody does the finding out, they just keep going back to the original person, which puts a burden on them as being their expert. Also, it means they never learned, they never developed their career, they never experienced it. And then when you're a manager or you're a delegate, you say, who should I give this task to? You go, well, nobody else knows. I might as well give it to the person who's the expert. And so we never actually as a leader say, actually, if I can't give it to anybody else, that should be a flag. I should be going, well, actually, I need to be able to give it to somebody else Exactly. Because our rocket scientist here is already working on the next space shuttle. We need to go to Mars, so I need somebody else to come in. And Yeah. That's what leaders don't always focus on is this succession. Yeah. And the as you say, the lost knowledge, the knowledge that will be lost. Do that. I don't do that Peter Edge: dynamically. You know, you can do that sort of risk assessment. You know, it doesn't have to be a big complicated process. But if you ask yourself a number of questions, as I said before, you know, is this the only person doing this job and they don't have a deputy? Is this person the go to person in a crisis? Has this person got all the contacts inside or outside the organization? Then that's gonna be flagging it up to you that you've got a problem, and that person represents a risk, and the loss of their knowledge represents a risk to the organization to do something about it. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I I I stick about the word prehistoric just now as you're talking. And I was just, I just thought prehistoric, that's dinosaurs, that's all this of like meteors and volcanic eruptions and prehistoric. I never understood what prehistoric meant is pre history, is before history was recorded. So we never had language, we never had a way of recording it, or there was no humans enabled to pass that knowledge down. So there was nothing existed that we have any knowledge about other than what we could find out from the past evidence. And we as humans started creating history at the point where we became or language evolved through cave paintings, through round the fire storytelling, passing that knowledge down through generations. But I'm guessing that in those days, the process that we we worked on was very simplistic. It was how to kill the mammoth. It was how to cook or skin it. It was how to build a hut. So the the process driven stuff was was our lives are much simpler, but we haven't evolved the modern equivalent of the, the sagas, storytelling in a way that we always effectively pass down? Is it and that's I'd like to think because a lot of our processes are now so much more complex and I don't have that mentality of of of passing it on so much. Well, again, and this again, this is one of the things Peter Edge: that really interests me about this. I mean, my sort of I was lucky enough to to be selected for a scholarship to go to university when I was in the place, and I studied psychology and communication studies. And one of the things we did in communication studies was about storytelling and cultural transmission through myth and storytelling. And you talk about prehistoric. Jo some of the the most successful cultures and when I talk about successful, I mean in being able to manage some of the harshest environments on the planet. So so some of the most successful cultures, you know, never have access to an iPad. They they sat around a campfire. And by some means, as you say, through fireside chat, myth, whatever, they were able to convey all those messages, hunt the mammoth, how to skin it and make it into a kebab or whatever it might be. But but they did it, and and they survived today. You know, the the Aboriginals in Australia, some South American native Indians in in the depths of the Amazon. You know, they haven't changed for 1000 and 1000 of years in some respects, but they have survived this incredibly harsh environment and learned how to survive in that incredibly harsh environment purely by cultural transmission through myth and storytelling. An example. I I was on a call the other day, and and and someone sort of made the observation that the the the the office water cooler is is is prehistoric fireside, and it yeah. It might well be that there's an awful lot of the stuff that I'm talking about that does get passed on at the water cooler, at the coffee machine, in the breakout lounge, whatever it might be. But you've gotta be aware of it. You've gotta be alive to it. You've gotta be receptive to it, and then you've gotta do something about capturing it. So there needs to be perhaps some more formal friendly Joanne Lockwood: workplace. I'm hearing a lot of that where as we're we're approaching the end of this phase of COVID where lockdown's ending and and now there's this huge debate around whether we stay remote workers, whether we hybrid, whether we go back to the office. And there's some big key corporate influencers are saying that one thing that's been lost over COVID is the the water cooler, that ad hoc mentoring, that ad hoc help. And and I and I was sitting there thinking, yeah, okay. I get that. So we've we've when we've when we've got trainees, we've got people who are learning their skills, apprentices. We've got people who have been mentored and developed in the organization. And then maybe they haven't got that at close contact where that's happening. I was saying, well, it's the only answer to that to go back in the office. So we're saying is the only way that paradigm works is by going back to the office. Or can we say, what we're doing now in this hybrid world, we're missing this element, we haven't got that right. How could we solve that with the only answer isn't coming back to the office? Yeah. And there are companies out there that have never had an office. Yeah. They've developed all their products with people around the world. They have thrived and succeeded. I mean, nobody owns Bitcoin, yet Bitcoin has somehow become pervasive. There's probably someone listening to this don't tell me actually I'm wrong. There is somebody that's doing this and Elon Musk has the power or something. But we've we've gotta say to ourselves is just because that's the only way we could do it before, doesn't mean to say that's the only way we can do it in the future. So I think what I'd like to see is is business, working habit, working practice evolving to a point where we keep what we need to occur, but the answer isn't always by the way we always did it. Yeah. Yeah. How do we reinvent process? How do we create new spaces? Peter Edge: Absolutely. And again, it's one of the key points I make in my lost knowledge talk is that one of the biggest casualties of COVID has been the absence of physical contact. And when I talked before about, you know, lazy leaders don't listen, you've got to be receptive to the clues, all the clues that come with that sort of three-dimensional contact rather than the two dimensional Zoom type call or Teams type call, all those little nuances of behavior, the body language, the little things you see, the gestures, the bit that you might pick up at the car park, the you know, Jo suddenly having a bit of a moment at her desk and rushing off to the toilets for a week or Simon on sale suddenly fist pumping because he's just, you know, secured. And you you don't see any of that because we live in this sort of sterilized little we've got a 40 minute zoom. It's in 2 dimensions, and that's it. So, yeah, you've gotta find a way of capturing all the other that third dimension of communication, all those little bits. But you're absolutely right, in my humble opinion. It may not be that, well, actually, we've all got to go back to the office to do that. Maybe there's other ways of doing that. I I don't know what they are, but as you say, there's gonna be businesses and organizations that are doing that. What are they doing? Joanne Lockwood: I mean, the other argument I've heard is that we need to get to work to socialize, to have human contact. There's a stat on how many people's relationship and marriages have been created in a work environment. I thought, okay, this is what we're doing here. We're trying to retrofit observation with reality. And I think, well, if you take the world of work back 50 to 100 years, most of the people in work were all men, yes, people still managed to get married. So we managed to get married before workplaces were mixed. We managed to evolve, we managed to socialize and contact before women went into the workplace and when women were exclusively in the workplace when the men were at war, we still managed to have families and get married as well. So the workplace doesn't have to be the place where you can or have to meet your partner. And when they were saying we have to go back to the office to socialize, I said, no, we don't. What we need to do is we need to have socialization. So if I'm not spending 3 hours of my day commuting and working late and being in an office, that means I've got 3 hours where I can go to the gym, I can hang out locally, I can do enrichment in college, I can meet other people in my community. So I can socialize locally, not think that the work is my place for socialization. So again, what we're trying to do is is trying to force the old paradigms back into saying, well, we need it to socialize, we need it for growth, we need it for networking, we need it for human contact. Now how about we don't go to the office and we build that in our community and we build what we used to have, the campfire, the village faith, the church, whatever whatever our our root of community is, and we reestablished that rather than people sitting like drones on a train commuting for 4 hours, using this fossil fuel, wasting their time, coming home drained, not having family time, not talk not not pass on their knowledge to their children because they're so tired, The children end up learning from somebody else's book and not your knowledge. That's what I wanna see is the artisan taking empowerment into our own lives and bringing having control over our life again, not being a slave to the machine, and that's that's really why. And I it really frustrates me when people say the only answer is go back to work. No. That's that's an answer, but not the answer. Yeah. Yeah. No. That I Peter Edge: think you're entirely right. And I'm hopeful hopeful that some of the more forward thinking organizations will have picked up on that and will have alternatives. If they've not designed them yet, they'll be thinking about them and doing some research on them because there will be. I read a book, it was recommended by Allan Stevens, actually, by a fellow called Ricardo Semler. I don't know if you have read it. It's called Maverick. And this is a guy who who ran a company called Semco in Brazil, big manufacturing company. And basically, he turned the whole sort of organizational management norms on their head. You know? Well, how much holiday do you give your employees? How much do they need? Jo I let them decide. You know, they're grown ups. If they need a day off, they can have a day off. Well, what hours are you gonna tell them to work? Well, why would I tell them what hours to work? You know, they know what the product is that we wanna do. They know how many we wanna produce. If they can do it in that time, and, you know, just everything, really, that that was, oh, well, how can you do that? Are you We've never done that before. Nobody ever does that. Well, why not? Why not give it a will? And his his company, I don't know what it's doing now because it's quite an old book, but he's now, I think, a lecturer at some, like, Harvard or Yale or some top American business school. And his business at the time just went from strength to strength to strength to strength, you know, because they found different ways of doing things instead of just rooting everything in the past and chop chop, busy busy work, work, bang bang, we're just gonna do the same as we've always done because, as they say, you do the same as you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. So, yeah, it was a really interesting read. Yeah. And if you get good shareholder Joanne Lockwood: return, you you've got good good income. Well, why do I need to change? What we're doing works. But it never evolves. And I think I mean, I love that concept where there's plenty of organizations now where you get unlimited holiday, you you you pick your own holiday, you pick your own hours, and there's still this command and control traditional way of working with, I can't see you at your desk, this presenteeism mentality, if I can't see you, I can't trust you. If I can't see what you're doing, I don't know what you're doing. I've got a I've got a spy for the watch. I've got a police you and make sure that you're you're delivering. But but we forget often that I think 67% of the UK population adult population are working for small businesses of that number. A large percentage of those are solopreneurs, managing and building their own businesses that they've built, and they manage inherently their own time and react to customers. So what we're doing is we're effectively telling employees they can't be entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial as is we've got to treat them like children, we can't treat them like adults. And, okay, there are some people who need structure, they need to have work in that environment. But when we start treating people like children, they start acting like children and they want to be spoon fed, they want to be told. Whereas you look at all the people maybe that they've been parents, there's no time scale on being a parent, you just be a parent, so your children don't die, they still survive. So you're gonna be really, really careful that we what we Jo, we we put these biases on people and these believing that they're gonna slack or not do their job or their role if we can't see them at all or keep control of them. I'm gonna have faith in people that by treating them in that way of allowing to have unlimited, allowing to pay them whatever their hours are and measure them on output of real value and delivery and and set clear expectations about what their output is, then they can match their own. If I if I wanna get up at 3 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday and go, oh, I haven't done that presentation, let me do it now for Monday morning, and then I can have line on Monday morning, why not? Why can't I work at this house? But the expectation today is that if I want to wake up on Saturday morning at 3 o'clock and do that, I still have to be there first thing Monday. There's no pre quote, quote. There's no sliding scale where I Joanne adapt. It's it's what I was saying Peter Edge: before. It's it's about recognizing where the value sits in the individual and the way they do their job and their knowledge. You know, your value in that scenario sits at 3 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, not at 9 o'clock as you Lockwood, ka ching, walk through the door of of your factory or your office block or your training room or whatever it might be. But, you know, you'll never establish that if if you don't trust people. If you don't trust people, then you can never properly see the value of what they they do because they won't let that out. They they won't give you it. They'll they'll hold it and they'll be that. Then particularly around things like knowledge and specialist knowledge, they'll hold that that in in some sort of very selfish golem sort of like way. Am I crazy? I'm going to hold my knowledge Joanne no one's gonna share it because that's my power because no one trusts me. But I've got this. And as long as I've got this, I'm safe. And, you know, part of this process for the day will be is still what Joanne Lockwood: happens because Oh, yeah. Of course it is. Of course it is. Peter Edge: But you've gotta sort of prize that out and say, hang on. We're all in this together. You're doing a great job. What happens if you fall over? Well, that's not my problem. Well, it's gonna be my problem, so I wanna equip myself to deal with it. So let's sort of why are we gonna deal with it? Joanne Lockwood: But that's that's about, again, about how you value people, how you create this culture of belonging. When people have this psychological safety, they don't feel in fear of their job and they don't fear if they share their knowledge, that devalues their contribution. And that's what we're gonna try and do is make sure people are valued for the sharing, not the hoarding. And I think the other thing that's evolving at the moment is this concept of asynchronous communication. In the past, we had to have that interactive chat at the cooler, we had to have that phone call, Joanne you, you answer it, but we it's real time. But now we're moving on to a more asynchronous way where you say to me, I'd like this done at some point in the next few days to do the task. I then receive that in my timescale and I reply to you within the timescale required. We don't need to have an interactive conversation. So I'm not interrupting you, you're not interrupting me. I could pick off my work queue and put it back on the done queue. I think we're evolving that with messaging and chat and people Jo, well, we're losing the human content. Well, fine, let's keep the human content in our social life. We don't have to socialize in work. As we're reminding ourselves, there are other opportunities to socialize if we're not tied to the desk. And we can be very efficient in communicating asynchronously, delivering work queues, delivering output, and give ourselves real time to enjoy our family, enjoy lifestyle, enjoy well-being, enrich ourselves where work isn't the hub. And, of course, that scares the bejesus out of the boss. Bosses want to own you. They want to know they've got you because they're scared that your knowledge, as you say, your knowledge will walk. But have faith in people, they won't walk if you love them and value them. Yeah. That's the that's the that's the ratio we gotta change here, where people feel valued, and they they have the power to lead but never want to. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's Peter Edge: that's one of the the sort of key foundations of this if you're gonna make it work in an organization. I remember seeing something that might have been on Facebook or LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago now, and I think it was the boss of Netflix. And he he was exactly the same. You know, Netflix, Gunnar was absolutely successful they have particularly in the last 18 months. I think everybody if you were to drain a pint of blood off them, all the red blood cells would have Netflix Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think they've done Peter Edge: really well out of things, but, you know, their their sort of management structure, the way that they they manage their staff is is very much along the sort of collaborative, participative sort of framework that that you described there. You know, it's very loose, but it's very sort of appreciative. Yeah. We know the contribution you make. Again, no hard and fast rules about things like time off, annual leave, whatever it might be. You do the job and you're grown ups. And I think some of the most successful businesses in the in in the world are very much like that. And people need Positively do we do recognize that not Joanne Lockwood: everybody not everybody wants to work in that way. We have people who are neurodivergent, people who have different ways of thinking, different ways of being valued, we know it doesn't suit everybody. So we Joanne, yeah, whilst we're doing this work evolution, we have to recognize that some people still need structure, some people still need routine, some people still need to be told. Yeah. And sorted to that. And that's it. Yeah. And and, you know, you and and, you know, in terms of Peter Edge: the sort of the inclusion bites side of of of your podcast, that that is a realization, I think, that an awful lot of people need to come to that. Actually, there isn't one size fits all for for employees. You know? And whether that's in in, whether they work in an office, whether whether that's whether they work with computers, whether they work with other people, whether they need to communicate verbally or whether they can communicate electronically. All of those different variables that exist in the workplace will suit somebody, but they won't necessarily all suit everybody. And and to to try and inflict that. And we should look at the people who are displaced. Yeah. Yeah. We'll look at the people who are being displaced because Joanne Lockwood: if we're not traveling to the city, we're not working in office buildings, we're not buying lunch, we don't need security guards, we don't need transport. We don't need as many buses or trains. The infrastructure that we needed in the past where we had 100 of 1000 of people commuting in and out of cities, We don't need that anymore. The people involved in repairs and maintenance, we don't need to do that. No. No. Because we could just hop off. We got the in the Internet superhighway as we It was faster. Speed lines. Up in the air, doesn't it? Yeah. Doesn't it? Think about who's being displaced. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very important to think about who's being displaced, not look through our own privileged lens of this is how I think it must be good for everybody. So it is important to think about the impact on people who are being displaced by this change of working, and what can we do for their future of work to reinvent their roles in society or their career paths or their opportunities? And what does that look like in the future rather than just saying, well, we want a lot of IT whiz kids, or we want a lot of high flying solicitors or lawyers who can do things remotely, or AI is gonna replace all that. So, yeah, I think the future work has to consider all it, yeah, holistic, inclusive, and not just follow the money. It has to be there has to be some social equity in there as well. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wow. We've been talking for nearly an hour. That that's flown by, and we chat, obviously, for half an hour before we started on the on the recording. So amazing. I've actually loved this conversation, and and I always enjoy talking to half of them like anything else, Peter Edge: but I probably haven't got time to. No. We didn't we Joanne Lockwood: didn't talk about your 40 odd years in the in the, in the motorcycle police and your your stories from the Yeah. From from that time. To sign. Peter Edge: And I'm able to do a follow-up. I took yeah. We Jo yeah. We do Joanne Lockwood: a follow-up. Go on. But tell us how people can get a hold of you. So, I mean, why not? People can get a hold of you. You know, you you They can they can they can find me on LinkedIn, are you? Yeah. You Peter Edge: can find me on LinkedIn, where my sort of persona at the moment is certainly all about the lost knowledge speaking. The the after dinner side, find me at the website, which is www. Dotpeterege.net. You know, all my contact details are on LinkedIn, or you can email me at PeterEdge@sky.com. If you wanna listen to some of the stories from the Camino, I did 2 Camino podcasts. So just to reiterate that, it's the Camino plugcast. If you search that on Google, it will go straight to one of my 2 Caminos that I actually recorded, so either the Camino Portogues or the Camino Primitivo. So there's plenty there for you to get to get your teeth into. And we've got lots more to talk about on another one of these at some stage in the future, Joe. We have. No. And Joanne Lockwood: I think you you you wet my whistle with the the whole aspect of this lost knowledge. And I just thought it was really, really interesting to follow that. So thank you so much, really insightful. Well, a huge thank you to anyone who's listening in and made it to the end, really impressed. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for getting this far. So please do subscribe to keep updates on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast, that's B-I-T-E-S. I'm sure you've got some friends. I'm sure you must have some colleagues somewhere. So please tell them all about it. Share this with everybody you know because I've got a number of other exciting guests lined up. I'm sure you'd be inspired by over the next few weeks months. And, of course, maybe you, you're listening. If you'd like to be a guest, then come and let me know because I'd always welcome your suggestions, your feedback, how I can improve future shows and how we can improve things. So my name is Joanne Lockwood, jo. lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. It's been an absolute absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time. Peter Edge: Bye.