2 ■ What Is a Knowledge Café?

2.1. WHAT [THE HECK] IS A KNOWLEDGE CAFÉ?

I remember that—you know, I didn’t receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo café, in the cafés of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling.

—Eduardo Galeano

Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano said that he was educated in the café, not in the classroom, library, or conference. Today, most of my friends are bringing café to their classrooms, workshops, and conferences. My intention is not to diminish their indisputable knowledge powers, but knowledge exchange miracles have been happening at the café since time immemorial. Truth be said, many classrooms are becoming powerful cafés today. I want to choose my seat, not be seated by others. All of us know something others don’t know. Let’s hug halfway in the mug at the café. Let’s café our knowledge and knowledge-share in our café.

What Is the Origin of a Café?

Author Adam Gopnik, in his review of Shachar Pinsker’s book, A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (New York University), said that cafés “were essential social institutions of political modernity—caffeinated pathways out of clan society and into a cosmopolitan world. European cafés were ‘thirdspaces,’ neither entirely public nor entirely private, where revolutionary discourse flourished” (Gopnik, 2018). Gopnik argued that “the theory, associated with the eminent German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, is that the coffeehouses and salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in part, were foundations of the liberal Enlightenment—a caffeinated pathway out of clan society into cosmopolitan society. Democracy was not made in the streets but among the saucers” in the cafés. Difficult risk identification and analysis, difficult conversations, friendships, tête-à-tête, and comradery were formed in café-like environments.

Café is a social space, intentionally created outside the state’s direct control, work, home, conventional classroom, learning settings, boardrooms, or meeting places, for conversation, collaboration, and coffee or tea. It is the Shachar Pinsker’s “thirdspace,” where civil societies leave the first place (home) and second place (work) and start to flourish in unexpected ways.

Café as a social institution means many things to many people. To some, it’s an escape from the noise or quietness at the home of work. As seen in figure 3, it’s a melting pot for knowledge-curious project managers and knowledge workers. To others, it’s a theater of flirtation and romance or connection with a similar caffeinated person. While to some it is a central meeting place where your cup’s price or the choice of your tea doesn’t matter; the smell of food, the art, and simplicity makes all the difference.

So, what [the heck] is a Knowledge Café?

Knowledge management guru and conversational leadership father David Gurteen has been a forerunner of the Knowledge Café through his online blook, Conversational Leadership. If you want to know what already exists in terms of knowledge, walk around the café and check out the floorplan before sitting down. Take a break from the business of the day. Walk along some other creative minds in a café. According to May Wong (2014), walking can boost creative output by 60 percent. Enter the space where what the organization knows and what it should know intersects. As you determine the best spot to sit, let’s clarify the meaning of the term knowledge.

A Knowledge Café is the conceptual “home base” for knowledge management (KM) conversation. It’s as simple as a corner café—an unstructured, sometimes structured, and interactive ecosystem for generating ideas, sharing, communicating, and rejuvenating knowledge. It is a straightforward way to begin the conversation about KM. It’s the meeting point between knowledge workers and knowledge exchange. Here every knowledge worker has a voice, and no one is judged for their contributions at the café—it’s a “judgment-free” or “knowledge safe space.” We learn—agile, fast, collaborate, reflect, ask, and answer difficult questions at the café. As Adam Mitchinson and Robert Morris (2014) contended in their research, our focus must shift from the traditional way of learning to finding and developing individuals who are continually able to give up skills, perspectives, and ideas that are no longer relevant and learn new ones that are, challenge status quo, and do it again.

Complementary to the Knowledge Café is a knowledge fair. It is a knowledge event that showcases diverse information, learning styles, knowledge methods and management, and best practice in an organization. Here, knowledge users display what they know, how they capture, share, store, and where what they know resides. Knowledge fairs can be topic-specific or general. Knowledge fairs are put together out of curiosity to know what we know and who knows what.

When I put together my first knowledge fair and café several years ago, there were little to no works of literature on the café practice. More so, there are divergent opinions on how to realize it. I combined my knowledge fair with a Knowledge Café for one simple reason of bringing communities of practice, knowledge management enthusiasts, learners, innovators, knowledge brokers, mentors, and mentees together to showcase knowledge exchange or management methods, tools and techniques, activities, information management practices, silos-busting best practices, and KM technology enablers used by different users across the enterprise.

Yes, the café can be spontaneous or planned, small or large—the critical feature is the exchange and the volatility of knowledge flows.

I don’t believe in the one-size-fits-all approach for anything. Knowledge fair is an alternative to the traditional presentation-style gathering—speakers are optional. A knowledge fair gives attendees options to explore areas of knowledge and information of interest, what others are doing, how they manage knowledge, results, challenges, and to personally engage knowledge brokers (experts) and those who have best practice. There may be demonstrations and booths displaying information or knowledge management elements and best practices for attendees.

Like other types of fairs, there is a lot of interaction that may not be available in other settings. Attendees network and build teams to expand their knowledge, practices, and value realization. So, if you need to know how much your organization knows and understands and how much they share, call a knowledge fair. A knowledge fair alone is like “booths” and storefronts—but storefronts that are open and inviting; too many fairs are still “push” rather than that network kind of flow.

You may add a café to your knowledge fair too. It could be your knowledge town-hall meeting to tell-and-show your intellectual capital, those with institutional knowledge, where the knowledge and information are, best practice, build knowledge teams, communities of practice, mentors and mentees, and spark off the fire of an enterprise knowledge management.

Café is both physical space, virtual space, and a mindset.

Knowledge Café is a knowledge exchange tool or method, just like communities of practice, succession planning, leadership development, lessons learned, data and information management, mentoring, and so on. However, you can begin the conversation about any of these techniques at the café. I will explore the café and other KM techniques interface in chapter 10 when discussing methods and knowledge management tools. It can be virtual or face-to-face. You can learn, share, and exchange knowledge on every imaginable issue ranging from KM, business, risk, relational, family, improvement, best practices, new ideas, innovation, and more. I will explore how to organize a knowledge fair and café in chapter 4.

CONNECTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

There is an inextricable connection between knowledge and experience. Knowledge is the information and skills acquired through experience or education. Experience is the knowledge or skill acquired by a period of practical experience of something (Wilson, 2015). Knowledge—the most important currency in a project and knowledge economy—is often confused with data and information. My favorite definition of knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association. Experience is the key!

What Is the World Café, and How Does It Relate to the Knowledge Café?

It’s never enough just to tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people’s heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.

—John Seeley Brown (Brown & Duguid, 1996)

A similar concept to the Knowledge Café is the World Café—when you search online for “knowledge café,” you may also get results for “World Café.” I love it. The concepts are similar, but not the same. World Café uses seven design principles and a simple method “for engaging people in conversations that matter, offering an effective antidote to the fast-paced fragmentation and lack of connection in today’s world. Based on the understanding that conversation is the core process that drives personal, business, and organizational life, the World Café is more than a method, a process, or technique—it’s a way of thinking and being together sourced in a philosophy of conversational leadership.” The World Café is a more “structured conversational process for knowledge sharing. Groups of people discuss a topic at several tables, with individuals switching tables periodically and getting introduced to the previous discussion at their new table by a table host” (www.theworldcafe.com).

The Knowledge Café I’m espousing is a KM technique, a mindset, and a space; held at the location and time agreed by participants, it has ground rules and conversational covenant for knowledge workers to make sense of what they know and identify the “aha!” moment of what they know. The Knowledge Café can be both structured and unstructured.

Knowledge is contextual. Wisdom is contextual. Knowledge Café is also contextual. Knowledge Café is different from World Café because it could be both structured and unstructured, and the purpose is for knowledge exchange, transfer, and reinvigoration (see table 2). You can use the café for a variety of reasons and purposes to exchange ideas and revivify knowledge—it may be project-specific. Still, you can have a café to answer questions related to family, friendship, or business.

Knowledge Café is also a knowledge management technique—a systematic approach for managing organizational knowledge. Why? When you steward knowledge by capturing, sharing, circulating, or exchanging it, you manage knowledge. It involves identifying, understanding, and using knowledge to achieve organizational objectives and innovating. It brings a group’s collective knowledge to the surface. It stimulates collective intelligence to promote learning between group members. The conceptual café creates an ecosystem that gains a deeper understanding of topics, issues, and KM best practices. Collaboration is a vehicle for the creation of new knowledge. Knowledge Café is the enabler.

Café can be used for a variety of scenarios that I’ll show you in this book. No matter where you are in your KM journey; initiation of strategies or call to action; developing an enterprise strategy; designing and implementing KM capabilities; or evolving, maturing, and sustaining, café conversation is the mindset and space for engagement. The simplicity of the café model against the traditional and intimidating restaurant format of KM makes it easier for me to use this technique at home, with my board members, teams at the office, or for an enterprise search for new knowledge and solutions. I use the café model to engage knowledge creators and users to explore any issue or topic like the place of security in DevOps to find healing to pain caused by change at work or home, confronting complex problems that need new knowledge and innovation for solutions. As said earlier, what we do is to manage the environment for knowledge to flourish.

Why manage the environment? Because management is an industrial economy concept, and it facilitates and invests in the knowledge economy concept.

Collison and Parcell (2005) express how complicated it is to manage knowledge and the importance of creating the right environment that enables knowledge workers to capture, understand, store, share, and stimulate knowledge. Working in a knowledge society should be as natural as entering any corner café, taking a quick scan of the room, and finding the perfect spot to set up your coffee and computer. This is the ideal space to share experience and build incremental knowledge. Do not force daily stand-ups or obligatory status meetings into this area—while those are project-centered tools and techniques and have important roles, they don’t belong in the café.

2.2. HOW TO MEET AT THE KNOWLEDGE CAFÉ AND THE FACILITATOR

Richard Thalheimer, the founder of Sharper Image, once asserted, “It is better to look uninformed than to be uninformed. Curb your ego & keep asking questions” (Close & Close, 2018). Two things that come to mind in a cafe environment are questions and the liberty to connect your ideas with others’. But it may devolve to other kinds of meetings without ground rules.

Ground Rules of the Café

Ground rules provide clarity and rules of engagement. It sets the expectation of the conversation, so there are no surprises. If you don’t have ground rules, everyone creates theirs because nature abhors a vacuum. Would you want to play a game where there are no rules, or you make the rules as you go? I hope not. That will suffice for a debate, not a dialogue. There will be fears, insecurities, and people who don’t like to be vulnerable unless they agree to protect everyone.

Peter Drucker once said, “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions” (Lozep, 2020). Café is about questions; we use ground rules to create the environment to make sense of the answers. Ground rules provide a set of guidelines that help shepherd meaningful conversation and dialogue, have evocative meetings or better-facilitated sessions. Ground rules are meant to be self-governing, and everyone has a stake in the game. I’m not talking until there’s a ground rule.

David Gurteen of Conversational Leadership and David Creelman of Creelman Research came up with the Conversation Covenant, which I consider the baseline for all difficult and meaningful conversations. They define a conversation covenant as “an agreement between two or more persons to abide by a set of rules when engaging in conversation. The rules help knowledge workers and project teams work in harmony to create a psychologically safer space for seemingly impossible conversations” (Gurteen, 2020). The following ground rules for a café are a marriage of David Gurteen’s café ground rules and mine.

I shall provide elaboration on the ground rules in chapter 4. Besides, I have listed the café ground rules and described why you want to have a Knowledge Café environment and some benefits. Now, how does a Knowledge Café work? What’s the role of a facilitator? Anyone can facilitate a café, but for the purpose of an enterprise KM, I recommend the following qualities for a café facilitator.

Qualities of a Café Facilitator(s)

1. The café must have a facilitator(s) who is/are enthusiastic about knowledge sharing and are passionate.

2. The most important attribute of a café facilitator is that it’s not about him/herself.

3. The facilitator is skillful in encouraging conversation and dialogue, not a debater; he or she respects other people’s opinions.

4. The facilitator secures the stakeholders’ buy-in, creates the environment, and organizes the café.

5. The café is more successful if the facilitator is a project manager—not because I’m a project manager—or have the attributes of a project manager, but it is not required; a leader who can secure the buy-in of both management and rank-and-file employees can also be successful.

6. The facilitator could be someone with experience in any of the following knowledge-transfer tools and techniques: information and library science, taxonomy creation, content and document management, the development and maintenance of knowledge portals and business intelligence delivery systems, outreach, business process improvement, training, data management, and knowledge architecture.

7. The facilitator may have the ability to integrate areas of knowledge with expertise in areas such as data, library and information management, communications, learning and development, workforce planning, organizational development, human resources, and strategy. However, the most important qualifications are open-mindedness, common interest, shared values, reciprocity, learning curiosity, and the like.

8. The facilitator could also be a strategist, persuader, measurer, consensus builder, knowledge-sharer, and learner. They should be organizationally savvy and have change management skills.

Café is not just a casual and unserious event. It’s a severe knowledge-sharing event, even though it can be casual too. I have had executives and senior leadership individuals participate in my cafés. Do you have the enthusiasm, skills, and drive to facilitate a Knowledge Café? If you have ever conducted a meeting or a brainstorming session without sending everyone to sleep, you can run a Knowledge Café. Give new strength to the knowledge of the project team by calling a café meeting. Discuss this with your team. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with. The café framework and step-by-step approach are discussed in chapter 4.3.

Based on my experience with numerous KM brainstorming and knowledge-sharing sessions, there are practical, reliable ways to nourish a Knowledge Café society and enliven knowledge users and creators. If you open the café, stakeholders will come! See chapter 2.3 and 2.6 for practical steps on how to lead a café. The following café recommendations for knowledge sharing may look like Wenger and Lave’s 10 ways to build and nourish communities of practice (CoPs), but they are not. I’ll discuss extensively how CoP interfaces with the café. CoPs can use a café space and mindset to engage in conversation, learning, and sharing knowledge and ideas.

Involve your leadership and secure vital management adoption of the Knowledge Café mindset. Engage leadership to help you develop department/organization/regional communication and share across the enterprise. Establish a knowledge leadership café (Café 2.0) framework. This is the middle ground between simplicity and formalization of a KM program. I’ll discuss this later in chapter 11.

Café is the environment for CoPs, as you can see in chapter 10. In a project, the project manager is responsible for the overall café project success. However, everyone—and I mean everyone in the café—is accountable and responsible for surfacing ideas to improve the processes used to create the café deliverables.

PROJECT MANAGER’S ROLE IN A CAFÉ

Within the Knowledge Café context, the project manager should play his or her role and exercise the following recommended duties if knowledge transfer is part of your organization’s strategy:

2.3. WHY KNOWLEDGE CAFÉ ISN’T JUST ANOTHER MEETING

You may ask, “Isn’t Knowledge Café just another meeting, brainstorming session, networks, flash mob, meetup, daily scrum, or stand-up?” I don’t think so. To overcome this confusion, an organization must build and espouse an ecosystem in which all workplace stakeholders are invited to share their experience, skill, and wisdom unreservedly. Full disclosure: I hate boring meetings. Unfortunately, I spend more than 90 percent of my work time communicating—a good chunk of it is in meetings. I even have meetings to plan for a meeting. Many meetings are redundant and a waste of time, especially when you have a terrible meeting manager or host. If you replace boring meetings with a café, I’m in!

The café is not just another meeting or meetup—you meet up at the café to be caffeinated with knowledge. As stated earlier, it is an unstructured, collaborative space to exchange, share, transfer, and renew knowledge. It has some attributes of other types of meetings, as shown in the comparison in table 2, but it is not your typical meeting or conference. It’s often a one-way knowledge exchange at a conference, but the café is a two-way exchange.

You can use the café for a variety of purposes: to exchange ideas and reawaken knowledge, to find a solution for your projects and programs, to connect and get to know each other, to break out of the noise or quietness of the house or office, to share best practices, to bring everyone to the same knowledge baseline, to identify knowledge assets, to create new knowledge, to resolve matters that are hard to discourse, and so on. For example, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) in the 2004 time frame to manage a new portfolio of programs and projects aimed at lunar return. They used a series of Knowledge Cafés to identify risk issues and how to mitigate those risks. Here are some of the takeaways from their May 2010 Café: Knowledge Mapping Techniques, Knowledge Frameworks, Capture Methods, Transfer Methods, Knowledge-Based Products, Roles of Security and records Management, organization and Planning Issues, and Risk Management Integration (NASA ESMD Knowledge Café, 2010).

SIX TYPES OF MEETINGS

MeetingSift identifies six general types of meetings. The Knowledge Café format can be used for any of them (“The Six Most Common Types of Meetings,” n.d.)!

Here is a comparison of some of the types of communication gatherings. When you think of a café, consider peer instruction with traditional lecturing. Questions, answers, dialogue, and conversation are prominent in a café.

Peer Instruction versus a Café

Peer instruction, an evidence-based, interactive teaching method popularized by Eric Mazur (1997) captures some of the essences of the café. Many scholars like Mazur agree that it’s not about the instructor’s facilitation in front of the class or a presenter at the conference or workshop. It’s about the students or the café attendees and their minds. You don’t learn by listening; you learn by doing, by conversing.

PEER INSTRUCTION

In peer instruction,

2.4. WHAT MAKES KNOWLEDGE WORKERS COME TO A KNOWLEDGE CAFÉ?

Some serendipitous cafés are open 24/7. If someone has an idea they want to share at 3 a.m., they can go to the café. Thanks to virtual cafés.

Welcome to the café! What makes knowledge creators and sharers come to the café? Curiosity. You must be curious enough to generate the curiosity of others. If knowledge must be shared and transferred, a drive-through café concept may not be appropriate. A sit-down, sip-your-coffee café may be the right environment.

Jean-Luc Abelin, director, Knowledge Management Group, Lafarge, said at the KMWorld 2015 conference that we have two significant KM challenges facing international companies. The first is to prove that a KM platform of management is vital to top management. “We have to convince all the top management level that it will be critical for the company. We have to find all the topics and all the solutions to convince them to put money on the table and authorize us to deploy that kind of platform.” The second challenge is to convince people to share: “When I say share, I mean both givers and takers” (Abelin, 2015).

Management sets the tone of an organization’s knowledge culture, but knowledge leadership café sets the tone and determines the knowledge users and creators to be invited to the café. It all depends on the manager and the organization, and the level of the manager. Strong personalities at the unit level can override espoused organizational cultures.

Knowledge leadership café is the framework for formalizing KM systems with a nimble and agile mindset. I’ll discuss the leadership café later in chapter 11. Consider project managers, archivists, historians, trainers, knowledge managers, public information officers, data scientists, and librarians. The truth is that everyone who uses and creates knowledge can be invited to the café.

Research by the project Management Institute shows that 95 percent of organizations effective at knowledge transfer have identified someone in the organization who is ultimately responsible for it, compared to only 54 percent of organizations that don’t do knowledge transfer well (project Management Institute, 2015). Who is responsible for KM in your organization? What or where is the rallying point for knowledge exchange? This relates to knowing how knowledge flows in the organization now. Once we know that, we can then use that information to encourage the persistent or spontaneous creation of Knowledge Cafés. At organizations like the World Bank, when they have a new VP, they walk them through the workflow map. You need to know what your knowledge flow is in the organization to leverage the café.

So, what would bring knowledge workers to the Knowledge Café? Let’s take inspiration from a survey of 1,370 individual café outlets by Australian Café Pulse (Top five things your customers really want in a café, n.d.) for the top reasons respondents chose their favorite café . . . literally. If you’ll pardon the metaphor, we might consider parallels with people’s experience of actual coffee shops. Let’s relate each one to the Knowledge Café.

Coffee Strength and Taste

How do you like your coffee brewed: mild, medium, or strong? What flavor of coffee inspires you? Identify the strength and taste or most mission-critical knowledge in the minds of employees to attract cafégoers. The strength, taste, and packaging of café deliverables determine the environment it creates. Café conveners must be willing to bring taste, power, and depth to the café with organizational, leadership, and facilitation skills. People may not come again to your café unless it’s exciting and powerful.

Quality of the Café

If we are going to have an environment for knowledge sharing, relevance and the quality of the café must be paramount. Product quality is based on the quality of the customer requirements. In a café, do you know what drinks the customer buys most? Adding bells and whistles don’t work when it’s not what the customer wants or needs. First, it would be helpful to have a list of café features, kind of like a Yelp review. What are the things we look for when selecting a café? Quality of the exchange. The product of the café is a piece of new knowledge or relearned knowledge or unlearned knowledge, other output, or outcomes of the café.

Location

A strategic location is important for a café to be successful. Do you know where your organization’s mission-critical knowledge is stored and who is the most knowledgeable about it? Not all knowledge is critical, so it is important to identify the most vital knowledge and where it resides in your organization. What are your knowledge gaps? What is the quality of that knowledge? Who knows where the mission-critical knowledge is? Ensure the strategic objectives align with your organizational strategies, just like a strategic location can make or break a café.

Pleasant Ambiance

The senses are fundamental—the first impression matters. The impression of what we see and feel contributes to whether customers or café-goers will come back. If knowledge is a valuable asset to your organization, create an environment where people want to participate and return. Put knowledge management in its place in terms of strategic priority in your organization.

Quick Service

The café must be smart, efficient, and exciting. This is not your typical training, conference, or workshop. It’s not a drive-through learning experience—we listen and think in the cafe. A café shouldn’t compete with traditional restaurants where you have to take a full-course meal. Café service should be quick and fun! Because there’s no preconceived idea, you are not inundating café attendees with big ideas and new programs. If there are some big ideas, it’s coming from the café attendees. Remember that KM is like eating an elephant—one bite at a time.

Price

Price is always king. If a product or idea is excellent, but the price tag is unreasonable, no one buys it. The price must match the value it delivers. Price is relevant to the customer and the owner. There are two different kinds of investments and two different reasons to participate. The price for the consumer cannot be considered in isolation of the cost to the investor. If an organization sees its knowledge assets as a competitive advantage, a tool for innovation, it must invest in managing that knowledge, just like any other organization’s strategic initiative. I developed a strong business case for my executive sponsor to see how much tangible and intangible benefit, cost-benefit analysis, including the cost of doing nothing vis-à-vis the organization’s value knowledge management.

Staff/Barista Attitude

What is the role of “staff” in a café? Usually, they don’t engage in knowledge exchange—they just serve the coffee and tea and provide the right fun and exchange environment. They provide the stimulus. What is the equivalent stimulus in a Knowledge Café? Consider the facilitators of a café, creating a welcoming atmosphere, asking the right questions, providing service, and facilitating fun. In a café, the attitude, competence, and friendliness of the staff matters. For a project or program to be successful, staff must be engaged—the face of the KM program matters and impacts the enterprise’s buy-in. The skills of the Knowledge Café’s facilitator contribute to the success, and personal relationships are the heart of the café. Strong executive sponsorship and buy-in of significant stakeholders are crucial to success. Don’t waste your time and effort on an enterprise KM program without it.

Brand of Coffee

I can get a good cup of coffee walking into Starbucks, but I don’t sit unless there is a really fascinating bunch of folks there. If you need solitude and quietness, a café is probably the wrong place for that. At the café, you may have a favorite coffee whose brand you recognize and respect. Just as with your favorite coffee brand, if you want to make KM and Knowledge Café an enterprise program, create a brand that people will recognize. People participate in your café based on the strength of your branding. You’ve got to sell it. In my organization to brand KM, I told enthusiasts and practitioners that we were creating a knowledge culture and having fun making it. Branding of a KM program must fit with the culture and environment of the organization. What works for one organization may not work for another. Choose your branding well. Align and brand your KM program with your organizational strategy and branding. Align and brand your KM program with your organizational strategy and branding. It should align with customer expectations, product type, organizational structure, strategic advantages, and environmental trends.

Ethically Sourced

We go to the café to receive and give. Café-goers “stay or engage” because other café-goers have similar values and beliefs. There’s a gentlemen’s agreement for mutual exchange. Are ethics and integrity true to your brand and organization’s offerings? I am grateful for the perspective and lessons learned from organizations I have been involved with, such as project Management Institute (PMI), National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board (TRB) Information and Knowledge Management Committee, AASHTO Committee on Knowledge Management, WSDOT, VDOT, the café strategy team at TxDOT, and Knowledge Management Community of Austin and central Texas, which I co-founded. Always under-promise and overdeliver. Did I say, overdeliver? Do not overdeliver beyond the scope of the project. Gold Plating—adding functionalities beyond what is covered by the requirements—is unethical and not allowed by the project Management Code of Conduct. Have a clear scope statement or statement of work and proper scope management plan. Have a change management plan, which helps you manage the change process and ensures control and discipline in scope, budget, schedule, communication, and resources.

Coffee Roasted Locally

Note the most effective café and KM program is the one that adapts to the local environment and organizational culture. Do not cut and paste another organization’s café or KM style. Make it local. Make it yours. Customize your program.

2.5. CASE STUDY: OPEN, VULNERABLE, AND EAGER TO SHARE—TONYA HOFMANN

In 2018, I had opportunities to speak at several conferences and workshops, including local, regional, and global project Management Institute conferences. I’ve been speaking for a long time because I have challenges I need to share with others I believe are experts in this art and can expand my knowledge. In 2018, I spoke on “Managing projects and Stakeholders from Hell” at the Executive Women’s conference in Texas. At this meeting, I was introduced to Tonya Hofmann, a café-goer who was also a speaker, and her husband. Tonya is the CEO and founder of the Public Speakers Association and Wowdible Phone Application. In August 2018, we held a Knowledge Café. At this café, I wanted Tonya, who I consider to be a speaking expert, to help me. I wanted to learn from her. She asked me, “How can I help you, Benjamin?” At the back of my mind, I was the person that needed more knowledge but here was my approach: “Hey, Tonya, can I pay for your lunch?” (I pay for lunches for knowledge transfer.) “And, by the way, I’m the president of the PMI Austin Chapter; I’m responsible for getting speakers to our Community Spotlight. I’d like to know how I can help you and learn from you too.”

I demonstrated a sincere intention to help her in her endeavors. She eventually became one of the panelists during our very successful October 2018 Community Spotlight. The rest is now history, as I’ve learned so much from her, and we have shared knowledge during several café settings and meetups. PMI Austin’s Community Spotlight is a café-style interactive event and attracts more attendees than any other monthly dinner event. Customer satisfaction was about 97 percent because of the sharing and knowledge exchange participants gain. Attendees to my café events testify that café-style knowledge exchange is preferable and more valuable than other types of learning and developments for professionals.

Here’s Tonya’s story:

As a café-goer, I run into a lot of professionals who believe that what they know ought somehow to be exclusive to themselves; that if they teach others what they know, it might somehow take away from their knowledge or their potential revenue. But top speakers and trainers do not reach their level of success by keeping knowledge to themselves. In a knowledge economy, there’s a free flow of knowledge. Knowledge is cherished, stewarded, and exchanged. They understand that the transfer of knowledge is how to raise others and, in turn, promote themselves. In simple terms, it is the fear of loss instead of the belief in gain that separates the haves from the have nots.

Fear of losing keeps so many people from really growing. We have all learned what we know from someone else. We may have a unique twist or a different way of looking at things, but the belief that knowledge is ours exclusively is just plain selfish. On the contrary, those who go out and shout it to the world are the real winners. Those who never blink an eye at sharing knowledge or how it will benefit someone else will create real momentum in the knowledge transfer space.

Some years ago, I worked with Matt (Matt is not his real name). He told me that his mentor advised him to learn something that interested him and was unique and to keep the knowledge to himself and share it with no one. And then there was a change in technology, and knowledge of the program that Matt could not keep up. Those who hoarded knowledge became irrelevant. Matt had to play catch-up as other knowledge workers, who were not closed in, moved ahead of him. The moral of the story is that those who keep everything to themselves and horde their knowledge will witness their peers flying past them in success, acknowledgment, and wealth! The fact that they don’t talk freely about what they know stifles their progress.

When I meet someone new, I ask them a question about what they know. People typically respond in one of two ways. The first is to give open information on what they know, what I should know, how they can help me, and what to avoid. I immediately feel that this is someone I can do business and or build a relationship with long-term. The second type of person is guarded, may want to charge me immediately for some piece of knowledge they have, and may even ask for an NDA before sitting down with me! This type of person I do not have time for or want to build a relationship. I immediately feel the fear in them. Ask yourself, who wants to do business or be friends with someone who is always making you feel like you are trying to steal from them or hurt them? Or, simply put, who wants to be cast as untrustworthy? There is a reason why they say in sales that people not only have to like you, but they must trust you as well. This is a prerequisite to doing a successful business. I see it over and over again that the people who move fast, make the most money, and create long-term relationships are the people who are open, vulnerable, and eager to share. I look for the hug and handshake, not the sign on the bottom-line people. These are the people who want to help, even before I feel like they want something in return. This is the way I live my life and build my business, and I believe I am a lot richer for it in both money and friendships!

People “Arrive at” a Café through Many Routes—Bringing Them to the Café Is Just One Strategy

If you are going to create a knowledge transfer community or bring people to a café, there must be trust and reciprocity, as the case study reveals. Poverty-minded people and environments muffle knowledge transfer and revitalization. Tonya said that the “fear of losing keeps so many people from really growing.” Some people cannot share unless they are guaranteed what they’ll receive in return. This mindset needs to be broken. Someone with a poverty mindset can park his Lamborghini, stand in line for a free burger, and ask you to pitch in for gas for giving you a ride. Knowledge leadership and an attitude of prosperity are necessary for success. Tonya’s case study reveals that “those who keep everything to themselves and hoard their knowledge see people flying past them in success, acknowledgment and wealth!” It’s giving and sharing your way to an abundance of knowledge that guides a knowledge leader. Those who share will never be poor. If you are a user of experience, you must be a creator of knowledge and be troubled when knowledge is hoarded.

Pay It Forward—Don’t Make a Profit, Make a Point

Profit is interpreted differently in the knowledge economy. It takes the form of more knowledge, more valuable knowledge, and more business value. It’s not a money concept in the 21st century. The problem with many knowledge creators and users is that they want to make a profit rather than make a difference. The publisher Berrett-Koehler recently held a global conference called People-First Economy. Several organizational leaders that believed in people first—and social responsibility—were featured. There has never been a time in human history when many organizations are clamoring for the realism of making a difference. This is sharing, making a point, and not necessarily milking profit. Please understand me. Companies need to make a profit. Their mission drives excellent organizations, and they, in turn, make a profit. But it should be making a point—changing lives, impacting lives, fulfilling its mission, and then, profit becomes natural.

After that conference, I contacted Shawn Doyle, a connection through LinkedIn, who has authored 24 best-selling books. I asked him how much it would cost me to learn from his wisdom—deep smarts. His office scheduled a call for us to talk. We talked for 40 minutes at no cost. Others of his caliber might quickly charge someone per minute to share their knowledge. This is an example of investment in relational capital.

I talked to my executive editor about sharing some portions of my book through articles and social media postings and if it violates my contracts. She said, “Ben, those who give away stuff seem to be the most successful writers.” Yea! When you raise others, you grow yourself. When you teach others, you prepare yourself. I want to mentor one million leaders; in the process, I’m helping myself.

What you know is for the World, not just for you.

2.6. PRACTICE CAFÉ: IDEAS, TIPS, AND TRICKS

In a workspace with multiple generations and an aging workforce, knowledge and knowledge management are critical strategic resources. Silos can impact communication, productivity, and growth—bust silos between groups, systems, and knowledge sharing to develop organizational efficiencies and resilience.

TIPS ON WHY WE HAVE A CAFÉ

Here are my ideas about why to have a Knowledge Café:

WHAT IS NEEDED TO HOST A KNOWLEDGE CAFÉ

Here is some practical advice on what is needed to host a café if it’s a broader KM organizational strategy.

HOW TO NOURISH AND REKINDLE KNOWLEDGE USERS

Based on my experience with numerous KM brainstorming sessions, here are some practical, reliable ways to nourish a Knowledge Café society and rekindle knowledge users and creators.