What the Best Synthesis Teams Do Differently | Susan Strom of Knowledge Architecture

In this episode of Smarter by Design, I talk with Susan Strom, Chief Client Officer at Knowledge Architecture, about the patterns she’s seen across the most successful Synthesis teams. Drawing on years of implementation experience, Susan explains how great teams build momentum, lead change intentionally, and bring people into the process one person at a time.

We explore the human side of intranet, LMS, and AI Search rollouts—what strong project champions do, how they prepare their organizations, and the leadership behaviors that consistently set teams up for long-term success.

Whether you're evaluating Synthesis, preparing for a new implementation, or trying to take Synthesis to the next level at your firm, this conversation offers practical insight into what the best teams do differently.

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📃 Episode Transcript

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.

Chris: So Susan, welcome to Smarter By Design.

Susan: Thank you, Chris. I'm so excited to be doing this with you.

Chris: It is very fun. It seems like this should have happened a long time ago, but here we are.

Susan: Yeah, we've been doing a lot of implementations. The first thing I did when I joined Knowledge Architecture 15 years ago was lead implementations.

Chris: That is true. 

Actually, that's a good segue. For people who don't know or haven't met you yet, what does a Chief Client Officer do at Knowledge Architecture?

Susan: Yeah, great question. The Chief Client Officer role here is responsible for our client's experience, from when they're learning about Synthesis — they talk to us and say what does it do, how do we implement this, how do we make this successful — all the way through to implementing it, to what happens after implementation: monitoring, adoption, going after new goals and strategies, and strategic firm objectives and support.

So, it's that whole client life cycle journey with us, and my job is making sure our clients have the right support, the right best practices, the right consulting advice throughout that whole journey.

Chris: That's great. And what drew you to doing this work with us? What made you want to lead intranets for AEC firms?

Susan: Years ago, I was an electrical engineer, and I was one of those 22, 23, 24 year olds who got really itchy when things were inefficient in my learning and design process. I remember moments when I was asked to do something like read a spec book, and I thought, there's no way I'm gonna retain this. I don't know what I'm looking for. This is not efficient and effective. I'd like to give you eight hours, you know, a whole day of learning because I want to be better and I want to learn and grow and I'm here because I want to be an awesome engineer, but I don't think this is the best way for me to do this. 

So, I started to speak up, and had ideas and got involved. And my CEO at the time gave me focused time to start working on some of these challenges for our organization. And I just fell in love with that work. I loved teasing apart the people, process, culture, technology web that we can get caught in when some of these processes aren't working, and helping straighten it out.

So, when Knowledge Architecture was getting started 16 years ago, Chris and I were in a roundtable, and at some point we each pulled out a book and we're like, oh, we both like reading. And it turns out we both also like knowledge management, although that language was still emerging.

And so we got started. And the work to be done initially was just helping firms get on board with the platform and figure out how to do that. And we had a lot to learn 15, 16 years ago when we were just getting started. So, I have learned a lot in that time, working with firms and refining our processes over and over and over again, incorporating what we learned from each implementation so that the next one is a little easier, a little better, gets clients to their goals even faster.

Chris: So you've been doing knowledge management about how to do knowledge management.

Susan: Yes. Yes, I have.

Chris: We're gonna get meta in this episode, I am sure of it. Okay, so the piece, “What I've learned from our best Synthesis intranet implementation project managers,” why did you write it? Why now? Was there a particular client interaction or conversation that drove you, or was it something else?

Susan: Yeah, I had two conversations with two different firms that want to implement Synthesis within a week of each other. One was with the CEO of the firm, another was with the development officer. And these are both firms that are, you know, 120 employees, they don't have a dedicated knowledge manager role, as most of our clients don't, and they really wanna do Synthesis. But they were getting kind of caught up on like, how do we staff this? How do we resource it? So I found myself having this conversation with them, and I felt like some of my — not my best practices, but some of my go-to talking points weren't quite landing. And I was reflecting on it. I was like, what is it that they're looking for that I'm not giving them?

And I realized — they didn't want to just implement Synthesis. They wanted to have an amazing Synthesis implementation. They wanted to be best in class. And that's what they were really asking me. How do I resource this given my firm's constraints and resources so I get an outcome that looks like Snøhetta? So I get an outcome that looks like Turner Fleischer? So I get an outcome that looks like these firms that I see on your webinars and I see on the stage? 

I spent some time thinking about that. And the way I tend to get into questions like this is, what data do I have around this? So I spent some time thinking about all the 200-ish implementations I've led, and I picked my top 10 teams on the client side.

Chris: We will not disclose that list on this podcast.

Susan: Yeah. That list may or may not still exist, and it may have changed in two months. 

Chris: That’s right—it’s dynamic.

Susan: Um, yeah. I reserve the right to do that. And I just started writing about what their makeups were, what were their attributes? What seemed like it was consistent across these teams? So that I can answer this question better for these two organizations. And so I could really get at how do you get to the next level?

You know, when firms work with us, a lot of times it's because they don’t just want a new intranet to replace their old intranet, they want to change as an organization. And they see this as a platform to support that kind of change. And that change isn't just technology. It requires people, process, culture and all the things.

But I wanted to hone in on that people side.

Chris: Yeah, that's great. I mean, first of all, what a gift to have a client saying, I wanna be one of your best clients. Like, amazing. It's good inspiration for the article. So you ended up breaking this into five things, five lessons, that you've learned from the teams.

The first one is, they, meaning the best Synthesis implementation project managers, understand how your firm ticks. What does that mean?

Susan: Yes, the best implementation PMs I've worked with just have this deep understanding of how to get stuff done inside the organization, and that means that they understand the big picture priorities. Like our big picture priority is to deliver really excellent, affordable housing that meets our clients' deadlines. Or our big picture is to design and service bridges for our clients in this very, very knowledgeable way where they go to us because we know the most about their bridges, so they just, they get it. They know — beyond what's on the website, beyond taglines — they know what drives people at the firm and they also know how to navigate getting stuff done. 

People join different firms because they like the firm culture, right? And different firms have different firm cultures. Some firms are very much like, we're taking the long view, we're gonna move slowly and thoughtfully and get there at the right time.

Some firms, their perspective is like, we wanna move as quickly as possible and we can absorb mistakes and we can adjust. The only way we're gonna adjust is if we make the mistakes. So let's just get going. You know, that's just one example of firm cultures that are different. But a good PM just gets that, they know how their firm works.

And that's so important because a lot of this work is around leading change, and that means connecting the dots for people. So, helping connect what you're asking them to do, the new thing or what you're asking them to spend time on that maybe is out of their normal job description, with the outcome that they actually care about. And then asking it in a way that works with how the firm works, with the patterns within the firm. Right? And that's really hard to do if you don't get how the firm works.

Chris: Yeah. And so you listed some things, like what I wrote down was, you understand the strategy, whether it's written or not, and what's important in priorities.

You kind of talked about culture. I would assume it also has something to do with relationships. And I'm gonna throw something out there and you can knock it down, or build on it, but are any of the people that came to mind on your secret top 10 list, were they new to the organization? Did all of them have, you know, X amount of years with the organization, understanding strategy, culture, relationships? What were your thoughts on that question?

Susan: Yeah, it's a good question. I don't remember exactly if any of them were totally new to the organization. It's kind of unlikely, but I am thinking of a firm I'm working with right now, and their implementation team has two champions, co-champions, one who's been there for a long time and is transitioning into more of a firm operations role out of a design role — and she really gets the strategy, she gets the culture of the place, and she has the relationships. And another is new to the firm, and has some background in KM and intranet stuff. And the person that's new to the firm is doing great because she's paired with someone who has the relationships and gets the strategy, unspoken and spoken and all of that. And she's been able to draft off that and build relationships through the process. So I don't think it's out of the question to bring someone in, but it’s who’s more new to the firm? I think if you do that, you have to be really thoughtful about who you pair them with, either as a co-champion or who you pair them with. As with for an executive sponsor.

Chris: How important is the PM part of implementation PM? Do they have to have managed big projects before? Can they rely on us to do some of that? What does that look like?

Susan: Yeah. The PM part of the PM…

Chris: …of the implementation PM?

Susan: It's funny, a number of really great PMs that I've worked with have managed client projects. Not big client projects necessarily, but you know, some client project work. They're kind of moving into a PM role in their career, but they may not have managed big projects.

They may not have managed a technology rollout before. So I don't think that's actually that important. We do a lot of the project management, we have the game plan, we have all the tasks laid out. We're bringing that expertise to the table, especially for this particular project that we know how to do really well because we've done it a lot. 

I think what's more important are other things that are in that list, in the article, which are the ability to lead change and just have a good sense of how to influence, with or without authority.

Chris: That's actually your second point in your article — good transition, I like it — they are strong change leaders. So you established why because, well, for context, an intranet is one of those projects that touches the entire company. So it's all the firm's knowledge. It's not like you're implementing for a department or just a team, this is an enterprise, firm-wide thing. So it is a big change. What does being a strong change leader look like to you?

Susan: It looks like being able to listen and hear and respond to where people really are—being very open to feedback, having a lot of empathy. It also looks like bringing the right person in at the right time with the right level of information.

The empathy part is when I say the right person at the right time with the right level of information, the way you figure out there's the right person, right time, and right level of information, is because you have a lot of empathy and you listen and you treat people as people.

One of the things that I coach our PMs to do is to build the momentum for the project one person at a time. Every time we onboard someone to start working on their content, we treat that moment with a lot of care. I coach people to treat that moment with a lot of care because their experience coming in and starting to build out the HR content or starting to build out their Revit content, that is change management, right?

You're expanding this project out, one ripple at a time. You can't just zoom out and come up at the last ripple, which is all employees, and say, okay, now I'm going to start caring about your experience as you're entering the platform. Right? You do it one person at a time. 

I think change management as a whole field, change leadership as a whole field — I don't expect anyone to be a change leadership expert. We've learned enough from our work doing this and codified enough best practices that are specific to an intranet implementation that we can coach people through a lot of the ins and outs, what the champion and PM needs to bring to the table. It’s that empathetic perspective and willingness to listen and to actually care about these interactions and not bulldoze past anyone.

Chris: What does it mean in the example you gave — so you're encouraging a new implementation PM to, if they're onboarding HR into Synthesis, to treat them with care. What does it mean to treat an HR person with care? When you're talking about bringing them in to putting their content on the intranet?

Susan: It starts at the very beginning of the project. One of the first things that we do with a team is help them audit the content that they have across the firm. Maybe they have an old intranet and, yes, that's going to come over, but chances are that someone has a calc sheet on their desktop that they send every new employee who gets onboarded into their department.

We want to get that stuff on the intranet, too. So the way that we help them get that stuff on the intranet is we have the essential content checklist. You can find it on our website. And it's just a long list of things you might want to put on an intranet. There's always history to that. We can come back to it if you want to.

One way to approach that would be for the intranet champion to sit down, close the door, and start going through and saying we have this, we have this, we don't have this, we don't have this. Not a good way to do it. I think the right way to do that, the way to care for it in this process is to sit down with your HR person and look through the HR section of that checklist and say: this is what's happening with this project. Here's some things that our partner has said we might want to have on the intranet. Do we have an onboarding checklist that you'd want to put on the intranet? No. Okay. No worries. We'll take that off. Oh, but you want to build one. Okay. Let me just make a note of that. All right. Do we have ESOP guidance? Do we have that? Yes, we do. Oh, you've always wanted to put that somewhere. Great. Okay, let me make a note of that. 

So from the start, it’s involving them in that process and listening to them. We are not imposing a requirement that they move their content onto the intranet. We're in service to them. We are going to help them replatform and consolidate their content so they can do their work more effectively. It starts there. 

Then, when we prepare the scaffolding and start onboarding, we should assume they are not interested in how the intranet functions and focus only on what they need to use it effectively.

What they care about is moving their content from one place to another and getting it set up in a way that's easy for them to maintain and effective for people to find. We need to narrow our coaching to the things that they actually care about.

Chris: So, on one hand, don't isolate them and just go do all the work without consulting them. On the other hand, don't go too far into technicalities — find the right medium of how much they need to know about what we're doing.

Susan: Yeah. And then also treating them as people. The HR people aren't a monolith. IT people aren't a monolith. All your content editors aren't a monolith. We tend to work with firms that are small enough where we don't need to create a one size fits all onboarding for those really key roles. We can be person to person.

Chris: I'm thinking back to a particular implementation that was probably 2012, 2013, early in our journey. It was one IT person who bought Synthesis without consulting a lot of other people and tried to implement it by himself. It was kind of like, you and I both like basketball, right? It's hero ball. It seems like what's implicit in what you're saying is that they run this like a team sport with respect, it's not Denise's intranet or Steven's intranet or Brian's intranet. It's the company's intranet and the PM is just the orchestrator.

Susan: Yeah. I think of them as a shepherd of the firm's knowledge. They're responsible for, again, moving it forward. They're responsible for coaching others. And in fact, that's an interesting thing I found when I was looking through these ten — there were maybe two out of the ten of these PMs where the intranet implementation was a springboard to the next level of their career. They were transitioning from that subject matter expert doer into someone who coaches other people. This was just a beautiful project for them to build those muscles and show the firm that they had those muscles.

Chris: Yeah, I was going to ask you a question you can't possibly answer, but there's this saying that challenge or stress reveals character, doesn't build character, and I’m curious if a project like this reveals that capability or is it more building it? It's probably both. 

Susan: Yeah, I think it depends on the case. Although, someone today was on the phone with me talking about implementing LMS, so it's a little different. They said, well, thanks for talking, thanks for the therapy session. So, I do think we are in the position where people are going through growth through this process.

Chris: Did you notice people changing over the course of 4, 6, or 8 months? Did they seem different by the end compared to when they started?

Susan: Absolutely. I've seen people develop by the end individually. I've also seen people get promoted at the end. It’s being recognized by the firm that they have also changed.

Chris: Going back to why you wrote the piece — if I’m a company considering Synthesis and aiming to be great, it sounds like you’re saying this role can be a real growth opportunity for someone. You might choose a person who’s shown promise and pair them with an executive sponsor so they have support, but it’s a chance for them to grow and show what they’re capable of while also building relationships across departments, markets, and teams through the work.

Susan: Yeah. Yes to that. If you're listening and you want to work on Synthesis, you want to have a fabulous implementation, that is one of the pathways to success. It requires like, wow, I happen to have this person. We don't always have that person. Although, I do recommend this to firms and frequently they do have that person.

Chris: Have a kind of an up and an up-and-comer who needs a place to prove themselves.

Susan: I think the nuance to that is being able to give that person some focus time to do the work, which is, I don't remember which point it is in the article, but it was one of those.

Chris: I think that’s five. You called it: “They have the time and space to lead.” And we can just call an audible and go out of order, Susan. Because hey, that's how we roll. So talk about that. You walked right into it.

Susan: Yeah. You don't need to have someone full-time in this role. In fact, most of our clients don't, and they certainly don't when they're implementing. Maybe five years into working with Synthesis, they've grown their KM program and things have happened and they give someone that role.

In implementation, very, very rarely is that a full-time role. But that doesn't mean that people can just squeeze it in between everything else. It is still work. And what happens if you do not give that person some time and space to lead is that they can't improve anything. In the margins of their day, because they're passionate and they're excited, they will be able to launch the platform. They will be able to move stuff from the old platform to the new platform. They will not be able to rethink the organization and optimize it for where the firm is today and where the firm wants to be in the next five years. They will not be able to be really thoughtful about onboarding each of those community managers and tailoring it to optimize for their engagement and joy in the platform. They just won't be able to really lead. The urgent will get in the way of their leadership.

Chris: Efficiency's going to trump other things.

Susan: Yeah. Again, they don't need to be full-time. They don't need to be halftime. But maybe give them a project number to bill to, maybe incorporate this into project staffing if they're a billable person. Incorporate this into your staffing if they're a marketing person. But be really thoughtful about giving them some time to do the work if you want to get those best-in-class outcomes. If your goal is, no, we just need to re-platform and we'll get best in class later…

Chris: Our old platform is going out of business in six months and what if there's a fire…

Susan: Yeah, that's, that's totally legitimate as well. And requires a different level of focus and gets a different outcome.

Chris: Well, you just said something, point four was: “They represent both practice and operations.” And so you were talking about time and space to lead, I think from the perspective of somebody who's billable, like a practice person, tell me about that idea. Because I think I've heard you say that a two person implementation's better than a one person, and if you're going to have two people, having them come from different parts of the business is really useful. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Susan: Yeah, absolutely. I was on the phone with someone yesterday who, again, is very excited about Synthesis, trying to figure out how they're going to staff it. And I shared this bit about it should be someone who really gets the firm and is good at change management. And she's in HR. She's in HR and she said, oh, well, I can do change management. I know a lot about the operations side of the firm, but I don't know a lot about our project delivery. I'm not an architect or an engineer. So maybe I can't do it. And I was like, aha. Point four: get a co-champion. Because in my opinion, the best of the structures is to have someone who really gets how things work behind the scenes, who gets your systems, who gets how the business operates on a systems level. And frankly, since they're on that operations team, part of their job is these kinds of improvements.

Chris: So getting their time isn't as hard.

Susan: Exactly, yeah. You can fold it into your strategic planning. Because they're going to be working on some strategic improvements this year. Let's make it this one, and pair them with someone who's on the practice side who has a lot of empathy for how it feels to go find a code, and knows other people who need to find codes, knows other people who are storing standards and knows other people who have the calcs that really should be on the intranet, because that's just part of their network. And again, they've done it before. If you pair two people like that, talk about knowing the business and knowing how the business ticks, you really have a lot of coverage in that knowledge.

You have a lot of coverage across relationships, and then they get to play off each other. So people, you will hit a wall, right? There'll be an area of content that the person who needs to be involved is on a deadline or they're not connecting the dots, they're not bought in.

You need to figure out how to navigate that, right? You always have, you, me or my colleague Sarah Davies, who's great, and we lead implementations. We're happy to coach you through it, but if you have a champion pair, then they can talk to each other and they know all the people. And they have bigger networks inside the firm. So they can be strategic support.

Chris: Yeah, I like that for a lot of reasons. You've seen more of these than I have, but I think one thing I've also observed is they can have different strengths and weaknesses. Like, there's internal communications component, there's a more structured data component, there's an analytics component, and maybe one of them is analytical and maybe one of them is a more feeling kind of person. And so you can also balance each other out a little bit that way, too.

Susan: Yeah. One of my favorite implementation teams was very early in our journey, probably my third year at KA. They're a structural firm in Seattle, and their champion was someone in operations who really wanted Synthesis. Well, his role was operations director, but he wanted Synthesis to support structural engineers.

He was like, we need to document how we do really great steel structures and how we do really great mass timber structures, that sort of thing. We need to give a space for these technical communities to capture and share and learn with each other. And he had a lot of empathy on that side, he was a feeler. And then we had a marketing director who had been cultivating Deltek Vision at that time and had really great project data and data about their clients. She was the only person who could get to it. She was very analytical and she wanted to expose that and get that in front of people, daylight it so that people could interact with some of this project history data that they have and would be really useful to understand. To see what steel structures we've done in Vancouver when we're going to do another one in Vancouver. We'd like to give that to our engineers. So they had different starting points, different objectives, but also different personalities and together it was just fabulous. They could pick up where the other one left off. It was a joy to work with them.

Chris: Shout out Brian McIntyre and Julie Jackson.

Susan: Those are the ones, now both retired.

Chris: Now both retired, so hopefully you're listening to the Smarter By Design Podcast in your retirement. Somewhere in Washington. Bainbridge Island. Okay. Number — well number three, but the fifth one we'll get to was: “They influence with or without authority.”

Susan: So, I was an electrical engineer, as I mentioned at the top of the pod, and then I kind of moved, my CEO gave me time and focus to do some more professional development in an HR role. And one of the first things I ran into was, I have no authority. I am no one's boss. How am I supposed to get people to do performance reviews differently?

And he gave me a gem of advice, which is that you have to lead through your influence. I'm not actually going to give you formal authority in this role. Because what authority exactly do you want? And then how can I give that to you? You have to earn it, at least in professional services and the kind of firms we work with.

It's built over time by showing empathy, by building trust, by showing outcomes. People who are doing this kind of work, rolling out a new intranet, yes, maybe they do have some formal authority. Is that going to help you? It actually can kind of be a hindrance potentially, if you think that the fact that you are in charge of operations means that everyone is going to start operating the way you tell them to tomorrow.

That's just not how it works. Change leadership, lots of literature on how people change behaviors and it is not that way. So, if you understand that either because you literally don't have formal authority or because you just get that the way that you get things done is by influencing people, by listening to them, by meeting them where they are, by showing them a different way and giving them the opportunity to digest it and then come a little forward, you'll have a lot more success with implementing Synthesis. Probably with a lot of other things.

Chris: We had a person come speak at one of our workshops years ago, she quoted another person, I remember it was Rose Hollister, but she was quoting a change management expert. And the one I've always remembered is “people want change done with them, not to them.” I feel like that's been a lot of what you've been sharing is the kind of empathy, the individualization, giving people the big picture, but not too much information. Yeah, that's powerful. 

I’m not sure if I want to ask this question… You focused on the top 10 firms — did you ever look at the inverse? When firms struggled, did it tend to be the simple opposite of those success factors? For example, putting someone in the role who didn’t really understand how the firm operates, couldn’t lead change, lacked influence, didn’t represent the broader business, or didn’t have enough time to focus on it. Or is it more complex than that? I’m curious what we can learn from the cases where things didn’t go well.

Susan: Yeah, I think a lot of that is true. I didn’t study the inverse or really analyze the lowest performers. I didn’t spend much time on the middle either. Is being in the middle ok? Sometimes it’s fine, and sometimes it isn’t. 

The nuance I’d add about why firms struggle is that failure often happens when one person assumes they can carry the entire effort on their own. I'll take care of it. No one else has time, I will be the champion, I'll be the sponsor. I will get all the content on the intranet. I will do all of the presentations. I will tease this out to the firm. Has that ever worked?

Chris: Right. They've built no momentum and no buy-in progressively as they've gone through. 

Susan: Yeah. And if your goal is only to replace a platform — if you’re not trying to help people capture more knowledge, share what they know, or start using things like AI search — that’s a different objective. For many firms, those capabilities are still new, and it may be fine not to prioritize them right now. But that approach won’t lead to the kinds of outcomes the two firms that inspired this work were aiming for. So, one person, not a winning style.

And then the other thing that actually is not so much about implementation, but get set up maybe a little bit in a mindset during implementation is what happens after you go live? I would say you're still in implementation for a little bit.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Like how long?

Susan: I tend to care a lot about what happens the 12 months after right after we launch. Part of our process for anyone who doesn't work with us and doesn't know this, is that every year we offer a partnership service — just part of how we work, it's not an additional fee or anything — to help you develop your intranet strategy.

In year one, it's kind of obvious what needs to happen. We still refine it, because what one firm needs in a multi-office, multi-discipline firm, what they're working with is going to be a little different than a single office firm that is going from 20 to 40 employees. Different pain points. So we have to modify it, but the gist is kind of the same in a lot of ways. We need to get the platform up, we need to get people using it. 

What happens in year two and three and four diverge. So in that first year in our process we do that strategy work and then we meet with you every quarter to look at your analytics and to talk about what you're experiencing on the ground with respect to your three to five business priorities that you've identified for the platform.

In the first year, I do not let clients out of that. You have to meet with me. I'm going to help you whether you like it or not. Hopefully they like it.

Chris: Why?

Susan: Oh gosh, I mean, I want them to be successful. When they say, “I’m not sure we need to look at this,” I sometimes worry they assume that because things have been trending upward, that momentum will just continue on its own. But we know from the trough of disillusionment that progress isn’t always linear.

Chris: You're going to get to a high and then there's going to be a dip.

Susan: Yeah, I know that things might be falling off or could fall off in the future. I know that because I've just been through this so many times. Just because people got their stuff on and it's looking good does not mean they're going to maintain it. And if they don't maintain it, we're not going to have a good intranet in two years anymore. We might have had something really great at launch, but if we don't continue to tweak it and build the culture of caring for this new member of our firm, we're not going to be where we want to be.

So in that first year, it's kind of like onboarding a new employee. I recruited them, I brought them in, I'm not going to walk away and hope their manager does a good job. I'm going to stay with their manager and make sure that they get to their 12 month mark and it's working.

So it's that kind of responsibility and accountability. 

Chris: Well you’re talking about the transition from being in project mode, which is launch the thing, to operational mode, which is sustain, build, evolve, grow, develop the thing as your company evolves and grows. And I think what you're saying is you know that change is coming even if they don't. You’ve seen that people get excited when something launches, then they k go back to work. And that the long work is to build adoption over time, to make it the new normal. 

Back to the premise of the article, are the same people who help you in the build the thing, launch the thing, the right people to be in the sustain, evolve, grow, adopt the thing?

Susan: Yeah, that's a great question. And I've seen it go both ways. Most of the time, they're the same people and the skillsets of being empathetic and listening and leading change and  understanding how the firm ticks translate really well. But in some cases they don't.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Susan: I've worked with some PMs who have been really great at getting this live, but then frankly, they either want to go onto the next project, the next new thing and get it through that process, or they might want to go back to their day job. I'm thinking of an architect we worked with who was wonderful, he led this project really well, but at the end he was like, I'd like to hand this back off to someone because I'm an architect and this wasn't a career move for me. This was a service to the firm and I've completed my service and now I want to go back to my job.

Chris: That makes sense. Maybe as a pure project person, you have a metabolism that's different from someone who wants to stay with something and maintain and support it.

Susan: Yes, that is a really interesting perspective. It brings up a question for me of, when we're looking for this implementation PM champion, should we be prioritizing more people who have the passion, interest, the personality to nurture and grow something versus people who are more of a project based type person. I will have to think more about that.

Chris: Yeah. Can you find a way to continue to add new projects, new challenges that are project-oriented to the intranet, you know what I mean?

Susan: Yes I can. I think that's a really healthy way to think about it, but is also not quite true. Because we have the project of getting this up and running, and now it is a program that needs to be managed. It's a portfolio of opportunities and projects that need to be managed and resourced, which gets back to that prioritization and nurturing, which is just a different way of working and thinking than project management.

Chris: Right. So you open a library on a campus, you can't not staff it and make sure that people can check out books. Because now you're onto the next building on campus. You can do new things, but you still have to resource it.

So you've been doing this for over 15 years with us. Thank you for your service. How has your thinking changed? If you had gotten that question from a potential client 15 years ago or 14 years ago and said, what will make us great? Who should we put in this job? 

Susan: I'm literally trying to imagine myself sitting in an apartment I lived in 10 years ago and talking to my new team and, how would I have answered that? I don't know. What I do know is I don't think I understood how much this is change management.

We’ve talked a lot about change management and change leadership a lot in this conversation. We used to describe Synthesis as a kind of Trojan horse for change — leadership would invest in it to drive organizational change, and we’d try to sneak that change in. 

What’s different now is that we talk about change management a lot. We’re explicit from the start that this is real organizational change. We’re setting a clear strategy, identifying stakeholders, defining success metrics, and following up on them. It’s all much more visible. And that shift has changed how I think about staffing the team — a large part of the role is, unavoidably, leading change.

Chris: So do you think that's changed because — how do I want to phrase this — because the culture has changed, because the surface area of the product has changed because we just didn't know what we should have known back then. And if we just started this way, it would have been really helpful for us to really emphasize getting change agents on your team.

Susan: Mm-hmm. I'm thinking back to some of the early, early teams and, I think I just didn't know it. From the beginning of our journey, we've looked for clients who have done something other clients would want to learn from and tried to let them tell their story to build knowledge. And I'm so glad we did that, because I think that's how we discovered this was putting implementation teams and implementation on stage that had been really successful and hearing them tell their story.

It helped us realize that part of what made them so effective is that they were leading change seriously. It might have been accidentally, but they were doing it and it was because that was in the DNA of the leader. It was a marketing leader who just knew that in order to be effective, I’m thinking of Amy Aponte…

Chris: Yeah. Aponte. Shout out Amy. Or I was thinking of Pat and Kathy from Mead & Hunt. I think their KA Connect talk was like, Change is the New Black. So they even named it in their presentation.

Susan: Yeah. So you hear your clients tell you enough that what they're doing is change and you take that in.

Chris: Yeah. I guess we got really lucky having people that intuitively understood it, but now that we’ve named it, having now known this and being able to tell people, when you've surfaced that as a really important component to building out that implementation team. Has that helped them connect the dots on who the right people would be?

Susan: I think it has. I published this a couple months ago, but I was writing it and I shared some early drafts with these two firms that inspired it. And one of them has picked a really wonderful pair of people who represent the two sides, the operation side, then the practice side, and they're displaying all the behaviors. And then the other is being really thoughtful about who they pick, and they haven't picked their team yet, but that's because they're taking this so seriously. So, yeah, I do think that naming it helps people, our clients. They come to us because they want these big outcomes and they're smart leaders, and I think they intuitively know that the people that they put in the position of making all these little decisions along the way are going to have an impact on the kind of outcome they get.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

We've talked a lot about the implementation PM which I think is really important. There is another very, very important role, which we have lightly touched on, but not really gotten into, which is the executive sponsor. And I don't want to get into a whole thing around what makes for a great executive sponsor, but the thing I do want to explore is the relationship between the implementation PM and the executive sponsor. And where there are things that only the executive sponsor can do, even if you have the best implementation PM in the world, what's their ceiling and how do they compliment each other? Just kind of cure the edges between those things. And maybe start with, what's an executive sponsor?

Susan: Yes. Great. So the executive sponsor is part of the core team. They're part of the structural team that is making this intranet project a success. And then after, when it's into its program phase and we're managing a portfolio of possible improvements and behavior changes, they're part of the core team that's helping prioritize which ones we're going to go after and resource and what's actually going to move the needle for the firm.

A really good executive sponsor isn't in every meeting, but they stop in every once in a while because they're interested. I tell them they don't have to be there, and they're like, but I just want to know what's going on. And they can leave their fingerprints on a few ideas. But what they're really there for is winning the hearts and minds of the leadership team.

Chris: They're the conduit between the intranet team and leadership.

Susan: Yeah. And speaking of written and unwritten strategy, there's the formal and informal leadership team, right? The executive sponsor gets that they know who needs to be influenced and they know whose networks touch which employees. And the champion might know some of that too, but they probably don't have the influence and access to that full leadership network that the executive sponsor has. So the executive sponsor's job is to work that network, as the champion is developing content that will be part of rollout, for example. 

Frequently the executive sponsor will share pieces of that, and again, right information to the right person at the right time. They're not going to overwhelm the whole executive team with a 15 minute how to. But they're going to know how to have the conversations with those influential leaders to get them ready for what's coming, and then also hear objections and think about them, and then find ways to go back to individual leaders with ideas or just let them know that you've heard their concerns. Bring that executive team along.

Chris: Part of the implementation PM number one was,  basically they understand how the firm ticks. And so an implementation PM would know when to pull in their executive sponsor or not. I need the board to know this thing is very important. I don't have the access or the reach or relationships.

Susan: Yes. I think you're right that someone who knows how the firm ticks will be able to see that some of the time. But they also have blind spots because they're not in the room and they don't really understand what it means for the leadership to buy in because they don't know…

Chris: …they’ve never been in the meeting,

Susan: Exactly. They haven't seen the way that things have happened in the past. So the executive sponsor does need to play an active role in knowing what's happening enough with the project that they can figure out when they can elevate it and how to navigate the executive team.

Chris: Okay. So these two conversations you had with the prospective clients and they asked you how we're going to be great, and you thought about the implementation PM thing, did you also give them advice on the executive sponsor too?

Susan: I did

Chris: You did. Okay. And what did you tell them?

Susan: Yeah. What did I tell them? Well, in, in one case, the person I was talking with is the executive sponsor. I know it. 

Chris: Did they know it? Is that one of those, I've had this situation where like, I know it's going to be you. 

Susan: Yeah. Well, I don't know if they knew it, but I shared with them that I thought it was probably them and that this was why, they see how this work is going to impact the firm strategy. And that they have a seat at the table to influence others who are in leadership roles, and they understand that just them seeing it is not going to… Well, I helped them understand maybe through this conversation that them seeing it was not enough to change the firm. 

Someone was going to have to do some work to help everyone else understand. And that was probably them. And they were like, yeah, that is probably me. Okay. Okay. Now I have a name for it. I'm the executive sponsor. Alright, cool. 

And then the other one, I think I've described for them multiple times what an executive sponsor looks like and acts like. And I think they're still navigating who exactly they want to staff the project with. I think they're still navigating who exactly is going to take that role again. Because they're thinking about it really seriously and they want to do it right and they want that person to be, they know they don't need to be hands-on, but they need to track the project and figuring out what executive team member both has the vision and has the ability to track the project I think is the tricky bit. Again, thinking about focus and having some time to lead, right? A lot of it's for the executive sponsors. Not a ton of time. But those people are swamped, they're responsible for business development or a whole team, they already have a lot on their plate.

Chris: I feel like this sounds like a leading question, but I don't mean it to be — so you're client number two or prospective number two, you're having this conversation, it could be X, it could be Y, maybe it's Z, maybe it's me. I don't know. Maybe it's all four. If they can't figure that out, would your advice be don't start? What happens if they do? Should they just wait three months or six months or a year until it's clear that someone's raising their hand, like, I'll take us up the mountain. Your thoughts on that.

Susan: Yeah. Good question. I would say just get started and the right person generally emerges.

Chris: Interesting.

Susan: Sometimes the same with a champion. If there's a few people that they think might be the right person, I'd be like, well, let's bring them all into the strategy session. I feel like we'll probably figure this out within two weeks, who actually has the interest, the passion. Part of what happens in the very early stage of the process of the project is everyone understanding what this project is going to be.

It's not unlike designing a building where, you know, if we have a bunch of stakeholders saying, yes, we want this building, but only when they start working with the architect and the engineering team do they understand the kinds of decisions that need to be made and how exciting that is, and how powerful that is, or how much they do not want to be in that room.

Chris: Yeah. But like 24-year-old Susan Strom would have wanted to be in that room. Leading that project

Susan: Oh, yeah. 100%. Yes.

Chris: Cool. 

So I want to ask you finally, kind of, community, it's something we've invested in a lot. “We” meaning Knowledge Architecture, but we also, meaning just you and me, personally, over the years, how does the KA community factor into implementations or that period after implementation where you're building adoption? Talk to us about that and again, back to those two people you were talking to. Do you bring community into the discussion with them also?

Susan: Yes. The KA community is a very special group of people who share very openly about their experiences, working through the kinds of changes that we're talking about with one another, and ask follow up questions with empathy and interest. So it is a rich community to learn from. Once a firm is done with implementation, they finish the project, they hopefully start connecting up with that group. And, actually, frankly, this is the tacit knowledge of my job. One of the pieces of tacit knowledge of my job is, I want to introduce the implementation PM and the executive sponsor to the KA community through the implementation process, but I also don't want to overwhelm them. So I'll wait for the right moment where we're..

Chris: You’re treating them with care.

Susan: Exactly, yeah. I'm onboarding them with care while we're having a virtual roundtable. And I think a topic might just fit squarely within their interest zone. You know, I'll invite them to that so they can just see who's here. What does this community look like? And maybe have a couple conversations that stick with them.

Chris: Should a firm in implementation come to KA Connect, our annual conference, or do you think it's better if they come later?

Susan: I mean, I think they should come, during implementation, before implementation, after implementation, I feel like KA Connect is supportive at any time. I think the tighter KA community that is client specific only, where it's, you know, the virtual roundtables, you need to be in implementation or after to be able to fully engage there.

Chris: Yeah. 

Okay, so final question for you. 15 years in — we hope everybody listening to this hopes there's another 15 years of Susan Strom at Knowledge Architecture— what are your hopes and dreams for where we'll take, whether it's implementation or supporting people afterwards, or helping them just go to the next level as learning organizations? What are you thinking about raising your game and then the game of all of our clients collectively?

Susan: Yeah. Since we moved to the new platform, my focus had been on trying to make as much of what we know about how you move through the project visible to our clients so that we're not the bottleneck. We're here as coaches, but they don't have to wait for me to say, well, the next thing is we should talk to your marketing team about their project data.

I've been trying to surface that, and I think what I'm thinking about now is how can we surface that level of detail to how you do it for the things that happen in year two and in year three for an organization. The stuff that happens after launch. I don't want to spin up a bunch of projects for firms that, oh, you've launched, now you have to start project two.

But I think with LMS, all of our clients that are already live with the intranet, they won't all want to implement LMS, but many of them will — how do we coach them through that and take the things that we're learning and just make it available while still creating a lot of partnerships so that they're not in a position where they feel like they have to go at it alone.

Chris: Yeah, so, just to name it for people that don't know, you've revamped our onboarding platform, you've brought in a piece of technology that makes it so they can go as self-serve or self-directed as they want. There's videos and there's all kinds of stuff they can go through. And I think what I'm hearing you say is, okay, great, so that's been optimized to get you to launch, but there's all these other moments that are going to happen in the journey in those two or three years that we know are coming. Can we try and make those come to you automatically or be self-directed or codified a little bit more? 

Susan: Yeah, I think that's right. And part of what I would love to codify even more are the strategy parts of it. I think LMS is a really interesting one, and AI search also has been a really interesting one when it comes to strategy.

For some firms, they'll be able to turn on AI search and just go at it. But for other firms, having a clear outcome, it's like we want people to use AI search to start to answer project questions so that we can deliver project advice that is more tailored and is based on our actual experience. We want to get our employees to do that and we're going to do that by teaching them how to use AI search really effectively. That's another level and that's where we get into strategy and change management and not just turning something on. 

Again, for the implementation, obviously it's a lot about strategy and change management and we know how to do it, but for these other pieces of technology or these other goals, having the strategic advice boiled down for firms to be able to work with, I would be very proud to have that.

Chris: Yeah, I agree. I think that sounds really helpful. I mean, in some ways it's almost like you've built a 100 level series on how to build Synthesis well, I think we're looking towards what would a 200 level series be, or maybe 300 level series, and how could we scale what we've learned? Ultimately, I said this would be a knowledge management discussion about knowledge management. And I think that's kind of where we are again. But good. 

Well, Susan, thank you for making time to hang out with me and talk about this stuff.

Susan: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me on. I love this work. It's such a specific thing that we do with implementations and Synthesis and intranets and AEC that getting to explore it in conversation is a real treat, and I hope that others find it useful.

Chris: Me too. All right. And if you did, let us know. Send us your ideas. If you've got other things you'd like to hear about from Susan, from people that have known Susan, please do.