Sense and decide
Who Knows What
Map the team's expertise before a decision needs it
The team builds a simple map of who knows what, so it can bring the right people into a decision and knows whose information to go looking for.
Borrowed from research on "transactive memory," the term psychologist Daniel Wegner used for a group's shared knowledge of who knows what. Read the original source.
One session · An hour or more to set up · Anyone on the team can start it
Try this first
For your next big decision, list the three or four kinds of knowledge it depends on, and write a name next to each.
Use it when
The team has deep expertise, but decisions get made without it because nobody knew who to ask or the person who knew was not in the room.
Skip it when
The team is small and has worked together long enough that everyone already knows who to ask. A map that is built once and never updated is worse than none, because people keep trusting it after it goes out of date.
How to introduce it
Ask each person to write down what they know well, what they are often asked about, and who they go to for what. Combine the answers into one short map, with topics down one side and names across the top. Check it against what actually happens by asking who people went to the last time a question came up. Before a decision, use the map to check that each kind of knowledge the decision needs is in the room.
How to show up
List your own gaps honestly, not only your strengths. Watch for titles standing in for knowledge, because the most senior person is not always the one who knows. Include the team's AI tools too: note what each one is reliable for, and who knows where it goes wrong.
How long it takes
About an hour to build the first map. A few minutes to check it before each major decision.
What makes it hard
People understate what they know, or list what they are responsible for instead of what they understand. The map goes out of date as people change roles, so someone has to own keeping it current.
What it looks like when it's working
Decisions bring in the person who knows, even when that person is junior or on another team. When someone says "ask her, she's seen this before," they are right.
How long until it sticks
Expect a few months of use before people check the map without being reminded.
How you know it stuck
Before a decision, someone asks "who knows about this that isn't here?" and the answer comes quickly.
The idea behind it
A team doesn't need everyone to know everything. It needs everyone to know who knows what. That lets the team divide up its expertise and still use all of it.
Where it comes from
Research basis. Wegner described how couples and close groups share memory: each person remembers some things and knows where the rest is kept. Later research on work teams found that this shared map of expertise is linked to how well teams perform. A combined analysis of 65 studies found that a team's knowledge of who knows what was more strongly linked to its performance than everyone holding the same knowledge. Research on group decisions also finds that making clear who holds which expertise helps groups bring out information that only one person has. Most of the studies measure the map through surveys, so they show a link rather than proving the map causes better results.
Also fits: Know-how lives in one person's head
Home problem: People aren't working from the same picture