Recently I co-hosted a C-Suite workshop with Grant Goodwin, the bright mind behind AllRoads. I asked Grant to elaborate on a few of the concepts he shared in the workshop. Here is a bit more detail from Grant.
Dave: In our Honolulu workshop you talked about the “stored value” that companies have but frequently don’t tap into. What did you mean by that?
Grant Goodwin is an entrepreneur based in Canada and President of All Roads Inc. an organization with clients across North America and Europe. –
Grant: Many entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, and CEOs think that their business’ best asset is what’s in the bank account. They think value comes from a warehouse full of products or an office full of expensive equipment. But the truth is, a business’ best asset is something much more powerful: its institutional knowledge. When the staff fails to capture that knowledge and make it shareable, that business bleeds value left, right, and center. It’s up to the leadership team to ensure that institutional expert knowledge isn’t sidelined or going to waste, causing untold inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
Dave: So it’s bad if knowledge stays ‘trapped’ in the brain?
Grant: When an organization’s collective knowledge is trapped in the brains of its best personnel, countless opportunities to support employees and clients are missed. Just look at the problems a business faces when its collective knowledge isn’t tangible and accessible and is only transferred verbally:
- Employees make mistakes or suffer through arduous workarounds because they don’t know that a colleague in another department has a solution.
- Customers visiting a company website are underwhelmed and unimpressed by the lack of useful information found there; they find no evidence that this business has any more expertise than the competitors.
- Staff are forced to repeat themselves hundreds of times a day answering FAQs.
- When an employee leaves the company, they take their knowledge with them, and the remaining staff members have to re-learn the same information.
- Customers do not receive the answers to their questions in a format that is tangible, retainable and re-usable.
David Keuning, CEO Peer Group Chair
Dave: You talked about “Authoritative Content”. What do you mean by that?
Grant: The principle behind Authoritative Branding is that a business should strive to capture the knowledge of its staff and transform it into a variety of multi-use formats that address a targeted audience. This ensures that
- an organization’s collective knowledge is shared amongst staff and clients,
- eliminates inefficiencies and repetition,
- provides a better service to customers, and
- provides more support for staff.
Knowledge packaged into Authoritative Content is a permanent, reusable, multi-functional asset that can be used for sales, HR, marketing, events, website and social media content, customer service, staff training, and thought leadership.
Dave: Now I get what you mean when you said “Knowledge is an asset that you can’t afford to waste.”
Grant: Knowledge is a business’ best asset. It can’t be faked or forged: it can only be earned through years of industry experience and innovation. More than anything else, prospects look to do business with the organizations that will share this knowledge with them, in person and online – because in the age of the Internet, customers often want to verify expertise before they buy. A business can’t capitalize on their knowledge if they don’t record it.
The only way to put it to good use is to capture it and share it across the organization. Each piece of Authoritative Content serves multiple purposes: to educate and engage, to confirm credibility, to convey brand personality, to streamline business processes and to better serve customers. Authoritative Content ensures that expert knowledge is applied across a whole organization, rather than retained in the brains of your employees.