“Do you find yourself reading books that just ‘make sense,’ so you end up reading the entire book but not doing any of it? Don’t let that happen with this book. The ‘tools’ Steve presents in this book work great. We’ve been using them for over a year at EA Canada with dramatic improvements in onboarding time and knowledge transfer. Here's the key: when you find a tool in the book that sounds perfect for your situation, stop reading and actually use the tool at least once before you resume reading.”

–Jerry Bowerman, vice president, chief operating officer, Electronic Arts Canada

FROM BLAH, BLAH TO AHA!

Breakthrough Knowledge Transfer Techniques for Every Professional!

No matter where you work there are people with experience teaching people who need to learn. Everyone is part of this exchange yet few people know how to do it well. Now, there’s a comprehensive how-to manual for effective knowledge transfer: Teach What You Know.

Steve Trautman introduces simple, practical mentoring techniques he created for engineers at Microsoft, and has proven in many diverse organizations ranging from Nike to Boeing. This is real-world, get-it done advice, organized into a framework you can use no matter what you need to teach. Trautman provides common-sense tools to successfully pass along years or even decades of experiences: easy-to- use checklists, sample training plans, lists of questions, step-by-step procedures, and a start-to finish case study.

Teach What You Know will help you orient new employees, support transitions to new assignments and promotions, prepare for employee retirements, build teams, roll out new technologies, and even move forward after reorganizations and mergers. You’ll learn how to

•   Create a plan for the entire knowledge transfer process

•   Clarify roles for each type of peer mentor in your organization

•   Set expectations for communication so you can mentor and still get your other work done

•   Organize what must be learned into manageable chunks

•   Develop a measurable training plan in less than an hour

•   Uncover the list of information and support that your apprentices can’t live (or at least learn) without

•   Explain the mysterious “big picture” to your apprentices

•   Create one-hour “lesson plans” in five minutes

•   Give a demonstration that is guaranteed to sink in

•   Help your apprentices take responsibility for their own learning

•   Make sure your apprentices have mastered what you’ve taught

•   Provide feedback that your peers will appreciate hearing

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

Making it painless to train people on the easy stuff - 2007-04-12
Reviewer Rating:
This book is a very clear, easy-to-read book about how to duplicate abilities to carry out repeatable tasks. And lest you think, "my task is special or too complex," think again. For better or worse, a lot of what we do every day is repeatable and not particularly creative. It makes sense to be able to train more people to share those burdens, anything from computer system configuration to project logistics, at the lowest cost to the current experts in our organization. It's all about getting more people up to speed, so we can all concentrate on the interesting part of the work: the creative and problem-solving parts.

For mentoring that part, try searching "lucid quality" on the web.

Teach what you know - 2009-08-06
Reviewer Rating:
Very good conditions of book and fast delivery. I'm very pleased to have done service with you, and would like to do it again if the chance come up.

THE BEST ON THE SUBJECT OF MENTORING! - 2009-07-31
Reviewer Rating:
Teach What You Know provides several concise and clever grab-and-go tools and templates for delivering the most important knowledge in the "lean" amount of time. The book explains the entire mentoring process from scratch guiding the reader through every step of the mentoring process, up to and including feedback and knowledge assessment. No matter how much experience and mastery an employee might have with a certain skill, this in no way guarantees the ability to teach it effectively. The book proves useful here by suggesting the best starting point for each stage of the mentorship role. All facets of the subject of mentorship have been thought through and mapped out by the author; he is a true specialist of the field. A few specific topics such as remote mentoring and practical cases of author's experience with real life companies have also been laid out.

I have used this book for mentoring a summer intern. Followed many advice and the tools provided. Me, being an only three-year experienced engineer on the job; my protege being an only freshman-year finished college student, had a successful project that will be valued my work team for a long time to come. The load of the project was nothing to look down upon especially within the time constraints we had. Thanks to Steve Trautman,it became an easy breeze!

The bare-bones can be listed as;

- Laying down a foundation: First Things First Essentials

- Transferring Episteme: The effective mode of acquiring and arranging knowledge in a given period

- Assessing Knowledge and Giving/Receiving Feedback: Ensuring comprehension is being achieved

Additionally, the book is not only tremendously useful for mentoring, but for peer relations, too. It includes many tips for supervisors, silo mentors and proteges as well. Tapping into the psychological aspects of learning styles and relations is another big plus. Many of the tools and templates that have been found to improve the effectiveness of mentorship-protege relationship have been explained and made easily customizable for any individual or company case. It is an especially great resource for learn-on-the-job companies.

The path to the effective mentorship always has to cross the clear definitions of

* roles,

* communication preferences,

* the big picture,

* the work assignments,

* training plan,

* content being delivered.

As with most things, planning of the mentoring process can save a lot of time and frustration for the mentor, protege, supervisor and ultimately the company.

"Practical guide" is accurate... - 2009-03-13
Reviewer Rating:
This title is a useful addition to the literature. Mr. Trautman's method is very similar to the system used on nuclear submarines to "qualify" new personnel. My work includes consulting on succession planning and new employee development. After reading Mr. Trautman's book, I remembered my submarine-days and the practical application "training what we know". Would recommend to anyone looking for systems/methods to train new employees and to increase the intellectual capital of your organization.

Good, practical advice. - 2008-02-01
Reviewer Rating:
Good, practical advice. For the impatient, you can read this book on O'Reilly's online service.

From Chapter 4: "The training plan is perhaps the most important tool in the entire book. If you take advantage of only one idea, I hope it will be this one."

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