In our Western management system we are used to one person, one job, one box on the organisation chart. Duplications are thought to be a waste. But shadowing somebody in their job (and having a buddy) may actually be far from a luxury.

Certainly, the larger the firm, the greater the chances that people are being boxed in by a particular ‘job description’. It is part of our business ‘efficiency’ and ‘focus’. The alternative would be called duplication or waste. But we have taken this box too far, because when the employee leaves, he takes the content of the box (his knowledge, experience and expertise) with him, leaving nothing but an empty container on the organisation chart.

There are other approaches - mainly, but not only, Japanese - where the idea of overlapping boxes and some degree of ‘duplication’ is not only acceptable, but the norm. It makes sense from a learning perspective. In reality, shadowing others in their job is far from being a waste or duplication or lack of focus. It’s actually more like a way of preserving organisational memory and creating knowledge transfer. The shadower does not have to have 100% of the other person’s knowledge or be a carbon copy. He just has to have a good enough understanding of what is going on, so he’s able to jump in if needed, whether partially or totally.

Through shadowing, knowledge gets spread and extra expertise is created. It may be a bit counterintuitive when you implement it for the first time, particularly if you pay too much attention to the ‘Focus Police’, who will be horrified. But it will pay off. Like any other of these 10+10+10 disruptive ideas, this one has the potential to transform the organisation into a true knowledge sharing one, where the risk of losing corporate I.Q is minimised.

Shadowing works well, not only between closely related jobholders (project leader A and project leader B), but also between more distant ‘relatives’. The greater the distance, the more counterintuitive they will feel and the more horrified the ‘Focus Police’ will be, but if you are brave enough to push through, you will see the benefits in the knowledge sharing arena. I am not suggesting you go crazy and come up with impossible shadowing pairs, but you need to give some thought to how far you want to go.

Shadowing should not confuse people, particularly if it is a fairly widespread practice and accountabilities are clear. One of the 10+10+10 processes suggests that you obsessively fix accountability and worry less about everything else! The shadower doesn’t share any responsibility with the person he shadows and that has to be made clear.

A cousin of shadowing is the buddy system, but there are differences. A buddy is somebody else in the organisation who you have frequent conversations with and with whom you share ideas, questions, answers or simply impressions of what is going on, what’s working or not, etc. Strictly speaking, the buddies are not shadowing each other’s jobs; they are simply sharing experiences from different parts of the organisation in a sort of corporate friendship. Whilst management can organise shadowing as a practice, it can hardly dictate a buddy system, but I advise that it should be encouraged.

Many people do their jobs in some degree of isolation, without having a good sense of what happens in other people’s shoes. A buddy can open the windows and let some fantastic light in. Some buddy systems that have worked for me in my client work are:

• Sales people - HQ people
• Sales people, geography A - sales people geography B
• R&D - Marketing
• Legal - HR
• Legal - customer facing staff
• HQ people - any non-HQ people

Shadowing and buddies should not be confused with mentoring either. A mentor has a clear remit in facilitating the mentored learning, whether in specific business skills or in leadership. Although a buddy can theoretically be a bit of a mentor, this is not his primary objective. In shadowing you can, of course, also see some elements of mentoring, but, again, this is not the main focus.

Implementing shadowing

• You could start in the obvious areas with high knowledge transfer potential; areas where the jobholders are closely related, such as Project leaders in the Product Development division or sales managers in different sectors or lines of products. Then it could spread virally to other parts of the company by reinforcing the benefits. Tip: have product leaders spread stories about the benefits of shadowing both for themselves and the organisation.
• Make shadowing a specific part of people’s objectives and therefore part of their performance appraisal. It implies that you will factor in a minimum amount of slack into the system. It is difficult to shadow someone else when you can hardly cope with your own job. But just think of the liability of losing two people who could not cope with their jobs and who didn’t transfer any knowledge to anybody else because they didn’t have any means to do it!
• Have a mechanism in place to check how the shadowing is working, for example by gently (or not so gently) asking the shadower to report on a particular issue encountered.
• Encourage a buddy system particularly between HQ and non-HQ people and between sales people in different territories.

Include shadowing somebody in a different role in every job description.

Make ‘the pair’ the unit of knowledge management or simply ‘the unit of work’. (It works for cops and it will work for you.)

There will be dozens of arguments against it, including waste and lack of focus. Resist them if you want to learn at twice the speed.

An organisation that has shadowing by design is super-rich. Knowledge is the only asset that multiplies itself when divided.

Copyright © - Leandro Herrero - 2008