About Todd Hudson

“A Maverick Thinker Who Isn’t Afraid to Get His Hands Dirty (and His Feet Wet)”

A perfect example of how I approach knowledge transfer goes back to my early career when I was a manufacturing manager for a large silicon wafer production facility in Portland, Oregon.

When I learned that my employees were still scared of the safety showers, even after being trained multiple times in how to use them, I started asking why and heard: “I’m afraid the water will be cold.” “I hear the water is really dirty.” “I’ll be embarrassed to get wet in front of my coworkers.”

Instead of making the usual verbal assurances, I showed up one day during production, gathered the entire shift around me and, without warning, demonstrated the shower on myself. (Yes, that’s really me and the water was clean. And warm.)

Here’s why I did it.

Knowledge and wisdom get encapsulated in vivid stories and examples. Human beings learn by hearing and retelling these stories. By the end of the week, my shower stunt and its important messages were known across the ENTIRE factory. People stopped me in the hallways and break rooms to ask about it.

My five-minute demo had a more positive effect on safety than hundreds of hours of classroom training. What’s the big lesson? To be effective, knowledge capture and transfer must take advantage of human nature and how our brains work.