Design a Workplace Culture with Purpose w/ Melissa Daimler (Author of "ReCulturing" and Chief Learning Officer for Udemy)

How do you build a truly great and healthy workplace culture, and what does it take to bring the values posted on office walls to life, every single day?

Melissa Daimler, CLO at Udemy and author of "ReCulturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success," joins JD to explore the key elements of building exceptional workplace cultures and how behaviors, processes and practices intersect to shape the outcome.

Melissa and JD also discuss how remote work impacts (and can even contribute) to an effective company culture and why it takes more than a robust course catalog to become a true learning organization.

• Watch the full video of this episode on the Axonify YouTube Channel.
• Subscribe for ITK updates and show announcements at axonify.com/itk.
• Grab a copy of Melissa’s book - ReCulturing - at melissadaimler.com/reculturing-book. 
• Get your ticket for AxoniCom 2023 in Nashville this October at axonify.com/axonicom. 
• Grab a copy of JD’s book - The Modern Learning Ecosystem -at jdwroteabook.com.

In The Know is brought to you by Axonify, the proven frontline enablement solution that gives employees everything they need to learn, connect and get things done. With an industry-leading 83% engagement rate, Axonify is used by companies to deliver next-level CX, higher sales, improved workplace safety and lower turnover. To learn more about how Axonify enables over 3.5 million frontline workers in 160-plus countries, in over 250 companies including Lowe’s, Kroger, Walmart and Citizens Bank, visit axonify.com.

Transcript

JD Dillon (00:19):
Hello friends, how are you today? It's great to see you. Welcome to the 37th episode of In the Know, your 25-minute deep dive into the modern employee experience and what we can do to make it better. I'm JD from Axonify, and today's episode is all about culture. Now, culture has got to be one of the buzziest of buzzwords around the corporate world, right? We talk about it a lot. We say it's super important. We spend hours and hours debating values and mission statements and fit and all of these different culture ideas. But when it comes down to it, I still get the feeling that many people can't really explain what workplace culture is. Well, we're going to work through all of this confusion today with our special ITK guest, Melissa Daimler, CLO of Udemy, and the author of the new book Reculturing is here to tell us what it takes to build a culture that works in today's workplace.
(01:13):
Plus, we're going to give our live LinkedIn viewers a chance to potentially grab a free copy of Melissa's book. So keep your ears peeled, which is a thing I keep saying on the internet, for a special keyword coming up in just a few minutes. But before we welcome our ITK guest, I'd like to complain, well, maybe not complain, maybe it's more of a pontification on the subject of today's show. You see, culture is one of those topics that can be sometimes kind of squishy and that I often struggle with. Everyone has a perspective on what culture is, and that's totally their right, but that also means that we sometimes have a hard time coming to a shared understanding of what culture means in an organization and how it informs the work that we do every day. And after you've worked for a few different companies and you've been part of the same types of conversations over and over again, it can get a little frustrating when companies fail to understand the impact of poor workplace culture on business outcomes.
(02:11):
When we fail to address systemic issues within our organizations and then wonder why we're not seeing results, it can feel like we're trying to slam a square peg into a round hole over and over. So what I want to do is point out, not complain, and highlight a few of the mistakes that I've seen companies make when it comes to how they approach workplace culture. And I've seen these mistakes in every industry size of business, new companies, as well as those that have been around for decades. So, if you don't mind, here are six things we get wrong about workplace culture, at least according to JD. So, number one, I think we conflate culture with company mission statements and values. And too many organizations, I believe, think that putting words on a wall means that people are going that way. But few companies managed to really bring the words on the wall to life in how they enable their teams daily.
(03:06):
So it doesn't matter how well crafted or wordsmithed your mission statement is if you don't deal with the underlying issues that inhibit people's ability to bring the right behaviors to life in the everyday work. You'll hear a lot about this in our upcoming conversation, but culture is just as much about behaviors, practices and processes as it is about missions, visions and values. Number two, the whole hire-for-fit thing. Nothing says we don't want to grow our business as much as saying we hire for culture fit. Again, from my perspective, personally, I don't want to work with people just like me, and I'm pretty sure my team members would say the same thing. Now, I think we should be looking to add to our company culture, not just limit our perspectives by refusing to bring on people who are not going to challenge the way that we do things within our organizations.
(03:55):
Number three, I don't think HR owns company culture. We already ask HR to handle a ridiculous pile of disjointed tasks, mostly because they all somehow involve people. But that's what an organization is. It's a group of people and, sure, senior management and HR can set the tone and provide a framework, but culture can't be owned by a single department. It's a shared idea. And frankly, I think it's more centered on the operation than it is on support functions or even the C-suite. And, after all, that's where culture comes to life every day in the way that work gets done. Number four, workplace culture isn't a singular thing in my experience. For example, this is a map of every Starbucks location in the US in 2018. Now, I don't work for Starbucks, and I don't have particular insight into their culture, but I wanted to share this visual because I think it begs a certain question: how many cultures exist within your organization?
(04:54):
By definition, culture is, and I quote, “the customs, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people or other social group.” And there are lots of, when you think about it, different people from different places serving different communities within even just one company. And again, the corporate team can set the tone and establish expectations, but the culture ultimately comes to life and how people in this example, in stores, treat customers and work with one another every day. So, in my experience, you don't really have one culture. You have as many cultures as you have different teams and different locations. Number five, I don't think we understand the relationship between culture and proximity. I want to dig in with Melissa about this in a couple of minutes, but I believe we often mistake physical togetherness for cultural alignment. When you think about it, being in the room doesn't mean you share the same perspective on how work should be done.
(05:49):
Just like not being in the room doesn't mean you can't collaborate effectively. And if you were wondering, that last sentence was a triple. So I did that. And finally, number six, I think we need to stop separating culture from the work it informs. And this is another reason why I think it's challenging when we say that HR owns culture. If the people who are accountable for business results aren't also expected to prioritize the right behaviors that inform how work gets done, we're just going to keep having this conversation about cultural challenges over and over and over again. So that's a short list of where I've seen companies maybe go a little bit wrong when it comes to workplace culture. But if there's one thing I hope we can all agree on, it's that culture isn't just something that happens. It requires prioritization, it requires effort, it requires a strategy to create the types of workplaces that we want.
(06:39):
So that's why I'm excited that you're here for this conversation today. And also why I'm excited to welcome our I T K guest, Melissa Daimler. Melissa is a trusted advisor who helps leaders design, operationalize, and scale their cultures. She brings over two decades of experience in learning and organizational development, leading these functions at Adobe, Twitter, and WeWork, and now, in her role as CLO of Udemy, she's an enthusiastic contributor to the body of work, exploring organizational culture and learning in publications like Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes and Fortune, and her book titled Recultured: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success. Melissa Daimler, you're In The Know
Melissa Daimler (07:17):
JD, it's great to see you and your orange.
JD Dillon (07:21):
Let's just start there, and just if anyone out there is wondering if you want to, we don't have a merch shop on the show yet, but maybe we should get one. We should. This is literally called Safety Orange, so I can direct traffic or airplanes at any moment if it's needed. Awesome. But around the orange question I wanted to ask you, I've noticed when you've been out and about talking about your book, you've often matched your wardrobe to the cover of the book, and it's something that I really can't do unless you know a tailor that makes green and pink suits, it's not really an option for me. So I'm curious: why did you go with Orange for the cover of the book?
Melissa Daimler (07:59):
I do have a good tailor I can refer you to side note. But yeah, the story with the orange is interesting, so thank you for wearing orange safety. Orange looks good on you. When I got the initial cover from my publisher, McGraw Hill, I was not happy. You have these expectations when you are writing a book, and you think about the cover and the color and all the details, and it wasn't orange, it was white or a black maybe or a blue. And so I asked them to come back with other colors just to give me some other ideas, and they came back and said, we really love orange. We think it's going to pop. We don't have a lot of other business books out there. There haven't been recently. And so it took me a couple of weeks, but over time, I finally just embraced it. As I started to research the color a little bit more, I realized that it actually means joy, and I just went with it. And I like the color orange. We were just saying that I think everybody looks good in orange. So yeah, I just decided to get some wardrobe pieces that would match the cover of my book.
JD Dillon (09:21):
You just got to find the ways to lean in, right?
Melissa Daimler (09:23):
You just got to lean and embrace it. 
JD Dillon (09:25):
I'm currently explaining my book cover by saying this was a planned Barbie movie. I don't think people are believing me, but when you look at the spine of my book, it's perfect. 
Melissa Daimler (09:38):
Exactly.
JD Dillon (09:39):
Anyway, so we have a tradition here at ITK time. We're talking to someone who's released the book recently. We want to give our live LinkedIn viewers a potential chance to grab a copy of the book. So, if you'd like your very own copy of Reculturing, drop the keyword ‘culture’ in the LinkedIn chat; pretty straightforward, right? And what we're going to do is we're going to pick a few random viewers after today's episode to grab a copy of Melissa's book. So be on the lookout for a DM from us after the show on LinkedIn. Now, Melissa, let's start out strong. Let's settle the confusion around culture once and for all right here on in the know: what is culture within an organization, and how do you define it in a tangible way?
Melissa Daimler (10:20):
Culture is three things. It is behaviors, processes and practices. So that's how I define culture in the very short version of it. I agreed with many things you said, JD, in the beginning, there was one that I did not, but you mentioned a few things that I also include when I'm talking about culture. One is that it's an active practice. I think the misnomer is that it's just a thing, a noun that you had shared before. It's not just a value on a website or a value on a wall. It's a set of behaviors that exemplify what that value is. If I saw you being innovative, what would you be doing if that was the value we were talking about? What would you not be doing? So it's an observable behavior that is actively being practiced every day. I think another misnomer, I have many of them, but another big one is that culture. Do we really need to bother? It's happening. Do we really need to be intentional about this thing? And my response is always that we need to be intentional because it is happening by design or default. So we might as well be designing it since it is such a big component of how we want to work with each other.
JD Dillon (12:00):
So I've worked in different organizations and had different types of jobs, and when I look back on my past roles, there's one culture that stands out, and it's probably not surprising because I worked for Disney. So, working at Disney really shaped my perspective on how I think about culture in the workplace, especially when you work in the theme parks, and see the magic happen, I can attest, that I fully believe the magic is real when you experience it at Disney. It really is an experience that shapes how I approach culture moving forward. Not necessarily expecting every organization to be the same, to be Disney, but kind of having a bit of an expectation around the effort put in, as you said, to create the type of culture that we need as an organization to accomplish what we're trying to achieve. So I'm curious from your perspective, when you look back at your previous jobs or maybe some of your early jobs in your career, how did your perspective on culture get shaped by your experiences in those organizations? And if you went back with what you know now, how would you shape that conversation differently regarding how culture impacted your ability to do your job?
Melissa Daimler (13:08):
I think one of the reasons I wrote the book is, again, I really appreciated your overview in the beginning because a lot of what gets you frustrated about culture is similar to what got me frustrated. And I think I had such an opportunity to work in some pretty iconic high-growth companies. Adobe had just an amazing culture. I was there for almost 11 years and learned a lot about what good culture and good leadership look like. I think there is. When I realized the powerful connection between a mission or a purpose or a vision, or whatever you want to call it, the strategy of the organization and the culture, I call it the why, what and how. And I do believe that those are all very important components to an organization, but they become even more important when they work together and when we can leverage them together as one connected unit.
(14:12):
And so I saw that in practice quite a bit at Adobe, and we didn't call it culturing, but we intentionally evolved our culture at least three times. When I was there, we evolved our business model, we changed CEOs, and we bought two major companies. So all of those were opportunities to pause and look at what it is we were doing strategically as a business and then how are we supporting that through our processes and practices and our daily behaviors from leaders on down. So Adobe was a huge input on why I wanted to write this book. I think Twitter was also just a great company for me to come into a very high-growth company, moving very fast, trying to figure out how to keep the essence of its culture while also knowing it had to evolve its business as well.
(15:18):
So I learned, once again, the importance of culture being this active set of behaviors that you embed into your hiring and development and feedback processes that then get reinforced daily. And then of course, WeWork was, I can say now an opportunity to learn what doesn't work. And I go into some detail in that in my book. You can watch all the movies and the books out there. We know what happened, but it was just such a great thing for me to experience when the purpose, strategy and culture are very disconnected and the fallout from that as a business, frankly. And then Udemy had the opportunity, and we're still culturing today to kind of evolve what was already a great culture, but to really be much more explicit about what are those values that we have, what do they mean, what does good look like? And then how do we reinforce that in our strategy and our everyday work with each other?
(16:33):
So I had a lot of good data, and you and I have talked about this, JD, I was so frustrated with all the books and the articles and the research out there over 70 years. This idea, the concept of an organizational culture, has been around for over 70 years. I didn't know that until I started researching this, but it was mostly things written by people who had never been inside a company and had never experienced good or bad cultures. And so I really wanted to write something from the front lines, from a practitioner perspective.
JD Dillon (17:12):
I have to ask, I didn't share this question with you before, so put you on the spot a little bit. You said movie, so I have to test. So, if you were portrayed in one of those films or television specials or limited series, who would play you?
Melissa Daimler (17:32):
I am a big fan of Reese Witherspoon.
JD Dillon (17:36):
I can see it. I can see it. So I have no reason to be portrayed in the film, but I really want to say Ryan's Gosling and or Reynolds. That's where I'd want to go. I don't think anyone's going to give me that. So I think I'd back up to Tofa Grace. I think everyone would be like, all right, I can go with that. The other ones I don't think the audience would agree with me or anyone who's ever met me would agree. But I just was curious. So now everyone's picturing Reese Witherspoon. I think it's a good choice, good choice. So, digging into the technology thing for a second, because we talk a lot about the tech culture, the technology companies are kind of held up with a certain perspective when it comes to things like workplace culture. And a lot of pictures come to mind, especially if you haven't worked in technology.
(18:24):
So there's the pinging pong table, free meal and nap pod. And I don't know if anyone else has this experience. I've paid for every meal I've ever had on the tech campus. And in my opinion, the best food is actually if you go to a grocery company's headquarters, they have great food there. But I'm curious, given that you have this rich experience in technology and are focused on company cultures and what does and doesn't work, what could companies outside of the tech space actually borrow from tech company culture? And then, what should tech companies be borrowing from companies outside their space?
Melissa Daimler (19:02):
One of the things I have really appreciated being in tech companies is this idea of getting the first version out there. This quick prototyping. We had that a little bit at Adobe, especially as we were growing. Frankly, we realized we needed to get faster. And then at Twitter, I just remember Dick Costello, who was our CEO at the time, the second week that I was there, I was sitting at my desk, and he said, when am I going to see that strategy on management development my second week there? And I just was blown away. I was like, what? I thought I had at least three months to get something to him. I literally went into his office with half a sheet of paper with scribbles. It was no PowerPoint. It was nothing perfect. But I got practiced in being able to show that first concept, that first prototype, and get feedback very quickly so that we could then iterate and evolve from there. So I think other companies can learn a lot from letting go of that perfectionism and not getting customer involvement too soon but letting people co-create on the other side.
(20:33):
I do think some companies outside of tech do a better job of connecting and reinforcing the strategy that they initially set out at the beginning of the year. And if there are changes to that strategy, be really clear about what changed and what we're going to do. Now. Sometimes I think because we move so fast in tech companies, we forget kind of these simple steps to bring employees along, and it causes so much confusion that it actually takes us more time to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot the reason why we're changing is this. Let's back up. We're pivoting, we're moving in this direction. It could have just taken a few sentences, maybe 10 minutes out of a meeting, to say, we're changing. This is why this is the new direction. So again, I think other companies, because maybe they're not going as fast, do a better job of bringing people along.
JD Dillon (21:35):
There's this interesting balancing act between iterative improvement and stability. So you need to be constantly changing and constantly moving, but not leave everyone else behind or just have everyone feel like the ground under them is constantly shaking in that regard. So yeah, completely identify with that as well. And now I don't think we can have a culture conversation without tackling the remote work thing because kind of been in the headlines for a couple of years now, and it's been interesting to watch us go from a world where we had organizations saying people can work from anywhere, and it's a great value to us, to a world where people are now being pulled back into the office in droves. And a lot of cases, culture and things like collaboration are being used as reasonings for bringing people back into the office. So I'm curious to get your perspective on whether culture is a good reason to bring people back into the office. And how does proximity in that way impact culture? Especially when I used that example in frontline organizations, you might have hundreds or thousands of locations spreading people apart within one organization.
Melissa Daimler (22:33):
Yeah, I have a lot to say about this. Culture is how work happens between people, the behaviors, processes and practices. It is agnostic to any office. And in fact, I think that the silver lining of the pandemic was that people realized, oh, culture is not the pinging pong tables. It is not free food. It is not the nap pods. It is how we work with each other. And it's about intentionally designing that and intentionally practicing that. So I think your point about conflating kind of the perks, or the fun stuff, is doing a disservice to culture. And I do believe that getting together, I love coming back into an office. I love putting heels on, wearing orange and whatever colors and seeing what other people are wearing and connecting with people. But that doesn't mean I'm less connected to the people on my team who are in New York, London or Tokyo.
(23:50):
So I think instead of the word culture, I think what it is we're craving is connection. And I think returning to an office in person allows those connections to deepen. It can accelerate connection. It can accelerate getting to know people, but I by no means think that the only way to build culture is if you have people physically in the same place. I think that's lazy thinking. And in fact, one of the questions I can't stand is how do we get our culture back? Because really what that's saying is, how do we get people back into the office? And again, you and I both agree here culture never left. It is an active and intentional set of practices that we are responsible for driving daily.
JD Dillon (24:47):
That's always where my mind goes in these conversations. Do you just not want to do the work necessary to make a different version of work, work? I just use the word work way too many times in one sentence. But is it just a matter of, there's a variety of things at play, I think, in the remote work conversation, but one of the big considerations for me is how many people just launched a digital platform and said, we can work from anywhere. And how many people actually rethought how the organization functions and how work is done in this type of setting? And those who didn't are just slamming into walls because they maybe didn't put the work in. So I'm just kind of curious about that.
Melissa Daimler (25:25):
Yeah. One other thing I was going to say is when you were talking about remote work and with all the Starbucks on that map, I thought that was interesting. I put this in my book as well. I do think that it is important that there is a consistent culture across an organization and that you have a common language not to take away anybody's identity. I remember I had some constructed debates with some engineers at Twitter where they said, you're taking away our identity, and you don't understand, and we need to create our own thing. And especially now, as we're talking more about skills-based organizations and really thinking about our work around skills versus jobs and roles and structure and movement of employees, it is even more important that we have a common language. And so I'm all about identity and creativity. It's just there are different ways to do that.
(26:28):
So you can maybe amplify certain values and behaviors in your team. Or what I always say is in terms of practices, there are things that you can do as a team that you can create together that can be your own, for instance. So we always look on a quarterly basis with my team at our own practices, we look at our meetings, we do an audit there. We look at how we're communicating, how we're connecting, and whether there are different practices that we want to evolve, change or get rid of just based on how we're working with new people coming in. So we should always be talking about how we're working as a team and having that identity be there. And I believe it has to be, any team has to be connected to that bigger cultural conversation.
JD Dillon (27:20):
Yeah, totally agree. I see it as almost something you're building on top of, right? So there's that consistent foundation, and then there's that kind of local reality in terms of there's meaningful differences. And just kind of relating back to Disney, even park to park and location to location. There were differences based on who was there and how management operated. But there was that consistent overriding of what we represent as an organization, what we're trying to bring to life for the people and the guests that we're supporting. But then there were subtle variations that really helped people kind of take ownership over that kind of local flavor of culture. And you often see this when management changeover happens, right? Someone new comes in, and they immediately start to implement their way of doing things and either by purpose or sometimes accidentally start to wipe away some of that local connectivity that you spoke to.
(28:11):
And that's when people start to brush up against the difference between consistency and kind of localization. So that's something I'm kind of curious about, especially in frontline roles when there are so many different locations and different managers at play. How you find that balancing act, I think, is interesting. Now, there's one more topic I want to hit before I let you go, and that's learning. We have to talk about learning for a second. So I'm curious, what role do you see learning playing when it comes to building a great organizational culture? And then, in your experience, what did you learn from the experience of sharing your story in your book?
Melissa Daimler (28:49):
There's a chapter in the book, and I certainly have been thinking about a lot more since I've been in this role for the last couple of years, but part of what I think about when I think about connecting all the different parts in culture is so often I see leaders talking about the culture and the importance of how we work. They define certain behaviors, but then those behaviors have no connection to any kind of skill, which then has no connection to any kind of leadership experience. And so you throw your employees over to a school or an external program for two weeks, not really knowing what the curriculum is not tied to anything that we talk about internally. They come back, and there's no kind of reinforcement opportunity. And so I believe there is such a huge opportunity that we keep missing between culture and learning.
(29:49):
And so once you've defined behaviors, then what is that skill that will help reinforce that behavior? And so I always give this quick example. When I first started here, we had this value of always learning a million different definitions of what that was. One of the behaviors that we identified was, oh, when we learn, when we're truly learning, we are debating. We are constructively debating. We are creating productive friction with each other. But then we realized we don't have the skills to do that here because people conflated debating with being mean. And we have a very nice culture. And so part of our responsibility as an organization and a learning team is to make sure that whatever we expect culturally in the system, whatever behaviors we want to see more of, we then have to make sure that people have the skills to do them. So we have workshops and how to debate constructively. We talk about what productive friction looks like. We roll out tools like decision-making tools and roles and responsibilities tools so that people are clear about collaboration. So I do think when you are developing learning experiences for an organization, ideally you're developing skills that tie directly to those cultural behaviors and to the strategy that you're trying to continue to execute against
JD Dillon (31:28):
Great points. I especially love that emphasis on constructive debate, and you can disagree without being mean or feeling like someone's being mean to you or being disrespectful. It's a great point. And then just last question, what's the biggest thing you learned from the experience of writing your book?
Melissa Daimler (31:46):
There's a saying you write so you understand what you're thinking. And that was the biggest surprise to me. I knew what I wanted to write conceptually, but after the first couple of chapters, I thought, gosh, what else do I have to share? What are some of those other things that I want to share with the world? And I just started writing. I think the biggest lesson is that you don't need to know everything you're about to write before writing. And so just the act of writing and practicing that writing on a daily basis, this goes with any kind of good habit and practice.
(32:35):
I just wrote every day. There was a point in time when I was writing the book five to eight every morning I would just write, some sessions were better than others, but ideas would come that I hadn't thought of before or different ways of looking at things that I never thought of before. And so I always share this advice with anybody who's thinking about writing a book, and I'm sure you do as well, having also gone through this process, but just getting in the habit of writing on a daily basis makes a huge difference because you never know what's going to come out of that writing session.
JD Dillon (33:19):
Absolutely. And I couldn't have written a book that hopefully some people have enjoyed reading if I didn't write or start writing that blog years ago that I know absolutely no one read. So going through the experience of figuring out what's my version of sharing my story versus trying to do someone else's version of it. So I appreciate that feedback as well. But Melissa, thank you so much for joining us today. How can people out there connect with you, follow the great work that you're doing, and grab a copy of Reculturing?
Melissa Daimler (33:47):
Thank you. This was fun. So melissadaimler.com is my website. I'm also pretty active on LinkedIn, and I'm @MDaimler on Instagram.
JD Dillon (33:58):
Awesome. Thank you so much again to Melissa Daimler for sharing her insights into what it takes to build workplace cultures with purpose. If you joined us live on LinkedIn for this episode and you drop the keyword into the chat, be on the lookout for a DM from my team for some of those lucky viewers who might be walking away with a copy of Melissa's book. If you had a good time today, be sure to subscribe to ITK. Head over to Axonify.com/itk for show announcements and reminders. You can also check out the entire ITK collection over at the Axonify YouTube channel or listen to In the Know on your favorite podcast app, and be sure to come back in two weeks for a huge portion of FOMO. We're just two and a half weeks away from AxoniCom, our Axonify community event taking place this year in Nashville, Tennessee.
(34:41):
And we're going to give you a sneak preview, an exclusive preview of the event. On the next ITK, I'll be joined by several of our AxoniCom speakers, including Dick Johnson, the former CEO of Footlocker, who's going to be sharing tips for how you can influence your C-Suite to invest in your frontline teams. We're also going to take a look back at some of the fun from previous AxoniComs and give you a glimpse into our highly anticipated AI conversations. So, if you're heading to Nashville later this month, get a headstart on your AxoniCom experience. And if you can't make it in person, get a glimpse into the insights we're going to be sharing onsite with our Axonify customers and partners. So let the FOMO commence on Wednesday, October 18th at 11:30 AM Eastern as we share a sneak peek of AxoniCom 2023. Until then, I've been JD. Now you're In The Know. And always remember to ask yourself the important questions. Do you know what they say about a clean desk? It's a sure sign of a cluttered desk drawer. I'll see you next time. In The Know is produced by Sam Trieu and visually designed by Mark Anderson. Additional production support by Richia McCutcheon, Andrea Miller, Maliyah Bernard, Tuong La and Meaghan Kay. The show is written and hosted by JD Dillon. ITK is an Axonify production. For more information on how Axonify helps frontline workers learn, connect and get things done, visit Axonify.com.