Knowledge Sharing For All

The benefit of knowledge sharing for all
Written by Gareth Brooks

Ahead of the Food Safety Summit in Chicago Eagle gave me the opportunity to spend a couple of days as a guest trainer for the US Men's Hockey team at the Chula Vista Olympic Training Centre in California. This is a magnificent venue and presents a wonderful opportunity for coaches and trainers to share knowledge and experiences as it’s home base for: Athletics, Rugby 7s, BMX, Rowing, Archery and Beach Volleyball to name a few.

 Field Hockey is a very inclusive sport where knowledge sharing between countries is commonplace. This was evident as I type with Chris Clements the US Men's Field Hockey Coach on the phone to Max Caldas, coach of the Dutch team discussing the merits of applying pressure in a game, general concepts and the desired outcomes.

Of course, Max is not going to give up the family silver but in sharing his general knowledge he is helping to develop an up and coming coach who will have influence over a team that can benefit all hockey in the future. Also, Chris will soon present to 25 high-performance coaches from around the world at the Champions Trophy in London which in turn helps to develop the next level of coaches.

I believe this knowledge sharing and efficiency in lifting the level of coaching from around the world is something that hockey should be proud of and is part of the reason the sport continues to evolve for the better.

I see the same sharing in the B Corp community where market leaders often share their best practice expectations of suppliers. This allows other B Corps to develop a best practice code of conduct for their industry and share these with suppliers. By sharing best practices with these factories it is reasonable to assume their employee engagement and performance will improve the quality of products produced.

Even if for some reason down the track factories start supplying a competitor of ours then what have we lost from sharing a best practice code of conduct?

It’s in everyone’s best interests that producers put in place steps to reduce their environmental impact and everyone’s best interests that products supplied to the food industry are of high quality with exceptionally low rates of failure as it’s our families that may be impacted should a product fail in the future.