Knowledge sharing litteracy

Dismantling a Culture of Knowledge-Hoarding, by Jamie S. Walters in the CEO Refresher (Thanks George!) looks at why people hoard information in traditional work environments

In such environments, the organizational cultures traditionally rooted are ones of hyper-competitiveness, where people hoard knowledge because it makes them more valuable and thus more likely to be promoted (or less likely to be sacked). In such organizations, for better or worse, the emphasis on competition, individual achievement and reward, and financial opportunities have well-fertilized these patterns of behavior.

Jamie proposes three paths to overcoming this cultural pattern:
- Create sub-cultures or initiatives that focus on small-group interactions
- Model from above
- Integrate "teaching and sharing" into the group fabric

These ar all good ideas, but I would argue that this is only one part of the equation. If people don't share what they know, it's not only because they are better off keeping it to themselves, but also simply because they don't know how to. Knowledge sharing can be an extremely cumbersome and time-consuming process both from the giving and the taking perspective. It needs methods and tools that must be learned at three levels in the company:

1- at the sponsoring level, top managers must understand how they must walk the talk themselves
2- at the program governance level, managers must understand the social dynamics of knowledge sharing communities, especially CoPs, be genuinely interested in learning more about social networking technology, and stop focusing exclusively on challenging new ideas with business cases and ROIs
3- at the giver/taker level, people must adopt new forms of communication and behavior, and sometimes even learn again some basic writing techniques such as the three level writing of journalists (catchy title, summary, and extended text).

For me 1 is easy; 2 is more difficult, and 3 is a nightmare. We might have to wait for the new generation currently in their twenties to really overcome this barrier unless we really tackle it in innovative ways. That's why I was impressed by Headshift's approach. So far I don't know any other consulting company that dared to address the nightmare.