September 01, 2004

Dismantling a Culture of Knowledge-Hoarding

Dismantling a Culture of Knowledge-Hoarding: "Hoarding" is probably not the best term. People often have very good reasons for not sharing knowledge (timing, nature of the knowledge, etc.). Hoarding should only describe a situation where the organization would benefit from knowledge sharing...but sharing doesn't happen in order to build personal silos.
For most organizations today, a sudden reversal in knowledge hoarding would result in chaos. Information has to be needed in order to have value. Sharing is a waste if it's not properly orchestrated with existing knowledge flow and technology systems. Most people are sick of "next-thing-ism". Give us some that'll work...something that's simple...and something that doesn't force us to revisit most of how we work. The problem is deeper than the problem (makes sense? :))...organizationally, we need to build some type of process first, before sharing will be valued and useful.

Posted by gsiemens at September 1, 2004 08:41 PM