Posted by Su Williams on October 13, 1999 at 09:38:30:

In Reply to: Overcoming "knowledge is power" posted by Hans Kroese on October 13, 1999 at 05:51:52:

Hans,

Knowledge is Power...our findings are on two levels.

Frist level -
(If the person is insisting on a competitive view)

Messages we try to get across:

1. Understand that the knowledge you are "giving away" is only a tiny subset of the knowledge you have inside, and only a tiny subset can every be expressed into static form. Therefore you keep much more than you can every give away.

2. By the time the person you have given your incomplete portion to, integrates it into his own knowledge-base and experience so that it can be acted upon, you will have moved on in your own processing and he/she will be lagging behind still.

3. By "giving knowledge away" more and more people come to know you as "a knowledgeable one" and your status may well improve thereby.

Level two.

We are looking into using various tools such as Mindscreen's DISC and Values inventory and a tool based Maslow's hierarchy of needs, to devine what makes a particular person tick and what messages they need to hear and support they need to help them share.

For example, using Maslow's inventory...a pretty basic cut...

If the person in question mainly values status, then you can give a title, and visibility, recognition.

If they mainly value utility, then a pay or other compensation incentive...

Incidentally, since not everyone is utility driven, this can help avoid very costly and often unneccesary "get paid to share" schemes, which don't actually "do" anything for the people they were designed for and sometimes just dumps the quality of what is shared for the sake of QUANTITY...

This stuff is mainly indicated for people who have turned up as major knowledge nodes in the organisation and are really blocking the channels.

If the knowledge they have to give is important enough for the company, then it will be in their interest to help them share it.

We use OrgMap/NetMap to help us plot the knowledge flows through the organisation and
pinpoint the key players.

Hope this helps...

Su

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In case you haven't come across netmap, it is a visual representation of an organisation based on the results of a set of questionnaire asking
"who do you talk to about this* "

*this* - being a list of important topics as defined by the leadership team in a pre-work session.

"how often"
"how important is that to your job"

The results are then displayed in a visual way that allows you to see the nodes clearly...

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Follow Ups:

• Pointer for OrgMap/Netmap? Graham Wideman 14:43:31 11/07/99 (0)
• Re: Overcoming "knowledge is power" Reilly Atkinson 22:42:26 10/17/99 (0)
• Re: Overcoming "knowledge is power" John Tieso 19:46:28 10/17/99 (0)

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