Posted by Reilly Atkinson on March 13, 2001 at 14:29:58:

In Reply to: How to motivate knowledge sharing posted by Jan Willem on March 13, 2001 at 09:30:27:

Jan -- That people do not necessarily share knowledge somewhat transcends KM -- it's a pretty universal phenomena. And, it is not always a bad thing -- think about many types of negotiations, competitive situations in general, keeping a blabber mouth in the dark, and so on. The point being that when and what knowledge to share requires judgement. Why increase the bandwidth of the "saturated knowledge worker" of today, who is buffeted by constant - if not sharply cataclysmic - change in this ever faster Knowledge Economy? Some thought about the payoff is probably a good thing.

From what I have seen and read, people's personality types are seldom considered in the quest for "knowledge sharing motivation". Some folks, sometimes the backroom computer geniuses, are terribly shy, and/or non-verbal, and/or highly insecure, and/or smug and above it all, not to mention condescending, officious, and "off-putting".Some of these types, and others, will take great offense at any corporate-speak approach to creating motivation -- everybody goes for their own carrots. And remember, even after centuries of effort and motivational research(psychology), we are still not always the "best that we can be". We still need big carrot fields.

At a more practical level, sharing knowledge takes work -- ask any teacher, any parent, most any boss, most any sales person (cf the Xerox Selling Course). Indeed, many of us are comfortable in sharing with family and friends, and, usually, have developed a local language, verbal and non-verbal, that is highly efficient -- something, I supose, along the lines of the benefits of the recently discovered ideas of an ontology and/or groups of practice. Once you move past the groups of comfort, to share knowledge you must develop and give presentations, formal, informal, solo, interactive. That is you must organize and articulate the knowledge you wish to share, and you must brush up your ability to listen, and simply, to learn.

Not everybody is good at this. Some do not write nor speak well, others are too impatient to listen, or don't want to exert the skills of scholarship, ie. go through lot's of information,......

I assure you from experience that the "same time, same place meetings (called seminars in the academic world) don't always work -- and sometimes can do damage -- in the academic world, the competiveness of researchers can lead to bruising arguments in seminars. There is that notion called skill. In the marketing world, your meetings are sometimes called focus groups, and the leader, moderator generally is highly trained for his/her job.

If you want to get a sense of the possible impracticality of simply storing conversations or discussions, try to extract the appropriate knowledge from 50-100 pages of focus group transcriptions, or from transcriptions of direct or cross-examination in a lengthy court trial. Someplace, someone has to digest and condense all this stuff -- not so easy to do.

This is not to say that knowledge sharing is impossible not impractical. Rather, my point is that there is a large, messy, intractable reality out there. Neglect it and you are in big trouble. Also, don't forget that there are countless examples of successful knowledge sharing through all of recorded history -- like culture.
Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

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Follow Ups:

• Re: How to motivate knowledge sharing Rob 01:28:43 03/15/01 (1)
  • Re: How to motivate knowledge sharing Reilly Atkinson 13:56:45 03/16/01 (0)

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