Comments on: Why is it so hard to get smart people to share?

By: Library clips :: Community of Practice for Facilitators : pilot, adoption and participation :: September :: 2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:31:55 +0000

[...] Gia Lyons has a great post on this “Because you are the one individual who knows this stuff, you are reluctant to advertise that fact, for fear of the avalanche of requests to collaborate. You need more emails, IMs, and phone calls like you need another orifice in your cranium. Plus, these people who would swarm you like flies on poo will not perhaps care too much if you are over-extended. But, you are more than happy to share what you know with one or two others, after you’ve discerned that they won’t abuse you, won’t stab you in the back, won’t take credit for your intellectual capital, and will perhaps return the favor. The people who invest in creating a relationship with you are rewarded with your experienced point of view.” [...]

By: Dennis McDonald

Dennis McDonald — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:59:50 +0000

I’ve concluded that focusing more on relationship development than on knowledge management might make more sense for knowledge transfer across generations. Here’s one example:

http://www.ddmcd.com/my_dow.html

Here are related discussions of the issue:

http://www.ddmcd.com/managing-technology/category/retirement

Dennis McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia USA
http://www.ddmcd.com

By: Dogear-Nation - Episode 52 - Freaky Friday » Dogear Nation

Dogear-Nation - Episode 52 - Freaky Friday » Dogear Nation — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:34:53 +0000

[...] Seemsartless Why is it so hard to get smart people to share? [...]

By: Scientia potentia est « Scott Schnaars

Scientia potentia est « Scott Schnaars — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:35:45 +0000

[...] As an industry, we’ve been spending a considerable amount of time trying to better understand adoption of business social network tools. Gia Lyons had a great post recently entitled ‘Why is it so hard to get smart people to share?&… [...]

By: Gia Lyons

Gia Lyons — Sun, 11 May 2008 00:10:00 +0000

Stephen, you are most welcome! Following you in Twitter, now.

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:23:41 +0000

Gia, great stuff. I have a presentation to do on this very subject before a mix of senior public sector administrators. Thanks to Jasmin pointing me here, I’ve yet another useful, well-considered resource.

Thanks!

By: Gia Lyons

Gia Lyons — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:27:39 +0000

Ooo, Jasmin, I like that idea. Goes back to what I was saying about individual rewards being a barrier to social software adoption.

Here’s a realistic scenario, IMO:

Subject expert is comfy answering questions in a forum. If I want ot know more about this person, I click to view a profile. Or, if I search on topic X, this person shows up in the results because of their forum answers.

That’s it. That’s all it takes. Boom, I’m now aware this person exists, and have a good idea of what they know.

Awareness achieved, density incremented by 1.

By: wonderwebby

wonderwebby — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:14:51 +0000

it almost takes baby steps, doesn’t it?

I have found, through blogging, that the things I deem to be important are perhaps not so. And the simplest things are far more profound and interesting to others.

Knowledge alone is not gold.
I think if we placed more importance on imagination, wisdom, application…what happens AFTER you share your pearls with the crowd, then we might feel more generous about sharing our knowledge.

By: Gia Lyons

Gia Lyons — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:43:27 +0000

I do what you do, David. I NEVER answer a question one-to-one. I always point them to a URL, even if it means me blogging/wiki(ing?)/foruming it first.

Now, how do you get those who fall into the camp Richard describes to do the same? In many cases, you simply can’t. But, you can get them to talk to others who perhaps might proxy what they learn to the general population via blogs / wikis / forums / documents / whatever.

So, what are you two doing in your organizations to encourage the laggards to start doing what you describe here?

By: Richard Fahey

Richard Fahey — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:42:49 +0000

Trying to codify the tacit knowledge stored in the heads of employees is probably one of the most difficult tasks when implementing any kind of knowledge platform.

Firstly, (like the Rumsfield quote) people don’t know what they know. Therefore, it’s often difficult for them to codify things unless they are asked specific questions e.g. within debates in communities. Therefore communities and active debates within these are critical in order to extract the knowledge from the experts.

Secondly, people often think that by sharing information and knowledge somehow the value of this knowledge is dimished. Stewart Mader talks about this a lot when discussing how to grow wikis. The opposite is in fact true. As people share their knowledge to a wider community their recognition as an expert increases, and they’re more likely to be appreciated and respected for this.

It is important to recognise that the most valuable people in many organisation are those who freely share their knowledge and expertise with others. The experts who hoard all their knowledge to themselves and don’t contributing this to the public domain will never achieve the recognition or potential available to them. If I have a little knowledge and share it, it’s likely that others will do the same (i.e. the wikipedia concept), and thus society and the public domain is better off. If I have a lot of knowledge and don’t share it, nobody benefits.