I spend much of my work day as many do, writing documents,
sending emails and researching online. A typical document that I write goes
through several reviews, and I am often leery to send a draft for review until
I am almost 70% sure of the content that I have laid out. Through my editing process I often come across
some great nuggets of information and the old me use to say, keep that in your
back pocket to use when needed.
Yes, I was “knowledge hoarding”.
The term knowledge hoarder is often heard in business as
knowledge holds great value. I know more
than you, so I hold the power. Knowledge hoarding is often seen as a method
of ensuring job security. Employees often feel that the company could not do
without them simply because they can’t do without the knowledge they hold
inside their heads. As a result, a lot of content is sealed away on home
computers, locked down in file stores and databases and kept in silos for no one
else to see. This culture is starting to back fire and I like to think that Social
Business has something to do with this. The power of “working out loud” sharing those
drafts, crowd sourcing ideas and connecting with others both internally and
externally to build conversations around content is proving to have significant power that will see a shift in culture to help fuel a more transparent and open work environment.
Collaborating on content is not new; we have had the ability
to do this for years. We all send documents through emails, create wikis
together, post documents in team spaces, but what is new is the ease and the velocity
in how it can happen when powered by the right tools designed with the right
strategies. Now, when I embark on writing a new piece of marketing content or
get engaged in a new project I look to my network first to see, who can help,
who can contribute and who has had success in this area in the past that I can
learn from.
Simply sharing what you are working on as you
are getting started, maybe in an activity stream or on Twitter or Facebook or
by posting an idea to your ideation app -
all of sudden you are opening a window of opportunity and inviting others to
share their thoughts and or ideas. All of sudden you have 10 or more experts at your fingertips helping you to pull
together your research and your project suddenly has wings and you are
completing your work in half the time and with a renewed perspective (that may
be a bit of an exaggeration, but the possibility is there). Imagine if I could
write a marketing piece for a new product based on feedback I am getting directly
from a beta customer. I am guaranteed that this piece will now have more
meaning since I am more aware of the audience. Of course this sounds easier
said than done and much of the concept of “working
out loud” comes with
change and we all know that change is hard. Removing the knowledge hoarding is
a culture shift and changing culture is an uphill battle, but there are many
small steps you can start with. For starters, stop storing files in "My Documents" and move them to an intranet portal like environment where others can see it and comment upon it and tag it for find ability. Look to the community and your network and
start discovering where the experts live online.
If you have any examples of how you are
working out loud, please share them as I would love to hear some more real world
examples!
