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Why Do Employees Know And Do Not Speak?

2008/9/12 10:28:00 41852

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Knowledge sharing enables employees to fully communicate with each other, and is regarded as the foundation of their success.

Leaders should encourage knowledge sharing and ensure that every employee can understand all aspects of the business, including finance, competitive products or services, and enterprise strategy.

To let employees share knowledge, leaders first need to understand why employees are unwilling to share knowledge.

The five most important reason is that they are unwilling to share knowledge.

The author recently completed a questionnaire survey of 200 middle-level managers to find out the status of knowledge sharing in their company.

This survey confirms what many knowledge management workers have been experiencing: team leaders are in control of information, only when they need to know how to give it up; managers are asking others to cooperate when the decisions they have made do require a rubber stamp; a series of personal and organizational barriers lead employees to not share their knowledge.

These human obstacles highlight a very important problem: in knowledge management, we need to prioritize human problems before relying on scientific and technological means to facilitate communication.

The cost of this reality is extremely high.

International Data Corporation (InternationalDataCorporation) has developed a way to measure what they call "knowledge deficits".

It records the cost and inefficiency caused by repetitive mental work, unqualified performance, and uncertain sources of information.

According to this method, the cost of this knowledge deficit in the "Fortune 500" company is estimated to be $12 billion a year.

In addition, through the use of best practices and lessons learned, businesses can save billions of dollars.

Del, a former CEO of Chevron, looks at this situation in this way: "every day a good idea is not adopted, it is a waste of an opportunity". (CEO)

We must share knowledge more quickly.

I tell employees that the only important thing they can do is to share knowledge and best practices. "

But it's harder to say than to do.

There are many reasons why employees are unwilling to share knowledge.

They are so busy that they have no time to share.

They forgot to share.

They do not want to share the extra responsibilities and responsibilities of sharing.

They feel that the projects allocated to them are simply not worth contributing to knowledge.

These conditions may be very common, but in my research, they are not the most common ones.

Employees are unwilling to share knowledge, which is caused by five important reasons.

Reason 1: knowledge is power.

"If I know something you don't know, I will be better than you in some ways."

Most people are still unable to get rid of the idea that if I told you what I knew, I would suffer.

When the company's performance evaluation, promotion and salary are based on relative performance, employees will feel that sharing knowledge will (forever) reduce the chances of personal success.

So the first solution is to change the reward system.

Find ways to strengthen and encourage knowledge sharing.

Praise and promote those who learn and share.

Punish those who do not.

In all companies that adopt best practices, conservative information and not taking other people's opinions can lead to obvious occupational consequences, sometimes even serious consequences.

In the United States, Management Systems Corporation (AmericanManagementSystems), by guiding your colleagues, writing, helping others, and educating young employees to develop your knowledge, can build up a reputation for world-class leaders of thought and make you a partner in the company.

Secondly, we should recognize that there are still more powerful motivators than money.

For Xerox, the 25000 front-line service technicians in the world, contributing to the Eureka database that collects maintenance techniques is an opportunity to be recognized as an ideological leader.

Let Xerox service representatives around the world know that you have found a solution for a difficult problem, and that is your greatest motivation.

In Xerox, they proved that knowledge conservatism is no longer power, and the reputation of sharing knowledge has become a force.

Reason two: knowledge is worthless.

"I feel that people tend to underestimate life experience and that book knowledge is overtaken. For those who have not been formally educated, it is hard for them to believe that they can contribute value in a totally different way."

In a recent book ghost story: a modern business myth (GhostStory:AModernBusinessFable), the author describes the heroine Dot. She does not want to share knowledge because she believes she has no talent.

Doc is an example of what educators call "unconscious ability".

In short, she doesn't know what she knows.

In all the group discussions, she was self abased and timid. She believed that her opinions were of no value.

(of course, her courage, strength, and inner wisdom saved her defeat.

)

There is a "small group culture" in every organization.

Despite the overall culture of the company, managers and group leaders will create a collaborative atmosphere within their teams or departments.

The leaders of these leaders are safe and valuable to share their knowledge by spending the necessary time and effort.

When encouraging employees to share mistakes and their lessons, these leaders emphasize the advantages of employees.

They set clear goals and clear personal roles.

They help employees understand the significance of each of them to the team.

They are open and honest.

They tell stories about team success and personal challenges.

Most importantly, they encourage and respect everyone's contributions.

Reason three: mutual distrust

"I am not familiar with other members of the team, so I do not trust them."

A collaborative culture must be built on trust.

Often, however, because we are eager to start a new project, we gather together a group of people and tell them to "start up."

This way proves inefficient, because the team has no time to discover the advantages and disadvantages of each other, nor has it formed a common understanding and understanding of the project.

In addition, mutual trust is indispensable for establishing a strong relationship in the whole enterprise, and rapid turnover of personnel, mass dismissal and early retirement make it extremely difficult.

Even encouraging employees to contribute information to an electronic database depends to a large extent on the relationship between members of the system.

If people do not trust other people's information or do not believe others will make the same contribution, the system will not work effectively.

Technology helps to share knowledge, but only by means of trust can it be realized.

When employees are not familiar with each other, they naturally don't want to share information, so at the very beginning, they have to create opportunities for employees to meet and interact in formal and informal situations.

Don't rush them.

Give them time to develop relationships, assess mutual credibility, and fully understand their strengths and weaknesses in order to achieve positive adjustment.

Taking time to build this "social capital" at the beginning of the project will improve the efficiency of the team later.

Trust is fragile.

People use small adventures to test. Until these trust behaviors are recognized and rewarded, trust will grow and build up over time.

Moreover, unless trust has accumulated to a certain extent, it can easily be destroyed overnight.

It is gratifying to believe that once trust is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, it will become a force that inspires team members, releases creative contributions, and makes teamwork work efficient and enjoyable.

Reason four: fear of bad results.

"I'm afraid my ideas will be ridiculed if they are a bit out of place, rather than being considered as a useful topic for discussion."

A few years ago, on a plane from San Francisco to Toronto, I was next to the two Nobel prize winner Bao Lin (LinusPauling).

When I asked him what the biggest obstacle to innovation was, he replied, "all processes, including education, science, or organization, impede the flow of ideas."

Knowledge is highly interrelated.

It can be triggered by the environment, such as when the right person meets at the right time, and finds each other needs knowledge in conversation.

So two things seem to be certain: first, knowledge sharing is elusive and changing at any time. Second, creative breakthroughs often occur in the integration and collision of ideas.

Therefore, eliminating obstacles to free flow of ideas has become extremely important.

Everyone has a very important knowledge of others. You never know whose opinion will become a key part of a solution.

When opinions and opinions are ridiculed, criticized and ignored, people feel threatened and punished because of their participation.

Their general reaction is to quit talking.

On the contrary, when people can put forward some "stupid" questions, they can challenge the rules and propose new or even grotesque suggestions. Knowledge sharing becomes a creative process that integrates different opinions and professional knowledge, but has a common goal.

Reason five: the boss is not an example.

"Personally, I have more problems with managers and policy makers than I have with my colleagues and team members."

In any enterprise, the way to deal with information determines whether it becomes an obstacle or catalyst for knowledge sharing.

In the industrial age, information management was deliberately turned into a barrier as a policy.

Employees do not expect to participate in decision-making or solving problems, so the information they receive is strictly limited to the minimum that managers think they need to do a particular job.

Today, full information collaboration is seen as the foundation for business success. Leaders need to ensure that employees know everything about every aspect of the business, good and bad, including finance, competitive products and services, and business strategy.

Further, it also requires enterprises to increase investment in education and personal development plans, so that employees have sufficient actual combat background and ability to make use of the data shared by enterprises.