I was running a KM executive briefing this week, in the UK, and I was again reminded in our discussions of the huge dilema facing large organisations, especially Public Services organisations. Most large organisations have developed silo's and, therefore, the knowledge doesn't flow very freely across them, if at all. This leads to knowledge fragmentation. The larger and more dispersed the organisation is, the less knowledge flow and the less people feel adequately 'in the know'. This eventually breeds a fear based culture, and of course, we all know that a natural knowledge sharing culture can only be based on a trust based culture.
Making matters worse, many people in the UK spend much of their working hours based at home, even more dispersed, fragmented and even less in the know.
But then I thought, if you look at the Web 2.0 technologies and the phenomena of social networking tools, not least the wiki's and blogs, they are totally dependant on open, collaborative, learning, sharing and trust based environment, and they are very successful indeed.
The same people who might not share knowledge freely from within their organisations, seem to be willing to share with the world! Also, they are not being paid anything for it either!
So is there, perhaps, a learning here? I have some views on this but I would like to invite and encourage your feedback and comment first, and then publish the overall conclusions later.
Ron Young
More at:
http://www.knowledge-management-online.com
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Absolutely agree, and the trust/sharing issue in most silo'd companies is the reason I've been focused on "culture change" alongside the introduction of wikis or blog to companies I work with.
ReplyDeleteCompared to culture change, the wiki and blog creation, set-up and launch are a walk in the park. ;-)