Corporate cultures not conducive to knowledge sharing and collaboration

I thought of reposting my list of cultural traits that identify an organization where the corporate culture is not conducive to knowledge sharing and therefore creativity and innovation. This list combines the 16 from this post and 4 from this one.

And here is a challenge to anyone reading this: Do you know one medium or large company with an internal culture not bearing a single of these 20 traits? If yes, please post a comment with its name.

1. A strictly hierarchical top-down structure: The “you should not share knowledge outside your department without your manager’s approval” syndrome.

2. Focus on short-term objectives: the “no need to share knowledge since once objectives are met, it wont be needed anymore” syndrome.

3. Reward achievements of each individual based solely on personal objectives: the “you are judged on what you achieved, not on what others have achieved with your help” syndrome.

4. Organizational silos that do not (or poorly) communicate/collaborate: the “we cannot possibly need help from anyone outside our very experienced and specialized group” syndrome.

5. Lack of trust: the “why should I take the risk to help whom I compete with, I wouldn’t get the recognition for it anyway” syndrome.

6. Internal politics: “Knowledge is Power so I retain it” syndrome.

7. Lack of Awareness of internal knowledge: The “I do not expect anyone in the company to have the experience/skills I need” syndrome.

8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge: The “others probably could benefit from my experience but I’m too busy to check, let alone actually help” syndrome.

9. Too much Pride: The now too famous "not invented here" syndrome.

10. The confidentiality issue: The “we fear that some vital competitive knowledge can get into the wrong hands, so the least we share it, the smaller the risk” syndrome.

11. Job Description framing: The "No-one's paying us to have a wider vision" syndrome.

12. Groupthink effect: The "We'll define our stakeholders as the people we already know" syndrome.

13. Only money talks: The "those so-called stakeholders aren't actually funding anything directly, so they're not real customers" syndrome.

14. Perfectionism resulting from fear of being wrong: the "I won't share until I'm certain it's perfect" syndrome.

15. Modesty resulting from lack of encouragement: the "who am I to teach others, of course they know" syndrome.

16. Top-executives misunderstanding KM challenges: The "this knowledge sharing sounds great! Can you order everyone to do it tomorrow please?" syndrome.

17. Dominance of explicit over tacit knowledge sharing: The "we only truly value what is written down and validated" syndrome.

18. Lack of social networks: The "only the networks which are supporting business processes are important and encouraged" syndrome.

19. Lack of knowledge management strategy and sharing initiatives into the company’s goals and strategic approach: The "Intellectual Property is the only Intellectual Capital that is worth managing strategically" syndrome.

20. Intense internal competitiveness within business units, functional areas, and subsidiaries:
The "we only share knowledge within our team since everyone else is potential competition" syndrome.

You can test your organization against these 20 cultural traits. The more of them fits your workplace, the more of a challenge you will have to promote knowledge sharing. Some are more difficult to deal with such as internal politics, but I would conjecture that you will need to address all the relevant traits at some point in the process. They all have their importance and only one of them - deep rooted in the organizational culture - can jeopardize leveraging knowledge efforts.

The latest trends for Intranet development

This IBF blog post from Paul Miller about the coming of “Intranet 3.0” gives 3 very good examples of large corporate intranets pushing the boundaries of internal communication and collaboration.

Although I am not a fan of these meaningless numeric names such as Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 (I’ve even seen Web 1.5 being used!) the eight Intranet 3.0 trends listed can - when combined - represent no less than a workplace revolution.

The 3 organizations given as examples are Sun, IBM and Nissan. The common theme I picked up between these cases is the strategic importance given to embedding the Intranet in business operations. This quote from Ethan McCarty (IBM) is spot on:

“The intranet is so deeply woven into daily life at IBM, it's part of every employee's day to use it,[..] You take a very mundane task and turn it into a social activity. Collaboration isn't separate from work. “

I particularly like this quote because the same thing should be said of Knowledge Management as a whole. KM initiatives are successful in the long term if they enable knowledge sharing processes that cannot be dissociated from operational activities. So, in other words, in such context, if you don’t share knowledge and collaborate intensively, you’re simply not doing your job. However, this requires a corporate culture not only conducive to knowledge sharing, but encouraging it.

Leverage the knowledge in your company by first transforming it into a "service" based organisation

[I recently realised that when I wrote this short post 11yrs ago, by "process" I actually really meant "service" based organisation.  I now replaced 'process' with 'service'] 

I am increasingly a supporter of the principle that it is more efficient and increases the chances of success to leverage organisational knowledge with a stealth approach, meaning not in a direct open way, but indirectly and without advertising it as THE objective. The less a company’s culture is conducive to knowledge sharing (see my list of corporate culture traits not conducive to knowledge sharing) the more this principle should apply.

In the majority of organisations today, performance is measured and rewarded functionally usually at department levels. This generates departmental silos where knowledge is at best hoarded for internal consumption.

But when performance is measured only through formally defined intra-departmental services, managers and staff will naturally focus on supporting the services as efficiently and effectively as possible. For each cross-company service, this will mean sharing all the relevant knowledge between all the individuals/teams/departments directly involved in the service and therefore responsible for part(s) of it. A service-based organisation naturally breaks down departmental silos: if a service fails, all participants fail.

So, in other words, re-ingeneering an Organisation’s operations and structure around clearly defined cross-company business services is an effective indirect way to foster value adding knowledge sharing.

The History of Maths and Knowledge Sharing

Yesterday, I watched a TV program produced by the Open University on the history of Maths. It started in China where Mathematics as a discipline really started. A book was written in about 200BC explaining among other things how to resolve equations. Then it moved on to India a few centuries AD where truly important advances were made such as the 9 Indoo numbers (ancestors to the Arabic numbers we use today), the creation of the number 'zero' and the first method for resolving complex equations to the power of 3 as well as the first method for an approximation of the value of Pi. Then came the Middle East and the Arabic countries where further discoveries were made in the Middle Ages. The point in common with most of these advances in Mathematics are that they were all made in the East well before they were either "rediscovered" or applied in the West from only about the 15th Century. And this is when it struck me! The lack of communication between these Eastern civilizations and the Western World prevented a valuable knowledge sharing that would have enabled a much faster worldwide scientific progress. What has enabled an exponential scientific and technological progress in the last 3 or 4 centuries is the increasing ease to share knowledge around the World. The Internet being the last of these inventions to contribute immensely to this. But then, if it is so obvious that sharing knowledge between distant civilizations, cultures or communities generates creativity, discoveries and innovation; why is it so difficult for most modern companies to recognize the value of fostering internal (and external) knowledge sharing between all employees and stakeholders?

Is sharing knowledge really desirable (question asked on Linkedin)

I recently asked on Linkedin my question comparing two extreme organisations in terms of knowledge sharing processes posted here on 26/04/09 (see all the 14 responses here). More respondents chose company B model (with knowledge sharing). A significant number went for the “it depends” option and a still significant number chose company A model (no knowledge sharing). I do not of course consider this as a quantitative survey but I would like to think that the respondents are a meaningful qualitative representation of managers thanks to the very nature of the medium used: the Linkedin professional networking site. In any case, I was not attempting to obtain a “true” representation of manager’s opinion but more an idea of the proportion choosing model A and what their arguments would be. For all intent and purposes, I view the company A and “it depends” answers in the same larger group of managers that do not consider company B as the best choice all the time. Arguments given for company A by the ones who chose this model are:

1. It is more organized for achieving the company’s goals by having people more focused on their department’s/team’s objectives. 2. Sharing of information between teams/departments strictly limited to what is needed for the operational work flow/supply chain, or in other words, “share [the information] needed to do the job – no more no less”. 3. It prevents information overload.

Arguments given for company A by the ones who opted for a split decision are:

4. Does well in a “best cost approach” (as opposed to “best product/solution approach”). 5. Suppose their offering is functional—it satisfies basic, unchanging needs and has a long life cycle, low margins, and stable demand. (Think paper towels or light bulbs.) In this case, you need an efficient supply chain—which minimizes production, transportation, and storage costs. So model A is better suited for “labour (Production and Manufacturing)” Industries, where employees are not expected to rely much on their thinking abilities. 6. It is a question of size and this model does well in large companies.

Let me now analyse each of these arguments: 1. Why would a model B company be necessarily better organised for achieving the company’s goals? Why is it that the vision of letting people freely share knowledge is often assumed to generate mess?With adapted formal processes in place, you can very effectively and efficiently enable knowledge sharing flows in an organised way, all in line with the strategic goals. Google is a perfect example of this as it has a second to none knowledge sharing culture and is definitely not a “chaotic organisation”. 2. This argument is from another age I believe. It describes the organisational models of the industrial age. We have moved on to a knowledge economy when intangible assets must increasingly be considered to accurately value a company. Managers can no longer dictate over time what information – and even less knowledge – is strictly needed for each operational role to be competitively efficient and effective. In a model A company, by the time managers adjust the information flows in reaction to the market, it is often too late and damage is done with the competition already ahead. To be ahead of the competition, you need to be proactive and therefore enable – at the level of the individual - fluid and adaptive knowledge flows internally as well as with with external stakeholders. 3. When I speak of knowledge in model B, I mean "knowledge", not information. Therefore, the argument of information overload does not hold water. Employees will only seek/share the knowledge they ask for/consider valuable. This is not about having full access to an encyclopedia of (mostly irrelevant) information. Even employees in a model A company can have access to it via the internet for instance! 4. A company with a “best cost” strategy such as Easyjet, the successful low-cost airline, does not imply a top-down structure with isolated teams and departments asked to only do their predefined job. Easyjet incidentally promotes a knowledge-sharing and learning culture where it is assumed that every tasks can always be improved by each individual for the benefit of all his/her colleagues (and ultimately the benefit of the company) therefore improving efficiency and reducing costs further. See below what Easyjet expects of its employees (from Easyjet recruitment website ):

• Pushing yourself to constantly develop and learn from every opportunity
• Sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues
• Seeking feedback
• Displaying a positive attitude that contributes to an enjoyable working environment
• Communicating your intentions clearly and positively

5. I can agree in principle that in a labour intensive industry (as opposed to a knowledge-based industry) employees are less expected to think and hold valuable knowledge for the company. But this does not mean they never do! If a factory worker works out a better way to use a machine for his/her repetitive tasks, wouldn’t it be valuable to the company that this knowledge be shared with all the employees using the same machine, even if their factory is on the other side of the World? 6. My example of Google earlier already negates the argument that a large company operates better in model A. And there are many more successful large companies with a knowledge sharing culture such as Toyota, BHP Billiton and 3M. In fact, I would argue that the bigger the company (in number of employees) the more valuable knowledge it potentially holds so the more benefits it can obtain by leveraging it. Having said all that, we are still left with the disconcerting fact that the majority of companies today still gravitate closer to model A than model B. If leveraging organisational knowledge makes so much business sense, then why isn’t it already widespread and becoming the norm? I think the answer to this question lies more with organisational culture stagnation than with operational or strategic considerations. For most companies senior management, enabling knowledge sharing or not is not about success but more about losing management control and power. In my 2 blog posts on “organizational cultures not conducive to effective leveraging of knowledge” (first here then here ) I listed 20 common cultural traits inhibiting knowledge sharing. You should find a lot of these traits fitting well with any companies closer to model A you are familiar with. Conversely, anyone familiar with companies more in line with model B should not recognise these traits as typical of their culture. So now, are these “model A” organisational cultures to last? For a while yes but some factors will (hopefully) slowly do away with them such as:

• Generation Y taking over the board room. This is about the necessary top-down leadership to instigate a knowledge-sharing culture, probably lead by the generation of managers who grew up with the Internet.
• Information Systems increasingly integrated and pervasive that facilitate (and reduce transaction costs of) information access and expertise localization.
• An increasingly mainstream acknowledgement of the direct relationships between success and knowledge-focused organisational cultures.
• Social media spreading inside the company. This is the bottom-up pressure for enabling a similar level of knowledge sharing at the workplace that people have at home.
• Or more simply, going out of business as a result of being out of touch with the Knowledge Economy.