Leadership? Innovation? Knowledge Sharing? There’s so much said about all of these and much of it of the hand-wringing kind. As I’ve said before a lot of those conversations are really about control. So I tend to agree with Dave Snowden when he says:
My general response to people who ask the question How do we get people to share what they know, is If you have to ask the question then you have probably taken the wrong approach. In my experience people generally do want to share, but they may not want to share in the manner prescribed by the corporate KM department. If you ask someone for assistance in the context of real and immediate need it will rarely be refused. As someone to share knowledge in the absence of that need, or in a form or manner determined by a centralised function then it will nearly always be refused.
