Sharing or Hoarding?
When given the following scenario; who would you rather leave your company? Someone who can leave with little to no impact on the day-to-day operations, or someone who is vital to operations and the only person who knows how to get things done?
Your immediate answer would most likely be the former. Why would you want someone to leave your business who is vital to the operation? However, what if I encourage you to change your perspective and I embellish on a little more detail.
The first individual is a manager within the company. They actively empower their team and ensure everyone in their team shares and captures their knowledge. The team has no single points of failure, with every member having the responsibility to ensure that someone else can cover their work in their absence. The team are rewarded for sharing knowledge and training others.
The second individual has a very different approach. They limit the amount they share with others and ensure that all members of their team have very specific roles, limited if any knowledge is captured in the form of documentation, videos, guidance notes, and what does exist is not always easy to access by all workers. The individual may be the only person who has a relationship with a key customer, or they may be the only one who knows how a given system works. Rather than actively looking to train others and share the responsibility, they embrace their “power” and relish in being seen as indispensable within your business.
Now, if I were to ask the same question again, as to who you would rather leave your company over the next 1 – 2 years, would you have a different view? Should you be embracing the manager in the first scenario, who’s created a culture to help your business thrive, or the culture of knowledge hording, bottle necks and single points of failure?
If you are unsure on what your own culture looks like, here’s a simple test. If you ask someone within your company a question, for example about your operations, product or internal systems, identify how the answer is obtained and provided. If you are immediately directed to a wiki or central site which is accessible to all, then it’s probably a good sign. However, if you are directed to key individuals, who perhaps insist on a call/meeting ‘because it’s easier to explain’ and by the end of the meeting you come away with your answer, but it's not in a tangible form, or the information is sent in an email, then you may already start to become aware of the problem.
The most popular excuse for not sharing knowledge and training others is time. We don’t have time to create documents or create videos to share with others. However, more often than not, the individual who retains the knowledge will be requested to share the information time and time again, either in person or via email. If they are continuously being called into meetings, sales presentations or customer support, ask yourself how much time would be freed up if that knowledge was shared and more easily accessible to other members of the team?
At AICOR we help companies adopt strategies to embrace a knowledge sharing culture, ensuring that businesses don’t create scenarios where one individual becomes indispensable to the day-to-day operations. Contact us today to find out more.
