Knowledge Hoarders

I heard a short story in one of the Tamil speeches by Parveen Sultana. There was an old woman in a village, who knew the remedy for any snake bite…..but she did not have a disciple, who she shared her knowledge with.  One day, one of the snakes who was watching her saving all the victims with her knowledge, decides to bite her and did it successfully. She cried of pain and everyone around her wanted to help her - but even at her death bed the woman decided to keep the remedy a secret and died.  SAD!  What do you call the old lady -   "knowledge hoarder”

There are 2 types of people in any workforce - knowledge hoarder and knowledge Sharer.

Knowledge hoarder:  Person who collects and save information for future subjective use.

Knowledge Sharer: Person who proactively, purposely and pleased to share their learnings / information with others.

Knowledge hoarding is very common in workplaces.

Signs of Information Hoarding in a company

1)    If the same handful  of  people are answering critical  questions always

2)    Whenever we prepare for a presentation - we need to reinvent everything.

3)    Associate make themselves indispensable. Company knowledge is lost, when employees leave.

4)    Answers /Solution to any and every problem lies in an individual’s laptop / emails.  We hear in  the meeting  - ‘I  have the details , I will  mail it you after this’

5)    Transparency is NOT valued as a part of the company culture. The goal of transparency is to share not only the wins but also the failures this becomes a knowledge base to build the future.

 Why would employees deliberately hoard knowledge?

 Power:  People are power hungry. They believe safeguarding information, gives them an upper hand. They call it as a ‘Trade secret’ or want to be called ‘Guru’. They believe that- they are the keeper of the information, they have a complete control.

 Uncertain:  fear of being wrong and are afraid to share information. 

Trust: If the workplace suffers from lack of trust -   information sharing is very LESS. 

Ownership: when they have strong psychological ownership feeling over their knowledge. 

Job Security – be the only person to perform specific function. Make themselves indispensable.  Employees afraid to share their knowledge, as someone will be prepared to do their task and get easily replaced.

Organizational Culture - Some organizations succeed, by encouraging cut throat culture among team members. 

Time:  some feel they have less time to hold Knowledge sharing sessions or sharing their best practices. 

Less important: Some associates consider, conducting this Knowledge sharing session are less important. 

Benefits / No Benefit: They are not recognized by the organization - by the way of promotion / any other benefits.  The main reason people play this hiding game - Although the company pushes ‘Team work make the dream work’ but it rewards individual‘s performance ONLY.

Information are not shared, justifying that they are confidential.  The employee would say they will share the details later - but the ‘later’ never comes.  Sometime they share incorrect or incomplete details.

If the information is not discussed openly in the team 

·        This will hinder ‘creative idea’ coming from the team. 

·        This prevents a good organizational climate 

·        Demotivate the team - lowering the individual’s performance and eventually organization’s performance.

Organization put themselves in a risky situation, by becoming dependent on knowledge hoarders.

 In order to reduce the knowledge hoarders….

1) Have knowledge sharing session after any initiatives. Only organizations should drive the associate to do it.

2) Check with the team the success and failures - how they could mitigate the failures and what additional measures were to be taken, not to repeat failures.

3) Also give opportunities to new set of people and check the outcome, so the juniors can pick up the techniques and seniors can focus on new initiatives.

4) Have a common SharePoint / Repository that anyone and everyone can access the required documents and data and able to share his/her views and findings.

More information shared with the team member make them feel that they have a stronger connection to the organization.

Knowledge sharing helps to improve the company’s productivity and efficiency.

 

Happy to Share - Thank you.

Story Telling For Business

I was watching a recipe on YouTube. I generally follow her for any new recipes.   At the end of her presentation, she started to talk about the new pan she cooked that recipe in.  She said it was presented to her, by one of her students, who took private cooking lessons from her. 

What is the inference from this ‘Pan Story’?

If she would have advertised explicitly that she takes private lessons too, people watching her will end up telling, she is marketing herself.  By telling this ‘PAN Story’ she subtly / delicately shared the same message.  CRAFTY!

What is Story telling?

It is the art of telling an event or a series of events

Communication Choices - We have 3 ways to communicate

1.           Assertion
2.            Facts
3.            Story

Assertion - Opinions and Generalization -  XXXXXX is THE best Company  to  provide solutions for Digital  Transformations.

Facts -   Statistical data -  XXXXXX  is ranked 193 in the 2019 FORTUNE 500 list

Story -  Success Story  -  XXXXXX  has successfully   completed 25  years and going strong  covering various industry  -  Banking & Financial / Health care / INS.   It resolved an issue with one of the INS client‘s claim Procedures. It reduced the time of the process from 10 weeks to 10 days.  It is NOT only solving the problem through technology, but solving human problems.  

I told you 3 points about the company XXXXX - but which one will stay longer in your memory….  NOT the Assertion or the Fact, but the STORY will. That is the power of Story.

As per Steve Jobs - the most powerful person in the world is a story Teller.    The story teller can create a view of the future that no one has.  He himself was one of the best story Tellers.

There are 2 reasons why stories are important 

1.      Scientific Reason - When you listen to stories - we produce 2 hormones Cortisol and Oxytocin. Cortisol advise us -  fight / flight Oxytocin love hormone - they help us stating that ‘this is interesting, pay attention….’ 

2.      Human Reason - We created it - we make use of some characters and build it. When we hear it, we know it is reasonable - it is NOT superficial / phony.

Story Sticks - you remember stories better. A small exercise. Below are 3 sentences. 

1)     John walked on the roof 

2)      Eddie  wrote the Play

3)      Bill picked up the eggs.

 

Who walked on the roof? Who wrote the play?

 

Now let us try this. 

1)      Santa  walked on the roof 

2)      Shakespeare  wrote the Play 

3)      Easter Bunny picked up the eggs.

 

Now - Who walked on the roof?  Who wrote the play?  You are able to answer them, bcos you connect these sentences with a story and able to remember them better.

In today’s world, attention is currency.  When we post something, we are all curious to know, how many people viewed or how many people reacted to it.  There is so much clutters out there, Stories prove to be the powerful way to get and keep attention.

In Business Story, it is important that - you need to take care of

·         What  happened 

·         Why  do  I  care

You address only the relevant details. They are just anecdotal only.

4 Patterns of storytelling.

Connection Story Pattern: Personal stories from your life - which you use to connect with people or coach them.

Clarity Pattern:  In the Past / Something Happened /So now / in the Future.  It answers ‘Why’ you are doing something and it is contextual.

Success Story: It is a snapshot - Explain how you helped another client to solve a problem.

Anti-story - Influence Story.  You cannot beat a story with a Fact. You can beat it with better story.

4 Principles of your story

1)      Story speak to your emotion.  We all know that there are 2 sides of our brain. 

Emotion

Practical

It is found that we take predominantly decisions based on emotions and back it with rational.  So emotions get more attention.

 

2)      Establish a connection with your audience - build a common ground, which is very important.

For eg.  When associates come to  me  to  get  a next /new assignment , they start  talking  in my  Mother tongue and try  to establish a relation, through  the language….  

 

3)      Power of Contrast: Bring in a twist / climax in your story. Else it will be a monotone and become boring and seek less attention.

 

4)      Truth Well Told:  I know everyone will agree to it. If your story is false, its shelf life will be short. Also presenting the truth matters, it must be narrated with proper articulation.  Yes, the ‘WHAT’ is important in your story but the ‘HOW’ is even more important.

So create your stories which are powerful and make an impact.  

The world is full of Data and noise.  You can reduce the noise and make your data heard only with the help of your stories.