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If you've thought about taking action to encourage knowledge sharing in your organization, but aren't sure how to get started, you're not alone. Changing behavior is difficult, and it doesn't happen overnight. One way you can begin is to initiate and model "knowledge sharing behavior." This article describes four steps for planning a pilot project, drawn from experience in the knowledge sharing trenches.
That experience started in 2001, when I attended the SLA Knowledge Champions Institute, led by Nancy Dixon, author of Common Knowledge. The experience became even more valuable when I became part of an internal knowledge council as Dialog's "knowledge sponsor" later the same year.
Our group of knowledge sponsors strove to stimulate knowledge sharing, both within our own business units and across the business unit boundaries. There were successes but, not surprisingly, we learned that it is hard work. It takes continued focus on motivating and rewarding knowledge sharing behavior. We learned also that a small project could sometimes have a significant effect on the organization. This experience reinforced my belief that information professionals are uniquely well positioned both to initiate knowledge sharing programs and to model knowledge sharing behavior.
The What and Why of Knowledge Sharing
Most of us have a general understanding of what knowledge sharing is, but it has a particular emphasis in the workplace. In Common Knowledge, Dixon characterizes it as a process for intentionally translating work experience into shared or common knowledge (Dixon, 2000). There are many ways to achieve knowledge sharing and, certainly, no single best practice. However, as illustrated in the basic Knowledge Sharing Circle (Figure 1), knowledge sharing requires activities to purposefully capture knowledge and encourage its transfer to and reuse by other parties.
Most importantly, knowledge sharing is meaningful when these activities are focused around and driven by actual business needs, which is shown as the central core of the process.
Clearly, the process of knowledge sharing is not an end in itself-it is a means to achieve business objectives. The continuous transfer of work experience across the organization over time can create competitive advantage for existing operations, time to market, or customer satisfaction.
The Four-Step Process
As illustrated in Figure 2, the process of building a knowledge-sharing plan includes 1) identifying business...