Sharing Knowledge

July 26, 2005

Do you find that folks in your organization aren’t big on sharing knowledge? I hear that complaint from lots of people. They feel left out. I support the exact opposite method. I love it when other people know what I know. Why? It’s about force multiplication.

Tomorrow, I’m going to give 1/2 dozen folks instructions, media, and some hardware and give them all a crack at building some red hat linux servers. I love this because: 1.) the work of building a dozen boxes will get done fairly easily, and 2.) this is stuff they can use in their futures at my company.

But then, say I have a situation where I need LOTS of servers built in no time. Instead of hording this information to myself, I will have seven sets of hands (theirs plus mine) to put against the problem. Doesn’t that rock?

I also find that if you share people’s passions, you’ll learn things outside your normal scope of experience. I talked to a guy today about sailing. He used to do it fairly competitively, and it sounded fascinating. I hope to talk even more about it. Not because I need the information per se, but because it’s great to hear people talk passionately.

A coworker dropped off the switch and router he promised me the other day for my lab. He did it in front of a few other guys from another team. They said, “hey wait! Do you have any more stuff like that?” Turned out he did. Turned out he had LOTS of things they could use for their own lab environments, and that it otherwise would’ve been in a “junk” pile. How cool is that? Folks will be learning just because people took the time to share the knowledge. End result: more people cross-functionally trained and usable should the need arise. Further, when you learn what another team has to do to accomplish their part of the puzzle, you learn PATIENCE and UNDERSTANDING, and that’s invaluable.

How about your situation? What’s the sharing of knowledge like in your realm?

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