If you put people in competition with each other *in any way*, they will have dis-incentives to share their knowledge.

John, in his comment on that post, said it seemed intuitive, but was having trouble articulating why. I’m here to help :-) Some of my reasons, which all go to how people are evaluated and compensated.

Managers evaluate and compensate people for their knowledge, rather than the results they provide. Sure, a company might say “We want you to work together and share your knowledge.” But as soon as they pay people for their knowledge, not their results, everyone is in competition with each other.

And, if an organization pays people individually (even though all the work we do in organizations is via some sort of team), knowledge sharing goes right out the window. If you and I are in competition for raises (and paying people individually after evaluating them means that we are in competition), why should I share what I know with you? That sharing can only hurt me.

The only way I know to enable knowledge sharing across an organization is to:

• Pay for results
• Pay people “enough”so it doesn’t hurt them financially to cooperate with each other
• Use open-book management so people know who’s making what.

Sure, some people will share their knowledge because it enables the organization to do better, but those of us who know the company doesn’t love us are going to be much less altruistic. As soon as our sharing hurts us, we stop.

I don’t think that’s going to work. That approach requires they know what kinds of knowledge they need to store and who will need access to it, and when. They don’t know any of that now.

Here’s what I know about knowledge management:

• You can’t create an electronic system until you understand what you’re trying to manage. That’s because the kind of information changes over time, not just the content.
• The Dreyfus model of knowledge acquisition infers that electronic systems are fine for novices, advanced beginners, and maybe the competents. But the people who really make a difference in the organization are the proficient and expert folks. Those people cannot easily put their knowledge into an electronic system, nor can the other people acquire their knowledge that way. Knowledge has to be transferred one-on-one, within a team, inside groups, between groups, and company-wide as the very last step.
• If you put people in competition with each other *in any way*, they will have dis-incentives to share their knowledge.

Given all of that, it’s not clear to me a top-down approach to knowledge management can work at all. What I do see as necessary is to have the managers (or some person):

• See the pockets of knowledge
• Plan some adaptive, people-based, timeboxed systems of knowledge management
• Measure where the knowledge management systems are headed
• And steer the people to do better

To me, agile approaches would work well. You could try something for a short timebox and see if it’s working. If so, keep doing it until it doesn’t work or needs another storage mechanism. Now you’ve got some experience to know what you need.

Starting with a tool is backwards, if you really want the experts who have substantial intuition to impart their knowledge.