Sharing knowledge is powerful
The workforce is filled with students who spent years accumulating knowledge and experience to help them succeed. These students are also unintentionally taught that the best way to differentiate themselves to employers is to know more than their classmates. When new graduates start their new careers, this can lead to some disruptive behavior that works against their success, and the success of their teams. Knowledge is hoarded instead of shared, and in many organizations, this becomes part of the organizational culture — knowledge becomes power. Many employees fear admitting that they lack knowledge or understanding as it signals a lack of power and capability.
My best mentors and guides during my early career were the people who were quickest to share the relevant knowledge and understanding that they held. It was interesting to me that those same people were the most willing to admit the gaps in knowledge. Instead of showing weakness by admitting that they lacked knowledge or understanding, they showed strength and willingness to learn from their team. I quickly realized that saying “I don’t know” wasn’t a bad thing, as long as it was followed by an exploration of how the required knowledge could be obtained. Often that would be as easy as finding someone to share the information, and sometimes it would expose gaps within organizational strategy or foundational research. In all cases it ended up being productive.
At Mozilla, we encourage our community members to share their deeply specialized knowledge with colleagues through a variety of means:
- Discussions in electronic message boards,
- Sharing learnings and experiences in weblog posts,
- Sharing tips and tricks in a company knowledgebase,
- Encouraging the use of tools like Twitter or Facebook to quickly share context and knowledge.
We also encourage people to ask questions if they can’t quickly find an answer in existing knowledge bases. We try to build a culture of knowledge and understanding in order to support our culture of excellence. This allows us to leverage the knowledge of the entire group at all times, while also providing coaching and growth opportunities to newer members of the group.
