This guide largely came about as I spoke to a few friends and colleagues about knowledge sharing — and generally heard “well, that all sounds great, but _____________.” You can fill in that blank with some of the following reasons:

* I don’t really see how knowledge sharing can apply to me or my business.
* I’m self-employed — who am I going to share knowledge with?
* We have other people at my company who worry about that kind of thing.
* I don’t really see what the benefits are to me.

All of these sound like great reasons that sharing knowledge sharing doesn’t really apply to you — but ultimately, sharing what you know has great benefits for everyone. This article will cover some of reasons, princples and methods you can use to better share what you know, as well as benefit from what others know.

I’m hoping to keep this guide always evolving, so if there’s a knowledge sharing method or principle you’d like to see included, leave a comment. We all have knowledge — so we’re all qualified to contribute to this guide.

Who can use this guide?

The short answer: everyone. Whether you work at a multinational corporation, run a small business or non-profit, or are self-employed, you can benefit from putting these knowledge sharing principles into practice. Knowledge sharing can enhance any existing business — and since most of the principles are common sense, they are easy to apply.

What is knowledge sharing and why should I be doing it?

Knowledge sharing is taking what you know and giving it away — for free, and usually without any expectation that you’ll get anything back from the exchange. Sound like a one-sided deal? Well, even if you don’t directly get anything back in return — you’re establishing a few key advantages for yourself in your area of expertise:

* creating goodwill with people in your field,
* meeting new friends and contacts that are mutually beneficial,
* establishing the importance of your knowledge and expertise in your field.

However, the greater likelihood is that sharing your own knowledge without any expectation of a direct return will in fact create a situation where people will be much more open to sharing knowledge. Like many other social situations, sharing knowledge requires someone to be brave and take the first step.

Knowledge management versus knowledge sharing.

Knowledge management has consistently promised to, well… manage knowledge. Knowledge however, isn’t something that can be managed like you manage other assets — like investments or inventory. Steve Denning describes knowledge sharing in relation to knowledge management this way:

“Many practitioners of knowledge management increasingly see ‘knowledge sharing‘ as a better description of what they are about than ‘knowledge management’. Advantages of “knowledge sharing” as a term include its commonsense comprehensibility, along with a certain degree of inter-activity implicit in any sharing.

Drawbacks of ‘knowledge sharing’ include the possibility that even ’sharing’ is insufficiently interactive, and that it implies (falsely) that the existence of knowlege precedes the sharing process, thereby (wrongly) separating knowledge management from ‘knowledge creation’ and ‘innovation’ and ‘research’. “

I bring up this quote for only one reason: so that we remember that research are innovation are important aspects of knowledge sharing. Research is part of the prcoess that allows you to lay the foundation knowledge you have created.

Create a solid foundation.

1. Information management.

One of the first things you need to do before you start sharing what you know with anyone else is to make sure that you have your information managed properly. While this sounds like something you should be paying a consultant to organize properly for you, there are many, many free tools out there you can use to get organized. See my post on free knowledge tools to get started on proper information management.

2. Research.

Research is how you build up knowledge of a particular area in order to have anything to share. While you don’t need to necessarily spend thousand of dollars on a set of professional research tools, you do need to have a solid network of people and resources established to answer questions you might have.

Note that I said people and resources. While setting up some favourites in your web browser is a great start to creating a network of resources, knowing the people who know the information better than you goes a long way.

Take legal information as an example — I may have access to all of the same legal resources as a lawyer, but I don’t have the training necessary to know where to start looking. But when I call up a lawyer I know and even just ask them where I should start looking, I’ve potentially saved myself hours of digging through statutes.

3. Push versus pull.

When setting up an information management strategy, remember that there are two ways to get at the information you need. It can either be pushed to you (RSS and email for example), or you can set out looking for it yourself (on Google, for example). Your information management strategy should consist of the right mix of push and pull.

In this case, the push versus pull balance is a little like investing — there’s not going to be one particular mix of stocks and funds that’s right for everyone. In general, when setting up push and pull information sources, think: “what information would I want to ask someone only when I needed it, and what information would I want someone to come tell me?”

The stuff you would ask someone only when needed can be dealt with through pull (Google, or if you have access to it, a professional source like Factiva), while the stuff you’d like someone to come tell you should be set up through push (think RSS). Syndic8 and RSS Feeds have just about every feed you could imagine.

Setting goals for knowledge sharing.

Like any other endeavour, it’s easier to measure your success if you’ve set some clear goals for yourself in the beginning. Obviously, setting up a goal that simply says “share more knowledge than I already do” is going to pretty much a waste of time.

In the corporate world, knowledge sharing goals usually need to be quantified. Your knowledge sharing goals shouldn’t be any different. Do you know what is often the biggest cost in a corporation in terms of knowledge sharing?

Time. Therefore, when you’re setting up a goal for yourself or your business, build knowledge sharing into your performance metrics — devote a certain amount of time per week to knowledge sharing and innovation-related activities.

What kind of knowledge sharing activities are the most beneficial?

This can include going out on the web and trading experiences with people in your field, it can include going to a conference and trading stories with some folks you happened to be sitting beside, or it can be talking to a few colleagues in the lunch room.

Consider these stories about the early days of a few startups posted on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Innovation didn’t happen by having the most people or the most money, it usually happened because of a lack of both of those.

Just keep in mind that useful knowledge activities should abide by the following the following two rules:

1. They should be informal.

Having a big meeting with all the head management folks in a boardroom is great for some purposes, but for knowledge sharing, it’s just about the worst thing you can do. No one wants to speak up and look dumb in front of the CEO or the company’s owner.

Note that by informal, I also don’t mean the company picnic or a company-sponsored retreat.

2. They should be small scale.

Humans are tribal by nature. We tend to get along best in small groups, and when we our groups get too big, tensions tend to develop. Keeping groups small and informal allows a comfort level to develop where people feel free to exchange knowledge with each other. I won’t set a number on how small the group should be, but it should be small enough that everyone feels comfortable.

3. They should be new.

By new I mean a few things. Getting a business unit together outside the office is nothing new — they already work together all the time. Mostly, you want to encourage the ‘what the heck‘ factor. Getting together with people who are doing something similar enough so that they understand each other, but different enough so that they’ll say ‘what the heck, how did I not know that?‘ is the key.

Seven incentives for knowledge sharing.

And finally, there need to be incentives for others to share what they know with you and with others. These principles should get you thinking about how to provide reasons to share. In The 3Cs of Knowledge Sharing, David J. Skyrme quotes these 7 incentives for knowledge sharing:

“1. Hire people who will share - at Collective Technologies of Texas, the process starts with recruiting people through an intensive few days of interactive interviews;
2. Develop trust - Buckman Laboratories nurtures trust through its ten point code of ethics in which employees are steeped;
3. Vary motivations - CAP-Gemini Ernst & Young applies incentives at three levels: a solid business case for senior executives, relevant benefits for departments, and incentivizing positive behaviours with employees;
4. Show public recognition - Harris has its “wall of fame” a gallery of pictures of employees who have excelled at knowledge sharing;
5. Reorganize for sharing - Northrop Grumman uses integrated product teams, backed up by appropriate mentoring programmes;
6. Create communities - The World Bank uses electronic bulletin boards focussed around relevant topics, but which cut across organizational boundaries;
7. Develop leaders - Capital One formed a group from natural knowledge champions to promote knowledge sharing and develop training.”

I hope this guide has been useful — like I said, I look forward to hearing what knowledge sharing and innovation activities and principles help you and your business flourish — leave a comment and let me know.