Preparing
for Conversations
with Carol Kinsey Goman
Why
People Don't Tell What They Know
Carol Kinsey Goman,
Ph.D
International
Lecturer and Author
 Introduction
It's about time
we had Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., as guest moderator of the STAR
Series Dialogues. And what better time than at the occasion of
the release of her latest book, Ghost Story, a business
fable about collaboration and why people don't tell what they
know.
Carol is an international
lecturer who specializes in human capital issues. She presents
keynote addresses and seminars for management conferences and
major trade associations. She tailors each presentation to meet
the challenges and opportunities facing her client organization.
Her areas of expertise include change-management, attracting
and retaining talent, creativity and innovation, leadership,
collaboration skills, and global business practices.
As a consultant
and executive coach, Goman specializes in the human side of
organizational change, helping senior managers become more effective
leaders of change, improving employee communication strategies,
building effective teams, and developing organizational cultures
that nurture intellectual capital.
She has published
over 100 articles in the fields of organizational change, leadership,
innovation, communications, the new employer-employee "compact,"
employee motivation, attracting and keeping great people, and
international business practices. She has authored eight business
books, including This
Isn't the Company I Joined, Change-Busting: 50 Ways
to Sabotage Organizational Change, The Human Side of High-Tech,
and Ghost Story.
Goman has been cited
as an authority in media such as Industry Week, Investors Business
Daily, CNN's Business Unusual, ZDTV's Silicon Spin, and the NBC
Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. She has served as adjunct faculty
at John F. Kennedy University in the International MBA program,
at the University of California in the Executive Education Department,
and for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States at its Institutes
for Organization Management.
Prior to founding
Kinsey Consulting
Services, Goman was a therapist with a private practice specializing
in short-term therapy for behavioral change. She lives in Berkeley,
California with her husband who refuses to change anything.
Back
to top
Carol's
'Situation'
A personal
message from Carol Kinsey Goman
As a professional
speaker, I've been a fan of storytelling (and of Steve Denning)
for years. So it is certainly my pleasure to follow him as moderator
of the AOK STAR Series. Thank you, Jerry!
Some years ago,
I gave a speech to a group of information, knowledge and corporate
communication executives. I was speaking about change management,
rather than knowledge management. But at the end I asked, "How
many of you are comfortable sharing what you know?" Out
of an audience of 200, only three hands went up. Clearly, if
the people responsible for managing, creating, promoting and
leading the concept of sharing knowledge were uncomfortable doing
it themselves, we were looking at a big problem -- a human problem,
not a technology problem.
We know that knowledge
sharing is more than the technology that supports it, more than
a business strategy aimed at optimizing a company's experience
and expertise, and even more than a cultural shift from the industrial
to the information age. Knowledge sharing is, first and foremost,
about people. And yet, when I looked through the research, most
of the literature was on technology; some of it was on corporate
culture; but none of it was on individual inhibitors and motivators
to sharing.
In the perfect knowledge-sharing
model, managers are valued not because they know more than their
staffs, but because they can quickly communicate to their staffs
what they know and get staff members to do the same with each
other. Leaders build environments of trust and mutual respect
where creative contribution is nurtured, and employees at all
levels understand that being successful in this networked world
increasingly requires collaboration.
That's the ideal.
The reality is somewhat different. I have recently completed
a survey of 200 mid-level managers about the state of knowledge
sharing in their companies, which confirms what many KM practitioners
have been experiencing. All too often team leaders withhold information
and dole it out on a "needs to know" basis, executives
ask for collaborative input when what they really want is a "rubber
stamp" for decisions already made, and people aren't sharing
what they know due to a variety of personal and organizational
inhibitors.
These human barriers
underscore the importance of tackling the people issues in knowledge
management before relying on technology to improve communication.
There are many reasons
why people are reluctant to share what they know. They are busy
and don't have time to share. They forget to share. They don't
want the additional work and responsibility that goes with sharing.
They are assigned to projects they feel are unworthy of their
contribution (a derisive term for this kind of project is WOMBAT--
waste of money, brains and time). They don't trust upper management
(especially apparent in the post-Enron atmosphere of corporate
America).
But, as common as
these conditions may be, they were not the responses I found
most often in my research. (See my articles "5
Reasons People Don't Tell What They Know"; "Want Collaboration?
Build Trust" - click on the articles link in the left-hand
menu; and "What
Leaders can do to Foster Knowledge Sharing," September
issue Knowledge Management Review (do a search for Goman - fee
charged for article).
My new book, GHOST
STORY: A Modern Business Fable, selects several reasons for
withholding information and embodies each in a cartoon-like character.
A few examples:
The heroine, Dot, is a prototype for "unconscious competence."
Dot simply doesn't know what she knows. Mr. Stonewall (an information-hoarding
magpie) is the company savant who embodies the belief that knowledge
is power, Honk is a three-legged Martian, the ultimate outsider,
whose contribution is discounted, and Daniel is the 3-year old
head of IT, who speaks "dribble" and can't translate
what he knows to others.
But as (hopefully)
entertaining as it is to see those stereotypes characterized,
the conversation I'd most like to stimulate happens as people
realize that "they" are "us." When asked
which of my characters I most resemble, I answer, "All of
them." Under some circumstances, I've behaved like all my
characters: I've kept quiet because I didn't want to look stupid;
I've not shared because I thought the more I knew, the more valuable
I was; and (like my "command and control" character,
Admiral Blowhardy) I've withheld information to "protect"
those who couldn't handle it. The trick is to understand why
those behaviors are outdated -- "ghosts" of an industrial
era -- and then to figure out -- and live! -- the new rules about
knowledge.
That's what I've
attempted to do with this new book. Now I'd like to hear from
you:
- What is your experience
- why are people in your organizations reluctant to tell what
they know?
- Under what conditions
are you reluctant to tell what you know?
- How do you as a
manager, team leader, or knowledge-sharer, create conditions
in which people share information?
- How do you answer
everyone's most pressing question: What's in it for me?
I'm looking forward
to entering this conversation with you!
Carol
Kinsey Goman
Web: www.CKG.com
Back
to top
|
