aryommsi

Corporate cultures not conducive to knowledge sharing

List of cultural traits that identify an organization where the corporate culture is not conducive to knowledge sharing and therefore creativity and innovation.

1. A strictly hierarchical top-down structure: The “you should not share knowledge outside your department without your manager’s approval” syndrome.

2. Focus on short-term objectives: the “no need to share knowledge since once objectives are met, it wont be needed anymore” syndrome.

3. Reward achievements of each individual based solely on personal objectives: the “you are judged on what you achieved, not on what others have achieved with your help” syndrome.

4. Organizational silos that do not (or poorly) communicate/collaborate: the “we cannot possibly need help from anyone outside our very experienced and specialized group” syndrome.

5. Lack of trust: the “why should I take the risk to help whom I compete with, I wouldn’t get the recognition for it anyway” syndrome.

6. Internal politics: “Knowledge is Power so I retain it” syndrome.

7. Lack of Awareness of internal knowledge: The “I do not expect anyone in the company to have the experience/skills I need” syndrome.

8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge: The “others probably could benefit from my experience but I’m too busy to check, let alone actually help” syndrome.

9. Too much Pride: The now too famous “not invented here” syndrome.

10. The confidentiality issue: The “we fear that some vital competitive knowledge can get into the wrong hands, so the least we share it, the smaller the risk” syndrome.

11. Job Description framing: The “No-one’s paying us to have a wider vision” syndrome.

12. Groupthink effect: The “We’ll define our stakeholders as the people we already know” syndrome.

13. Only money talks: The “those so-called stakeholders aren’t actually funding anything directly, so they’re not real customers” syndrome.

14. Perfectionism resulting from fear of being wrong: the “I won’t share until I’m certain it’s perfect” syndrome.

15. Modesty resulting from lack of encouragement: the “who am I to teach others, of course they know” syndrome.

16. Top-executives misunderstanding KM challenges: The “this knowledge sharing sounds great! Can you order everyone to do it tomorrow please?” syndrome.

17. Dominance of explicit over tacit knowledge sharing: The “we only truly value what is written down and validated” syndrome.

18. Lack of social networks: The “only the networks which are supporting business processes are important and encouraged” syndrome.

19. Lack of knowledge management strategy and sharing initiatives into the company’s goals and strategic approach: The “Intellectual Property is the only Intellectual Capital that is worth managing strategically” syndrome.

20. Intense internal competitiveness within business units, functional areas, and subsidiaries:
The “we only share knowledge within our team since everyone else is potential competition” syndrome.

Source: http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/2009/12/corporate-cultures-not-conducive-to.html

KM Tools

Ipcube – interesting Indian product with PKM, collaboration and DM components even includes Ipod syncs

AKT-technologies: A list of knowledge tools to ease the bottlenecks of Acquiring Knowledge, Modelling Knowledge, Reusing Knowledge, Retrieving Knowledge, Publishing Knowledge, and Maintaining Knowledge. Note that these tools are results of research project in the domain of knowledge engineering; however I do see several overlap with knowledge management.

KnowIt – From TraverseIT. A comprehensive Command, Control, and Communications Platform that allows enterprises to easily see and manage their data, organizations, and stakeholders, naturally, from one location, regardless of their geographic location.

WikiMatrix – a tool for comparing wiki features

Unyte – collaboration tool

Gliffy – a free visual collaborative tool

Inkscape – open space vector drawing tool

Vyew.com – visual collaboration

Source: http://kmwiki.wikispaces.com/KM+tools