5 Reasons People Don’t Share
Their Ideas and Specific Knowledge
Sharing knowledge makes you more visible as a person, which is a useful thing for any career.
Barriers between countries slowly dissolve, and new
communication technologies make it possible to share and get knowledge about
anything in just a few seconds. On the other hand, businesses often get lost in
tons of new software, installing some programs and then realizing that they are
incompatible with their hardware or much more expensive than their old
solutions.
To avoid such awkward situations, organizations should pay more attention to knowledge
management so that they can navigate in large amounts of
information, understanding the capabilities of their environment and using real
experience in practice. It’s also important to be different from competitors,
which means developing a clear idea of a brand and sharing it with the world.
Finally, the ability to share knowledge and ideas is a useful skill for
everyone who wants to live a fulfilling social life.
What Is Knowledge Management
You can find many definitions of knowledge management on
the internet, however, some of them don’t include the aspect of sharing
knowledge, while others are too abstract or too academic. Simply put, knowledge
management helps people process and enable technologies that allow them to
find, acquire, share, and manage information.
Those four actions are crucial for knowledge management
and they determine its effectiveness.
- Any information should be acquired, which means moving the knowledge from an unstructured to the structured form, making it centralized and explicit. The acquisition of knowledge depends on an expert’s ability to share their experience.
- Any knowledge should also be managed, which involves improvement of content and ensuring its relevance. This applies to the format, architecture, and style of the content.
- Sharing is another important thing. Both organizations and individuals must be able to collaborate and share knowledge.
- Finally, people should be able to find information. Content should be not only easy to find but also discoverable, which means finding additional related content, recommendations, and experts in a certain area.
Benefits of Sharing Knowledge
First of all, sharing knowledge makes you more visible as
a person, which is a useful thing for any career. People who have the necessary
knowledge and share it become experts within their organizations and contribute
to the organization’s base of knowledge. Sharing knowledge from your personal
research or blog posts also reinforces your personal brand. Not only makes it
individuals more visible, but organizations as well, making them experts who
are respected by consumers.
Another important thing about sharing knowledge is an increase in
trust, clarity, and transparency. People and organizations who
openly share their knowledge are easier to trust. Knowledge sharing within an
organization increases transparency. Open licenses increase clarity and
encourage reuse.
Sharing knowledge, organizations improve the quality of
performance and the quality of the content itself, as when people understand
that their content will be read by a large audience, they put more effort into
it. In addition, when people share their knowledge and experience, others don’t
need to reinvent the wheel. Quite often, people from different departments may
work on the same problems without even realizing it, just because their
organization lacks proper knowledge management.
Reasons Why People Don’t Share Their Ideas and Knowledge
- They are afraid of their ideas being stolen
Two
of the most common fears are a fear of an idea being rejected because it’s not
as good as it seems, and the fear of it being stolen. The action of sharing the
idea becomes a personal choice. The truth is that any idea remains basically
useless unless somebody implements it successfully. The history knows many examples
of similar ideas developed by different people, and only the effective
implementation of these ideas determined who failed and who succeeded.
- They are afraid of judgment
If you highly value your idea, it
can be not easy to receive critique. When you don’t share your idea with
others, it’s certainly safe so you can feel good about yourself. When you share
it, you kill the fantasy around it and make your idea vulnerable, however, this
is the only way to actually prove its value. You should realize that any
feedback is useful because it can help you improve your idea and make it even
better.
- Fear of competition
The ego is a very strong thing,
especially when we feel threatened or vulnerable. Sometimes you may feel
competition when sharing ideas, as people try to change them or make their
suggestions on how to improve them. There’s nothing wrong with feeling
ownership over your thoughts, just don’t let this feeling stop you from sharing
the most interesting ones.
- Fear of failure
Let’s be honest, the best way to
not fail is not to do anything at all. However, such a solution will unlikely
help you achieve any goals. If you’re afraid of failure, try to imagine the
worst case scenario. What really can happen? Is it really so bad? Should it
stop you from trying? If the answers to the last two questions are no, you
certainly should try and share your idea with others.
- Lack of self-confidence
When you have no doubt in your
abilities, you also feel the same about your ideas. Just don’t focus on what
some idea means to you, share it to support your team. Think about your project
and don’t make it too personal.
Conclusion
Knowledge management and knowledge sharing are important
for any organization, as well as for any individual who wants to live a
fulfilling social life. On the other hand, it may be not an easy task. People
are often afraid to share their ideas. They think that their ideas may be
stolen or rejected, they are afraid to fail or don’t want to hear any critique.
It’s important to understand that
the real value of your ideas becomes apparent only when you receive feedback
from others. Don’t take sharing ideas too personally, instead, think of the
opportunities and possible applications. Share your knowledge, improve it, and
see how it grows, becoming more than just a thought in your head.
Regards
Mr. Pralhad Jadhav
Master of Library &
Information Science (NET Qualified)
Research Scholar (IGNOU)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge
Repository
Khaitan & Co
Twitter Handle | @Pralhad161978
Mobile @ 9665911593
No comments:
Post a Comment