Comments for A knowledge sharing policy?

Comment from Patrick Lambe on 2007-09-14

2007-09-14T07:40:38Z

That's a fascinating question Jack! I think this links to a post I made yesterday basically saying we shouldn't set policies for things we can't observe. Can "creating a trusting environment" be described in terms of observable behaviours that one can legitimately expect from staff? Maybe it can... but policies are tricky things!

Comment from jackvinson on 2007-09-14

2007-09-14T18:53:46Z

Yep, it is hard to measure and observe trust directly. A lot of what is in your policy suggestion hints at "trust each other," but sets it out in the form of a policy. The struggle, as I am sure you know, is that setting out the policy almost implies that the trust isn't there. Or that people are somehow going to be checked against / measured against these specific actions, which destroys the trust implicit in their design.

I'm still trying to decide whether the policy "makes sense" from a KM perspective or not. Maybe it should be more of a "terms of employment" statement in conjunction with the values of the organization. "This is how we work here. If you don't, then you might expect to be happier elsewhere."

Ah! I knew I'd seen these discussions before. There are all those "values" discussions that test the real values of a company when they ask if they'd fire the guy who is a jerk (doesn't uphold values) but still brings in the big money. My impression is that most companies let it slide, and therefore show their true colors. I have the came uncomfortable feeling when I read this proposed knowledge sharing policy. "What if the policy is ignored?"

Comment from Patrick Lambe on 2007-09-16

2007-09-17T04:29:29Z

It's a tough question. It's probably the reason why there aren't many very specific knowledge sharing policies around. To go back to first principles, I wrote this because I felt it was important to get a handle on what specific guidance and reasonable expectations for knowledge sharing might be - just telling people that knowledge sharing is good doesn't help people figure out what they should be doing in specific situations.

I think the "terms of employment" idea and association with corporate values is a good idea, but to my mind that has less force than a policy. But a policy may be "over-regulating" an impossible-to-regulate domain (cf Dave Snowden's post that you linked to recently). So it's a hard balance to maintain between giving clear guidance and setting common expectations that everyone can refer to, and attempting to over-legislate what is always going to be a voluntary, largely unsupervised activity.

I think a final point in favur of a policy is that if implemented well, it's never just the document setting out the rules... it should ideally be accompanied by training, be integrated into employee orientation and induction, be used to guide related decisions and poicies (eg staff departure/handover procedures), and should have some kind of regular review on any worrying gaps in compliance. The availability of a policy makes all that possible.

I'm sure health and safety policies in their early years must have had similar challenges.

Comment from jackvinson on 2007-09-17

2007-09-17T14:55:12Z

Good stuff, Patrick.

Many (big) companies have layers of policies and procedures, where the high level policies set out the ground rules, possibly referencing relevant regulations and the like. While the lower level policies / procedures (when needed) speak about the day-to-day implementation of those things. Health and safety is an excellent set of examples.