1. ISKO UK Conference 19 March 2013
Overcoming the barriers to knowledge sharing and establishing a culture of trust
Virginia Henry 1

2. What gets in the way? Macho leaders and managers (of both sexes!)
‘Scatter-gun’ as the default communications tool
We all know the leadership sets the tone in an organisation, and the management are meant to sing in tune. But if the discordant lyrics are about competition rather than collaboration, then collaborative behaviour becomes an act of rebellion. Fortunately, there are benign rebels in many organisations.
can be used as a weapon of communication avoidance. Firing off s rather than picking up the phone, or walking across the office to speak to a colleague, may rapidly become the norm – unless it’s actively discouraged.
When a competitive manager rewards team loyalty, rather than cross-organisational collaboration, the walls of their silo are strengthened.
Silos of Silence – indifferent to the existence or needs of other teams in the organisation 2

3. It’s not always easy to notice things......
Sometimes “common sense” isn’t so common.
The fact that we’re collaborative as well as competitive beings can escape the notice of many leaders and managers......
.....and sometimes colleagues will ignore the implicit organisational culture, and just get on with collaborative activities.
Remember the Monkey Business Illusion? It got millions of hits on You Tube ( ). Viewers were asked to count the number of times the ball was passed between those wearing white – focusing on that task, the Gorilla went unnoticed by a large proportion of viewers. (for more details: 3

4. How to Overcome the Barriers
Pay attention to your people. They want to learn about each other and collaborate. If you don’t enable and facilitate collaboration, they’ll find their own way (spontaneous Yammer groups, finding other ways to take interaction and knowledge-exchange outside ...)
Champion, celebrate and reward the sharing of knowledge and skills. Some simple initiatives:
Profile completion drives
“Spotlight on...” features
Case studies
Leadership and manager blogs
Webinars and podcasts
Organisation day activities and competitions
Yammer –began as “twitter for business” and evolved into “facebook for business”, bought by Microsoft last year. Said to have up to 100,000 organisations using it, including 80% of Fortune 500.
Staff profiles help break down barriers, and demonstrate internal knowledge and expertise.
Case studies and “spotlight” features show the benefits of cross-functional teamwork and illustrate the breadth of skills in the organisation.
Leadership and manager blogs are powerful illustrations of the organisation’s culture
Webinars and podcast reinforce the organisation’s commitment to knowledge-sharing
Engaging everyone, from all areas of the organisation, in collaborative activities and inclusive competitions underlines commitment 4

5. Building the Culture of Trust
Turn to the person next to you and ask them three open questions, with this in mind:  
you genuinely want to know about their expertise, their immediate knowledge need(s) and how you can help them. 
Then swap over.
You trust who you know, and you know who you speak to. So let’s spend a few minutes building our own culture of trust 5

6. Maintaining a Culture of Trust and Collaboration
Publicise: Being heard and appreciated is very important.  To support the culture of trust and collaboration it’s necessary to find ways to publicise and reward exemplary behaviour.  Doesn’t need to be monetary, but it must be of value to the individuals or teams that have earned the reward.
In it together: Leaders and managers must understand that initiating the behaviours isn’t enough, they must continue to demonstrate them: build them in to their daily work lives, not delegate them to the knowledge manager, comm’s team or their PAs (cure them of the disease of delegation!).
Consistency: No exceptions – there can’t be areas of the organisation that are exempt from the culture. And there can be no lapses in the agreed behaviours (trust takes effort to build, and moments to break).
Strategy: To ensure the survival of the culture you’ve built, the strategic approach must be constantly reviewed. Attend to areas that aren’t performing so well, build your strategy in to every area and level (from onboarding, performance reviews, KPIs,  through to knowledge exit interviews).
Publicise and reward exemplary behaviour
In it together - culture can’t be delegated
Consistency - to guarantee collaboration is “the way we do things here”
Strategy – without a plan, there’s no purpose
images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net 6

7. Thank You! Virginia Henry virginia@virginiahenry.co.uk
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