Knowledge Sharing – An important but often neglected area!

Author – Vikas Dhankhar

In my early days in corporate life, I worked with smart, technically sound, and subject matter expert colleagues. Although they were nice, they wouldn’t share knowledge unless the manager was involved. 

Later, as I moved through organizations and teams, I observed whenever a new person join the team, the first thing usually asked was knowledge-sharing sessions and project documents. However, as the person settles down, the same knowledge-sharing disappears from the agenda.

It’s not that people don’t share knowledge at all. They do, but on a transactional basis. There is a lack of culture that promotes intrinsic sharing and learning from one another. The culture that we all experienced and benefitted from back in our school/college life, where we helped each other understand complex topics and crack exams. So what’s holding us back now? 

I’ve identified various reasons for this, including job insecurity, an overhead feeling, and a “what’s in it for me?” mentality. Even corporations often lack a focus on knowledge sharing culture, burying it under big initiatives or buzzwords like productivity improvement or collaboration.

However, I believe that knowledge sharing should be a key focus area for individuals and organizations. It played a significant role in my career growth, and the concepts that I remember best are those that I documented and shared through interactive sessions. Knowledge sharing helped me and my team create bandwidth to pick wider responsibilities and achieve our goals more efficiently. It helped us achieve things relatively faster, better, and cheaper.

By keeping knowledge to oneself, one misses out on immense opportunities and benefits. So, it’s essential to overcome fears and embark on a beautiful journey of sharing knowledge to create opportunities for oneself, one’s organization, and the people around them. Remember, no one will fall until we keep helping each other, whether it’s a team, friends, or family.

Keep sharing and reap the benefits of this beautiful, proven process – Knowledge sharing!