What are you hiding? And, more importantly, why are you hiding it? That’s the question to consider when you run across instances of knowledge hoarding within your organization. It’s very hard to create an open, collaborative, knowledge-sharing culture without first understanding what drives people to put up walls around their content.  Is it fear?  Ignorance?  An excess of competitive spirit?  Whatever it is, you’re going to have to identify it and then find ways to help the hoarders overcome their issues.  Otherwise it will be difficult to achieve a thriving knowledge management effort.

If you’re searching for inspiration, take a close look at Air New Zealand, a company that has gone all out to foster a spirit of openness.  They like to say that they’ve “got nothing to hide.”  Chances are your law firm won’t be willing to go to the same lengths for the sake of knowledge management.  But imagine if it did?

Here’s some additional information on the Air New Zealand transparency campaign:

[Photo Credit:  roboppy]