CREATING AN INFORMATION-SHARING CULTURE


We've been hearing a lot in the news lately about the need for our government's intelligence agencies to share information. A recent congressional report cited the lack of information sharing as a major factor behind the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. To prevent future terrorist attacks, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are forming historic collaborations. At the core of these new partnerships is a free exchange of knowledge and ideas about suspected terrorist activities. Many of these agencies will be talking with each other for the first time. Previously, such sharing wasn't part of their organizations' cultures.

Stuck in Smokestack Mode

To be successful, a business, too, must create a culture that promotes the exchange of knowledge and ideas among individuals and departments. Achieving that free flow of information requires letting go of the nineteenth-century industrial business model (where wealth is built on tangible commodities) and embracing a twenty-first-century model (where wealth is built on gathering information about new ways of satisfying customer needs). Unfortunately, too many businesses today still look—internally, at least—like the old "smokestack" industries. Their smokestacks have been transformed into the isolated "silos" that comprise the individual departments within their organization such as Marketing, Engineering, or Human Resources. These departments act independently, without sharing information or ideas, whether strategic, tactical, or technological. As a result, the entire organization suffers.

So how do you create a healthy information-sharing culture within your organization, one that will give your company a competitive edge? You begin by developing a better understanding of why information sharing is so important to businesses today, what causes internal information sharing to shut down, and how a systems approach is crucial to getting the information flowing again.

Information Is Exponential

One of the powerful truths about information is that it is exponential. In other words, if you have information and I have information, together our separate pieces of information can equal more than their sum. Think of it in terms of a jigsaw puzzle. One piece of the puzzle doesn't give you much of a clue as to what the puzzle is about. But when you put two pieces together, you begin to see the pattern emerge. That pattern then leads you to the next piece that must be added, and the next. The more pieces of the puzzle you put together, the more quickly you're able to envision the whole picture and know with even greater precision how each piece fits into the overall design. Business information works the same way. One piece is only a starting point. With each new element of information, you're able to see more clearly the emerging patterns and move more quickly and precisely to make wise—and profitable—business decisions.

The free flow of information within a business can give a company a powerful competitive edge. But employees will share knowledge and ideas only if leaders have created an internal culture that allows them, in fact encourages them, to do so.

When the System Becomes Poisoned

One of the biggest obstacles for leaders to overcome is seeing the business as a series of isolated events. A business is more like a living organism. The health of that organism depends on how employees interact with each other. Without good interaction, employees will not share information—and the company will suffer.

Say, for example, that a conflict occurs between two managers. The company's leaders expect the managers to resolve the conflict in a businesslike manner and to focus on the job. But this kind of "brush-the-problem-under-the-carpet" approach doesn't usually end the conflict. As a result, the tension between the two managers trickles down through the organization and poisons the company's environment, inhibiting the sharing of important information not only between the two individuals, but also between their respective teams. Such a seemingly small episode can seriously harm an organization, especially if the conflict is allowed to be resolved by way of a win-lose outcome.

Let's take a closer look at how the organization is harmed. When people are in conflict, they are rarely comfortable revealing their feelings about the underlying issues that led to the conflict. Nor do they feel comfortable giving feedback, especially if the other person is in a position of power. Trust within the organization quickly diminishes, making any future interaction between the parties even more difficult. So a small conflict can grow like crabgrass, infiltrating an organization and creating an environment that shuts down communication and the sharing of ideas.

Remember: In the Dual Age of Information and Connections, information is the raw material that gives businesses their competitive edge. Each day without open internal communication is a day of lost business opportunity. Why? Because today's news is tomorrow's history. Knowledge and information have a shelf life, and if they're not used while fresh, they quickly go stale. If you fail to communicate and use information while it's relevant, you will lose the advantage that the information offered you. That's why it's imperative that an organization's environment be receptive to building the kinds of internal partnerships that allow information to flow freely and without inhibition. Self-Disclosure and Feedback and Ability to Trust are the foundational attributes for keeping information flowing, though as you will see in Chapters 9 and 10 there are other crucial attributes involved.

A Systems Approach

Creating internal partnerships has never been more critical. In the past, when teams of employees worked in conjunction with each other on assembly lines, they really didn't need to share much knowledge. Just working on a task together was challenging enough. In today's information and connection enterprises, sharing information is more intimate, requiring people to have more developed interpersonal skills. Those skills don't come naturally to everyone, as most managers know—nor is there only one skill that people need to learn for internal partnerships to work.

Ensuring a free flow of information within an organization requires a systems approach. You can't work on only one problem area— improving employee feedback, for example—without also working on others, such as building trust and developing comfort with change. Information will stop flowing unless all areas of the system are addressed. That's where the knowledge of the Six Partnering Attributes can be tremendously helpful. Developing these interconnected attributes—Self-Disclosure and Feedback, Win-Win Orientation, Ability to Trust, Future Orientation, Comfort with Change, and Comfort with Interdependence—can enable an organization to resolve its internal conflicts in a healthy, positive way, moving it toward a partnering culture. The results can be stunning: a free, open flow of information and ideas within your organization—and a new and exciting competitive edge.




Powerhouse Partners. A Blueprint for Building Organizational Culture for Breakaway Results
Powerhouse Partners: A Blueprint for Building Organizational Culture for Breakaway Results
ISBN: 0891061959
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 94

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