Knowledge Sharing

In today’s information world, of all the people use internet, about 10% of the people are content producers. They produce most of the content and the rest of the people are consumers. It is probably a rough estimation. But let it be writings or videos, it is true. Only a small percentage of people produce these and post to different sites or apps. Knowledge sharing at work place is also very similar.

Let alone job responsibilities or not, a small percentage of people by nature like to produce content and share with others. Even though everyone at work are encouraged to document and share knowledge, most of people are just like consumers. But this is fine. Work place should provide platforms to make it easy for these content producers to create knowledge sharing content and share, such as slack topic channels, company wiki site, or the readme file for a repo, etc.

How about the people that hold certain in depth knowledge, but in nature not content producers? How can their knowledge be shared with others? Let them pair or mob with others to work. Then there could be some others to document and share. At least, the more people interact and work with others, the more chances knowledge is shared or even documented and available to more people.

This all happens naturally and organically. Company can have certain reward mechanism to award the content producers. This is normally an overlooked area. But regardless, the sharing themselves is a natural reward.

Not documenting or sharing on the other hand can turn into penalty such as interruptions and reduced productivity. People may ask around for the same information at work from time to time. Then this information definitely should be put to a wiki page or some how to guide. If certain things are only done once a while, then having a readme file or wiki page is like leaving some notes for the future ourselves.