Culture of Collaboration

In my company we call information that is known but not documented “tribal knowledge” and there is a surprising amount of this tribal knowledge floating around; unaccounted for and essentially only recorded in the mind and memory of existing employees. This information can disappear when an employee leave and this means time and resources are spent trying to figure out how to resolve an issue. There is also a lot of the this-is-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it-so-it’s-the-right-way mentality, where change isn’t explored or embraced, which means we have outdated processes or under/over qualified employees managing the process in an ineffective manner. These two things seem to interfere with the culture of collaboration needed to transform in to a learning enterprise. “Collaboration centers on the relationships we have with people or the potential relationships we can build with people. Right now there isn’t an effective way to match our relationships to the work we do” (Morgan, 2012).

Sometimes it feels like employees don’t collaborate because this tribal knowledge or information hoarding is perceived to provide some sense of job security. Perhaps it does in some cases. But I’ve seen a lot of restructure in the company lately, and some people that seemed above a reorg are no longer working for my company. Collaboration is necessary for a company to grow and the character and personalities of the individual needs to align with the technology available to facilitate a better level of communication and documentation.

I would like to see my organization shift towards a stronger culture of collaboration, using technology and human resources to document and revise current processes. This could be done with SharePoint, a wiki or even in the cloud….as long as it gets people working together and not duplicating efforts. “The future collaboration platform will be able to match the people we are connected to with the work we do, or the people that we should be connected to with the work that we do” (Morgan, 2012).

Morgan, J. (2012). The collaborative organization. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill.