What's the Opposite of a Knowledge Culture?

We're living in interesting times, as far as KM, knowledge services, and the knowledge culture are concerned.

In the workplace, we focus on developing and sustaining the organization or the corporation as a knowledge culture. And we give much attention to the role of the information or knowledge services professional as the natural knowledge thought leader for the organization, as the responsible employee who smooths the progress toward the knowledge culture.

All good stuff, right?

And all based on a number of assumptions, such as "knowledge is good," "the more we know the better our chances of success," "the knowing organization is automatically going to beat out the competition," etc.

And perhaps the most popular assumption of all: "every organization has a knowledge culture, because all the people in the organization know something."

Well, yes. But isn't that the crux of the matter? It's not that those of us affiliated with the organization or the corporation don't know anything. It's just that there are so many distractions - so many paths, you might say, away from the knowledge culture - it becomes very difficult to get to where we need to go. We can't quite reach that knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) state that ensures our work will be successful.

So instead of thinking about the attributes of the knowledge culture that lead to organizational success (attributes identified in a number of places, including work done at this company), what if we went in the opposite direction? What if we thought about the attributes that prevent the development of a knowledge culture? Or impede the organization's success in sustaining a knowledge culture?

We might begin with human nature. In his helpful description of how Western philosophy was developed, Thomas Cahill writes about how, once knowledge was no longer the sole province of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers and started to include attention to human nature and a "close consideration" of human affairs, new principles about knowledge, about how knowledge is used to guide humanity came into the picture (the reference is to Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter). Built into that close consideration should be, it seems to me, attention to the role of the worker and - for our discussion - the role of the knowledge worker in relation to that of other workers affiliated with the larger organization.

What are the impediments to the knowledge culture? What constitutes an organization that is the opposite of a knowlege culture? If we take the organization apart, recognizing that an organization is, at its most basic level, a group of people working together, we soon come to realize that it is indeed human nature where we must focus our energies.

For example, we speak about the importance, indeed the necessity of collaboration in the knowledge culture and about how collaboration, transparency, and a respect for KD/KS are built in, are part of the management framework of the organization that is structured as a knowledge culture.

Are they present in the organization or company where you are employed? How do people feel about collaboration, about being open about their work (unless there is a valid reason or requirement for privacy, as with security or proprietary information), about sharing the knowledge they develop in the workplace?

When these attributes are not present, yes, the company might still succeed in achieving its organizational mission, but that success is realized not as the result or effect of a well-managed KD/KS process. In these cases, success comes in spite of the lack of KD/KS. In other words, those affiliated with the organization who make success happen learn to work around the lack of a well-managed KD/KS process, recognizing that they are working in an organization that can be characterized as - and which if they think about it they very likely characterize - as the opposite of a knowledge culture. It's a situation ripe for intervention, and the knowledge professional who identifies that he or she is working in such an organization is provided with a splendid opportunity to get things on track.