Think how frustrating it must be to believe someone in your organization has previously traveled down a pathway of searching for information that you are on today.  They possibly did a lot of research on the topic.  Perhaps they even wrote a white paper or report about it for someone else in the organization.

But you don’t have access to it.

You are among those on the outside of the “need to know” group.

It happens every day in organizations large and small.  It tends to happen to newer team members who may not have the history of knowing what areas the organization has worked in previous years.

I was reading a blog posting over the weekend from Barry Camson titled “Open Government IS Cultural Change.”  Mr. Camson writes a blog titled Bridges to Knowledge.  He has been doing research and writing in the area of Knowledge Management.

Mr. Camson talked about the recent delivery of a training program he developed for the U.S. Intelligence Community on how to effectively transfer knowledge.   He wrote about how this program was delivered in a time in which the Intelligence Community was migrating from the Cold War mentality of "need to know" to the 21st century mentality of "need to share."   He went on to talk about how similar this change is to the change that needs to happen in the rest of the Federal Government as it moves to be more open as directed by the President's Memorandum on Open Government, dated December 8, 2009.

Mr. Camson’s comments caused me to reflect on my blog post last week on Knowledge Hoarders and Knowledge Leaders and how the “need to know” and “need to share” mentalities follow along the same lines as the characteristics that our team laid out in these two behavioral traits several years ago.

While Mr. Camson is focused on government in terms of how it interacts with its citizens, I think many individuals in most organizations need to think about their own behaviors in how they interact with their fellow employees or co-workers.  This is especially true as organizations adopt more of a collaborative way of working, collectively called Enterprise 2.0.

I’ll admit there is a difference in sharing corporate data and intelligence data.  Obviously there is some information in organizations that is now and will always be on a need to know basis -   New product research, human resources information and other similar information will always have sensitivity around it.

But how much information that would be beneficial to others in the organization is not being shared because of the old culture of “we will tell you what you need to know when we think you need to know it?”  Or because people are Knowledge Hoarders and want people coming to them for information?

It is a real culture shift for many individuals and the organizations they represent to move toward openly sharing knowledge instead of trying to control it.  A lot of the work force is still made up of “Baby Boomers” who are frequently characterized as sharing information on a “need-to-know basis” only. 

It takes real change and a lot of hard work to change attitudes and behaviors on the parts of everyone in an organization to make it more of a sharing culture.  Mr. Camson summarized it well in his blog -

“Employees will need increased skill training and authority.  Managers will have to act more as facilitators. Organizational agility will become more important than control.”

Is your organization working toward having a mentality of “need to share” or is it stuck in “need to know”?