My colleague Hugh Bathurst is currently working for an engineering firm helping one of the divisions develop a knowledge sharing culture. Hugh has been collecting stories, eliciting how things get done and encouraging peope to contribute to developing of a range of knowledge resources.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting the manager who’s sponsoring this initiative. His division is leading the firm financially and he puts their success largely down to the knowledge sharing initiatives, especially their ability to transform their culture over the last 18 months. So I asked him, “what behaviours do you see now that weren’t there when you started?”

I find this question really gets people thinking because in many cases managers don’t think about culture in terms of behaviours. “Hmmm, I think people spend more time moving about the floor and having conversations,” he said first. “But now I think of it, there are two things that have made the biggest difference. We call one of them Active Introductions. It’s where I accompany Hugh when we first introduce a new person to our knowledge sharing initiatives. I sit next to Hugh as he explains the program to show that knowledge sharing is important. After about 5 minutes, when I see they are getting it, I say I’ll leave you guys to work through the details and I head off.”

“The second thing we do is to identify what we call Beacons. These are the people who really get into knowledge sharing. They are like a bright light. We make sure the beacons are spread across the floor so they shine on as many people as possible and we keep their energy up by heaping praise on their good work.”