In the Business World, Knowledge is Power

Knowledge is power

Many employees have probably, at some time in their career, attempted to ask a co-worker a relatively simple question and realized eventually that this expert is not going to share his/her knowledge or expertise with you to the extent that is needed. Why would a co-worker do this? This co-worker probably adheres to the philosophy that their knowledge is their job security and/or path to a promotion. To put it bluntly, they feel that knowledge is power.

For some personalities it is a simple case of having a badly needed feel-good moment when you, the questioner, see that they, the expert, are special because you had to come to them for an answer. Again, they feel that knowledge is power.

For some workers, especially programmers, there might be a possible direct financial gain from their programming work and they are afraid to release the information in a program (source code). None of these are valid reasons for not sharing information with co-workers but it seems to continue in business at every level. And again, they feel that knowledge is power.

Knowledge is job security and/or path to promotion

It is not uncommon for an employee to feel that they are in a special class of employees if they are the only person with knowledge that fills a special, critical need of the company. Usually this includes talents like being "The Expert" on a particular computer system. This person might be the one person that is able to solve problems for a particularly difficult customer. The employee could be the boss's favorite who doesn't have to share anything with anybody. These people obviously feel that knowledge is power.

"The Expert" on a particular computer system needs to realize that promotions do not result from expertise in a single system unless an entire work group is created around that system. I know of an expert who unknowingly missed out on four promotion possibilities because top management feared that she had become critical in producing an important company product. Being critical can be a roadblock to a career but a company should never allow this situation to exist.

Every company has that one person who has some relationship with a customer or special entity that is important to the company. That does not make the person indispensable or give the person power. I have known a number of these situations and the companies involved never refrained from promoting or transferring these people when the time came. If a company allows a person to feel that they are indispensable because of a special relationship, that employee will inevitably feel protected and will at some point start to take advantage of that protection. The company has no alternative but to prevent that feeling of protection.

The "boss's favorite" is always a difficult person to cope with at any level. My experience has always been that many of these people are working for a boss that is either weak or incompetent. Not to fear, in this case the boss should not last long anyway. There are some strong effective leaders (sometimes called sponsors) who pick out favorites as protégés. This will always exist and you need to follow my simple rule on this subject - say "so what" to yourself so long as the protégé does not use the status as a power base.

Some co-workers need that special, feel-good moment

Likely Page BreakWhen you encounter this type of resistance where it appears to be a personal trait that the co-worker has, you have only one alternative. You must try to refer the situation upward and see if the company is ready to address the problem. This approach worked once in my career and did not work one other time. It did not work the second time because no one wanted to solve the problem. In time, I found a way to circumvent the roadblock but it was not easy and worse, it was not an inexpensive exercise.

Holding back information for personal financial gain

This was always my biggest objection with programmers specifically. They would never allow anyone to see their source code. It was made worse when two programmers managed to sell source code to their company. They wrote the code while being full time employees of that same company. Of course this was a major mistake because it made every programmer in the company think that they had some code that could be sold to the company. They felt they had some special code that was going to make them rich. Programmers need to understand that employees on the front lines sometimes need to know how a program works and their reluctance to release it can harm the company operation.

Some programmers will not allow you to see their source code because they are afraid you will alter it and they will lose control. In my case they were probably right because I had a programmer working for me who could alter or fix many of the smaller programs that I used. The reason I needed the source code is because they refused to correct their programming problems so I had no other alternative. The programmers were finally forced to release the code and we were able to accomplish some results that were remarkable (meeting the companies' number one objective at the time). In this particular case I probably managed to do something that most people would generally not be allowed to do but it points out the effect that releasing the information can have in some cases.

How do you stop this information roadblock from occurring?

If you are a company leader and have the authority to change attitudes, you may want to address this situation by making it known how you object to it. You can emphasize the harm it does and how it impedes productivity and results in the company. If you do not have the authority to make change, you might try any conventional means available like talking to a trusted manager or carefully phrasing it as a suggestion or issue at some company venue. Companies are different which means that employees have to use different methods and approaches in different companies.

The first step in addressing any problem is recognizing the harm being done in these situations. Never put your career on the line because of someone else's roadblocks unless you have total control of the operation. If you are in control, you have a responsibility to your company and employees to make sure that knowledge does not create power or the perception of power.