When " Knowledge is Power " becomes bottleneck?

Yes , " Knowledge is Power " sometime becomes bottleneck!

In Today's digital, global economy punishes slow, inward-looking, dumb-acting organizations.

Companies must be not only fast but also smart about figuring out what customers want and then getting it to them very fast.

I have seen many instances in my working with many organization where people are with the system for 10-15 years.They have become super expert knowledge house with the system. Working with them sometime not so easy.They sometime slow down the execution speed! Frequent ego clash , power tussle cause organization to lose the battle.

Those superman expect you to give them salute everyday because they know which screw to turn on when critical incidents pop out. They retain the information and slow down the organization process.This internal politics waste energy and create silos only to ensure their interest not overall company interest.

They expect you to bend in front of them ! Oh! what a torture !

They are the key people for the senior managers (No other option!). You could be Manager, Leader, Agile coach for the team but you are the new animal in the Jungle where those Lions are already in charge for long time.

Have you come across such situation? where organization is bend in front of few individuals who has the legacy knowledge ? They exercise the power in wrong way!

They build HERO culture , they like people to come to them and consult. They create silos and bureaucracy!

Especially in legacy technology where team members is working for long time with the same project or applications for long time , they become power house over a period of time. They do not want to share knowledge for the fear that it will reduce their importance.

We want to apply Agile for this type of project ! to improve efficiency and effectiveness

Bureaucracies Impede Learning.

Everyone is competing with everyone else to grab and hang on to power, so no one wants to share knowledge because it is tantamount to giving away power. 

As the knowledge is with few individual who were the original team members , power remains with them.

They try to apply command and control style.Thus culture continue to damage the new team members confidence and people do not want to work in such environment.

Any amount escalation does not help as few individuals are running the show, they know which line of code has to change for a critical issue! They dominate the team culture.

The environment is fearful , no body opens their mouth.

" The Challenger disaster in 1986 was an example of an information- withholding culture at its worst. The leadership at NASA did not want to learn about the O-ring problem because it would stop the launch and hurt their careers and reputations. So the engineer working for a subcontractor who did know about the problem was browbeaten, pressured until he eventually stopped pushing the issue. It was a vicious cycle of “non-learning” and “non-teaching of each other.” The result was a lowering of the collective team IQ, a lack of alignment and negative emotional energy that led directly to the disastrous crash of the space shuttle"

How can we change such setup when we are coaching them ? What has worked with us....

Building a Teaching Organization: Let us starts with a mind-set that teaching is a valuable core activity. This is a mind-set that is firmly held by top leaders who make teaching an explicit goal within the company and development of people a top priority for everyone.

Every body learns from top to bottom, they create community where every body has to share learning's.

The working agreement set with the team members. All hero has to share else they go out of the team. Many team members fired who did not shared. I have see many such team members.

Use of positional power to promote knowledge power to scattered:Teaching and learning as the means for coordinating and controlling their activities, and the leaders who build them do avoid flamboyant displays of power. But they do not take any tools out of their toolbox, and they can be quite creative in using their authority to promote teaching and learning.

Can you fire those who are not aligning with this goal? it works , I have seen project came back to normal state by removing few key knowledge house if they show high attitude and not sharing knowledge.

Jack Welch did this when he ordered the top 1,000 managers at GE to get mentors and learn e-business during his time.

Building a learning organization is the key to sustain in today's era.

" Knowledge is Power" when it is shared with others to get the combine IQ of all the team members.

Knowledge is not centralize with few, but decentralize with many.Identify such team members and coach them one to one.

Do you agree ? how can we change ? if you have seen such ambient you would have realized how tough it is to sustain such suffocating environment.

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