Build Trust - Information sharing
You need to make this the default operating standard of your team, and ultimately with your customers. Information-sharing leads to transparent decision-making, team commitment and minimization of individual selfish decisions. If everyone has the right information at the right time with the right people involved, then they should make the right decisions. However, people are not prone to share in a brave new world where pesky “users” are now promoted to “customers.” Therefore, you have to take time to show people the benefits of information-sharing and how that collaboration with their colleagues and across teams benefits them directly.
A colleague of mine once hit a glass ceiling of his own making as he was the signal point of failure for a financial system. He was unable to progress in his career, as he was so tied into the financial system there was no way for him to be promoted or take on new challenges. Gradually, over time, the management team brought on additional resources for my colleague to share his knowledge with, and over time he did so. This was not an overnight transformation; sharing knowledge meant diluting his initial criticality in the short term, which was a scary concept for him. However, over the long haul he reaped huge benefits as he went on to tackle far more interesting strategic work than he would ever have had the opportunity to tackle while carrying the weight of the financial system.
Building online portals, wikis and lunch n’ learns are great ways to start the information-sharing process, but you will have to work hard to make the change stick. You will have to talk to your team and determine how you can make it personal to them and illustrate the benefits they will reap.
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