Human beings are wired to share

Getting people to connect and establish relationships so that knowledge flows, was the core strategy for Knowledge Management, says Raj Dutta, Vice-President and Chief Knowledge Officer, MindTree Consulting, who believes sharing is a human instinct.

Being social is vital
Recently, Harvard Business School selected MindTree as a case study for its innovation in knowledge management. Raj Datta, who started the function in 2003 at MindTree says, “‘Social’ has been the buzzword for the last two years, rather ‘knowledge management’ has been socio-technical in nature. Prior to that, when I put together the project charter for the function, our focus was to ensure it is socio-technical in nature — one reason why I think we stood out from others.

“Partly why we wanted to focus on ‘social’ was not because we believe this type of network was needed for proper knowledge flow. It is similar to your LAN or internet, through which your IT packets, otherwise known as information flows. But knowledge flows much more evenly, which means it is purely relationship driven.”

Raj says it is important to get people to try and make connections and establish relationships, so that knowledge flows. “That was very much the core focus of our strategy in Knowledge Management,” he adds.

Socio-technical structures
He says they termed it socio-technical to make it more scaleable, productive and efficient. The role of technology came into play to support it, to make it more efficient and transient.
“Focusing on the ‘social’ part was essential,” he says, “because a culture had to be created for social structure. Social movements determine change in society. It was clear to us that if knowledge management was about culture, then it had to be a social process.”

The key was not to let it happen by defining a rigid policy and a definite process, although both have an impact, he agrees. “The most impactful is the compounded effect from a social approach, when you to try to seek out a change.”

GenY loves exploration
Technology plays a vital role in documenting ideas exchanged through a social forum, he says. Social network sites like Twitter and the more effective Wikipedia exemplify this phenomenon, he says.

He cites Wiki as a perfect example in social memory, where transient ideas are recorded without complicating the process — involving a larger knowledge group.

Elaborating on the principle on which Wikipedia worked, he says, “In the late 90s, Wiki was underplayed but made inroads into corporations in the US in 2003. Eventually, it was the best as it was not threatening, there were no downloads and one didn’t even need to know any coding — all you have to do is click to contribute.”

He points out how technology made it easy “to do what I can do”.

Knowledge sharing is power
There have to be multiple ways of sharing knowledge, he says. “When you have shared your knowledge, helped other people grow, you are ready to venture to the next level.”
“Inherently, as human beings, you are inclined to share, we share things that we probably wouldn’t share with anyone else. But we wait to share it with family or our spouses.

Basically, as human beings, we are wired to share,” Raj says. “I fully believe in it and the reason I can give you is an open source — Wikipedia — they don’t get money for it, not even recognition for it. So what is the motivation there?

“To some extent, we are motivated to share. Mostly, we create unnatural unnatural systems, whether it is schooling or in the workplace,” Raj points out. “It is unnatural if you do share in school. It is called as cheating, you will get smacked and you are taught to compete with the next guy, whereas if we are able to share, we will both be at each other’s level,” Raj explains, stating that he believes we are all conditioned through these unnatural systems but inherently we want to share.

Ultimately our natural, inherent motivation comes out when we allow it to. How can we convert the organisation so that our natural inclination comes out, he wonders.

“I think it is a cultural thing. Ultimately, what I mean is that we have ventured into this to let people’s natural instincts come out,” he smiles.