sharing the knowledge ??? 19

[xerf]

I have been thinking about this situation which often happens to me :

Sometime you might work / study hard to figure a path to solve a problem. After you spent plenty of time you finally figure out a solution .

However the solution is useful for many people at your job.

Then all your colleagues seeing that you solved that problem, ask you to show them how to solve the same problem.

Then this situation happens repeatedly and mostly is not reciprocal.

What would you do ?

 

[jmw]

I digress, you digress, he regressed?
:-D

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[MrMojito]

HVACctrl,

I've worked with quite a few people who didn't bother to try to share their knowledge. Most of them were otherwise good people but were trapped in jobs where the employer wanted every single project as well as every single employee's hours to show up on the weekly timesheet as a profit. Under such micromanagement, who's going to take the time to create or pass along knowledge? What will they bill the hours to? I don't like this "penny wise & dollar foolish" situation either, but that's how a lot of companies do things.

 

[HVAC68]

Well, if I knew everything, what am I doing here ??? !!!

I think I know a few things in my area of domain which others probably don't know. So, I share it with them, teach young engineers. Over the years, I have learnt one more thing. By sharing knowledge, you actually gain (a bit selfish too) knowledge, because, there are other view points raised by different people with whom you try to share your knowledge and those view points give a different dimension to one's thoughts and makes you think further than what you know. All-in-all, it's great to be sharing knowledge, regardless of whether somebody else shares it with you or not.

HVAC68

 

[xerf]

I just want to thank you all for your sincere opinions.

 

[macmet]

I think engineers and engineering is almost ridiculously competitive. Think of when you were in school. Competition can be a good thing, but most have no idea when it's time to become a team player. Many only care about marks or their reputation as being the best in the office.

 

[MadMango]

Then all your colleagues seeing that you solved that problem, ask you to show them how to solve the same problem.

Then this situation happens repeatedly and mostly is not reciprocal.

Showing them how to solve the problem themselves is the correct action to take (teach them to fish), instead of just giving out the answer (serve them fish). Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to force others to share knowledge they have.

[green]"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."[/green]
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[Twoballcane]

I don’t know if it was mentioned, but one reason some people do not share knowledge kind of grew from the days of down sizing. The more knowledge you have over the other guy the more likely you will not get picked for layoff. In this day of dog eat dog, people are trying to be their own company within a company. So in a way the knowledge you have is your own personal propriety information that will give the edge over the other companies (co-workers). When the axe starts to fall, people can do the most unthinkable things. Is it right, is it wrong? I don’t think it’s nether, it is just survival in the work place. When lay off comes (and they will come), will you still be off loading your knowledge to a point you are not needed?

 

[epoisses]

I would first of all fire the annoying people who think they have a tiny kingdom of precious knowledge that nobody can enter, because they kill the organisation's effectiveness.
:-D

 

[Ashereng]

Twoballcane,

I think you and I come from different a times a different era and probably a different culture than many of those much younger than us. I apologize if I have aged you needlessly, in which case, I guess it is just me then.

Unless someone has gone through those times themselves, or lived through the times you mentioned as a child, it is tough to empathize. Memories of people litterally walking away from their home (mortgage) because they can't affort to pay it, wondering where the next paycheck (and food) is coming from, of people willing to work for food (okay, this one is more my parent's generation, but I hear the stories), is something that like you say, stays with you. Thats why that generation have a higher savings rate those after it.

epoisses, I agree with your sentiment. People should help people, and freely share information. Now, who goes first?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[Twoballcane]

Then you would loss a good chunk of knowledge that might be key to a program. I don't know any company that had layoffs get rid of their most knowledgeable person. Shifting gears, I remember another thread that was about jobs going over seas. A person went over seas to train them on how to do his job thinking that they were only there to pick up the slack. A few months later, he was let go.

 

[Ashereng]

Twoballcane,

I think 60 Minutes ran that story? It was silicon valley software company that was doing that I think.

Anyhoot, yup.

Once you have lived through it, and not just the "lost one job and find another in 6 months" type, but the Bethleham Steel shutting down and the entire town going ghost type ...

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[IRstuff]

It can and probably still does happen that more knowledgeable people get laid off.


Partly because they are the older ones, usually, and often, the most knowledgeable are the most narrowly focused, meaning that they are less able to wear more hats.

Often, the choice is to keep the ones are are adequately knowledgable, but can wear more hats.

TTFN

 

[epoisses]

I think it is a misconception to think that the more mysterious and uncooperative a person is, the more indispensable knowledge he must have gathered!
I'd rather put my money in a smart guy who invents two new ideas tomorrow before somebody else has been able to copy one idea he invented today.

 

[epoisses]

(but I am against firing the most knowledgeable people first, just to avoid misunderstandings)

 

[HVACctrl]

Do you honestly think that sharing info with others will go unnoticed to the extent that the boss and/or all the others around you will not realize you are the one with all the ideas and knowledge? THIS is what will keep you around when the great layoffs come. If not, its probably not the right place (at least not for me) to work in the first place.

Now, I'm not saying write up some short-cut, spit-out-an-answer type spreadsheet for someone who is totally uneducated or experienced in our field. I'm saying that helping one another should be contageous. Those who have to hord their knowledge may not be very good engineers and that's why they are scared. Think of how much you all can learn together. Your department can become a rock-solid indispensible part of the company.

I don't know if I would fire someone for keeping knowldge to themselves, but it would certainly negatively affect my opinion of them. This would probably affect my review of that person as well.

Ed

 

[Twoballcane]

Ashereng,
;+)…I have been out of college for ten years now and survived two layoffs and left before the third, gone the day’s of long term work in one company. On some programs that I have worked on we kept an Engineering note book were knowledge on how we did project is captured. I think this is a great way to capture knowledge. Everybody has to participate and if in three years some upper management ask “why did you do that and how?” one can go into the Engineering note book and pull out the reason and the methodology of how we came to that conclusion.

 

[Ashereng]

Twoballcane,

My book is mine. I keep it when I go from job to job. It is like the old daytimers, except I jot everything down that I think is useful to remember...my wife's birthday, pick up the kids (that is really important), etc. Don't know if my PM wants that much detail about what I am doing.

What you are talking about is a bit more formal - knowledge capture for a company/project. That works too, except it is harder to manage. Another way is meeting minutes. Keep those online. During the meeting, you have to keep minutes anyway. Once it is online, it is searchable.



"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[jmw]

Twoballcane,
I have to disagree.
In the real world, management are very much capable of letting go skilled workers and very often do.
It is the natural reflexive response to short term problems and how convenient management find the "obligation to the shareholders" as a justifcation for some really stupid actions.

"slash and burn" management response to short term problems often sees wholesale losses of skills.

All too often it is the most experienced people they "let go" simply because they make the most impact on overheads.

Casualties:
[ul][li] Investment in new products, plant and equipment.[/li]
[li]sales and marketing, R&D[/li]
[li] production engineering[/li]
[li] the future[/li][/ul]

Then the company closes or gets sold and "rationalised".

Think about it in terms of product life cycles.

New product: R&D skills to devlop it which become surplus to this product once the product has been developed.

Production requires another set of engineering skills to get all the manufacturing bugs out. Now these guys are surplus to requirements.

Now you just depend on sales to sell it and manufacturing to make it "monkey-see monkey-do" fashion.

In a well run company one new product follows another and as any skills become surplus to one project they are picked up by another.

But one of the first casualties of "hard times" is investment.
Once that investment goes, all the skills go. Everything gets dumbed down and products become "cash cows".

Sales and marketing follow a similar skills curve until management pursuade themseleves that "80% of sales come from 20% of the client base".
This unfortunately leads to the view that you only need 20% (or less) of the sales force and no marketing.
In tough times these go near the head of the "let-go" list (often before engineering).

Next, having cut the overheads to the bone, they decide to improve profitability by increasing prices (they lost the skills set to reduce costs).
Sales drop.
Prices go up again.
Products that can't survive this get dropped and any staff that support them. Spares etc get written off (reduces the inventory... for some reason tht lost value is a benefit in the accounts?).

Some companies achieve skills loss simply through ill-conmceived policies such as ageism... someone decides that bright young minds are the future of the company and a sort of corporate self-inflicted amensia takes place.

How many products and how many companies met their end well before their time simply because of poor management?

OK, the whole world isn't like this but it happens enough to know that there are good companies and bad companies and more bad than good and in this world skills regularly get let go.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Twoballcane]

“I don't know if I would fire someone for keeping knowldge to themselves, but it would certainly negatively affect my opinion of them. This would probably affect my review of that person as well.”

You sound like a manager. I’m curious, do you share your knowledge of little management nuggets to the next young kid who might take your job? Do you freely give out your method and techniques of being a manager to the next person who wants your job? If one of your subordinates wants your job came up to you and said “wow you are great manager, how are you doing that” would you tell him in detail?

 

[Twoballcane]

JMW,

I can only draw on my experience and in the past the people that they let go first are the dead wood i.e. the people that are not really doing anything. I have never seen any of the people that have a lot of knowledge in certain fields get let go. For the older generation, I feel it was part age discrimination and obsolete knowledge. The older generation that was kept on was Fellows and Principles that have a lot of knowledge and have kept up with the times. I have come back to that company and they are still here.