Five reasons for not sharing

After posting the previous entry, I found Carol Kinsey Goman's Five reasons people don't tell what they know from DestinationKM, June 2002.  The reasons she lists should sound fairly familiar, but I wanted to get them recorded.  This list comes from a survey she did of 200 mid-level managers.  See the full article for Goman's expansion on each of these points.

Here are the top five reasons people don't tell what they know:

1. People believe that knowledge is power.
2. People are insecure about the value of their knowledge.
3. People don't trust each other.
4. Employees are afraid of negative consequences.
5. People work for other people who don't tell what they know.

It's interesting that her motivation for writing this article was the same as the Nancy Dixon article I referenced: individuals are the people who do the knowledge sharing (or hoarding).  And it is individuals who need to see the value and make the change.