When Those Who Know Won’t Share

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/business/when-those-who-know-wont-share.html?ref=science

by dnetesn • 12 years ago

57 62 12 years ago

mooreds• 12 years ago

“Put in incentives to reward people on team outcomes versus solely on individual outcomes"

This. You get what you incent. If people are rewarded for working together, they will work together. If they are rewarded for individual contributions, they will optimize for that.

Now, it can be tough to measure and reward team effort, bit if that is what is important, figure it out!

amrrs• 12 years ago

Yep. For stuffs like appraisal, the org. should calculate the team's score rather than individual's and hence the team gets some point which should in turn become their appraisal percentage, thus team cooperation would improve.

benjvi• 12 years ago

This then encourages free riding, no?

In the general case, the goals of the company and the employee are not always aligned so I don't think this is an easy problem to solve.

EliRivers• 12 years ago

Here's an article from Mary Poppendieck that I first came across many years ago, discussing the matter of working as a team within an incentive system that can't really deal with it.

http://www.poppendieck.com/pdfs/Compensation.pdf

TeMPOraL11• 12 years ago

There is a third way. Evaluate and reward people for their individual performance, but don't make people compete by limiting the prize pool. That is, everyone who reaches certain performance level get a fixed bonus, independent of how many others also receive it. This way, no one stands to gain anything by witholding knowledge, and everyone has an incentive to help everyone else because they can except to be helped in need as well. You also somewhat avoid the free rider problem, because people won't keep helping those who are clearly just lazy.

Anecdote time! When I was a student, performance scolarships at my faculty were distributed this way. There were set thresholds, and if your grade average from the previous year was above a given threshold, you got +X money in scolarship. We were all extremely cooperative. People helped each other all the time, we pooled notes, scans, bootleg textbook pdfs, previous year's exam questions, we passed this knowledge down to younger students, who in turn passed them further after adding more materials of their own. We'd happily help each other get better grades.

You bet there was a lot of us on those scolarships. And people who came from the outside were extremely surprised about how friendly and helpful everyone is.

After I left, my faculty was forced to make scolarships work the way they work at every other faculty/university - i.e. make only top X% of students eglible for rewards. This instantly killed teamwork dead. I know few people who are still studying and they say there's a clear and visible difference now. People no longer share things. They don't care about recording exam questions for others, they don't coordinate the whole year to win something. Students stick to small groups and are antagonistic to others. If they help at all, they do it to the degree it doesn't endanger their own chance for scolarships.

Incentives matter. Also greed/stupid costs savings on the part of people setting up incentive structures matter too.

rational-future3• 12 years ago

don't make people compete by limiting the prize pool

That is an interesting idea and it probably works in some rare situations. But unfortunately, most of the time, we only have limited resources and so a limited prize pool. The question, for managers/politicians/capitalists, usually is how do we get maximum motivation out of a limited rewards budget.

fidotron• 12 years ago

I've initiated large knowledge sharing projects before, and they all failed because at the time I didn't realize the problem was not a lack of medium for sharing but a lack of will to share.

This covers the problem where someone hides the very simple knowledge which keeps them employed (documentation being the enemy of job security) but the worst is having a culture where if you share something that is later found to be even slightly wrong it will be used against you. For sharing to work you have to be tolerant of the right sort of mistakes.

brazzy• 12 years ago

I suspect that most knowledge sharing projects fail because people are not incentivized to participate and have other things to do that are perceived as more productive or where there is more (any) pressure to get them done.

FranOntanaya• 12 years ago

Missing in the article is when you have more information about a generic request that your partner actually needs.

It's OK for me if a partner discards half of a serve-yourself email, which was easier to write than doing the whole expert-system style Q&A until you narrow the answer, but there's always the worry that it will be perceived as wasteful -- from the other side's point of view that unused information may equal to days of study and research, or as confusing noise that would delay a solution if it had to be grokked.

I could see someone in a very large team eventually resorting to simple answers, just for the sake of not snagging the business flow. Maybe adding invitations to request further info about certain parts would be in order.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

Went I went to the US(Boston, from Europe) I was surprised by the behavior in University given by the intense private competition.

It is not the difficulty itself, as it is probably harder to study engineering in Europe or Asia, but the competitive mindset, "every man for himself".

This has advantages, like taking plagiarism very seriously, but also terrible disadvantages, like not working well in groups.

People like Japanese or Chinese are trained in working in groups with disrespect for the individual. The American culture is the polar opposite, they worship individuals disrespecting the team, e.g you wont ever hear them talking about Edison's team(of which Tesla was one of its members), or Steve Jobs'.

Americans love to believe that there is a person that does everything.

Having said that, in some companies they don't share because of fear.

If you create a community like Microsoft's four years ago in which for every team, the "least qualified"(even if all of them are great) is fired, you create a culture of threat and terror, and people are going to protect their selves.

You have also to take care, not putting too many leechers in the same place as the seeders, or the seeders won't be able to solve problems(that they love to solve) because they are babysitters of the leechers full time(something they hate to do).

Some companies do not understand the last point, then they comply about people not sharing.

If you put together a team that admire each other, they share naturally.

kghose• 12 years ago

I have worked in three research institutions in the US - At the University of Maryland, at Harvard University and at Mass General Hospital. While there were cultural differences as well as individual differences, my main observation was that people were eager to share and teach one another. This was my main attraction to academic life. Cross-disciplinary collaboration was also very encouraged.

The level of secrecy, however, probably depends on field. I was in neurophysiology + cognitive science. Colleages in the molecular biology field complained of competition and secretiveness from colleagues.

I suspect that this extends not just to the US but to Europe as well. I knew of a researcher from Denmark in a certain field who was known to 'sit' on a certain resource and control access to it to reduce competition and further their own name.

paulhauggis2• 12 years ago

So it should be fine in a university setting that one person does all the work and the rest just copy it? The reason this is frowned upon is because the people that just copy don't end up gaining the valuable skills they are there for in the first place.

I've worked in many group settings in school, and this is usually what ends up happening if left unchecked (1 or 2 people doing 90% of the work and the rest just copying it.

I don't know about you, but I don't want any "leechers" working with me in the workplace. Why would I do your job for you and then not get the credit?

In a work setting, I've been in groups where we had to share knowledge (each person is working on a different part and you need to combine them together). This is much different than what you are describing.

calibraxis• 12 years ago

If we wish to remove such dysfunctions, best to drop the grading system (to the extent stamping a number on your forehead affects your future life).

I do exactly this, and none of us "cheat". Cheating is a meaningless concept to us anyway; using someone else's work is as silly as stealing from your own wallet.

As for avoiding leechers, they're often called "managers" and "bosses". (I say that as a manager. Structurally, and in the vast majority of cases, they're leeches.)

TeMPOraL11• 12 years ago

If you create a community like Microsoft's four years ago in which for every team, the "least qualified"(even if all of them are great) is fired, you create a culture of threat and terror, and people are going to protect their selves.

The other side of the very same coin is when you award top X% people for performance. When you fix the reward/punishment pool, people have much less incentive to work together, because every help you give to someone else is reducing your own chance of success.

I'm not sure why people set up such incentive structures. Is it greed? Or some kind of stupid belief that a little bit of competition will help? Yes, if you let every good performer get a bonus regardless of how many others are also getting it you'll have to pay out a lot of bonuses, because you'll have a lot of good performers. But isn't it exactly what you want to have?

pmorici• 12 years ago

"I'm not sure why people set up such incentive structures. Is it greed?"

I think it comes down to managerial laziness and social discomfort. Giving someone a bad performance review or dealing with poor performance is inherently an uncomfortable social interaction. Once a manager acknowledges that someone isn't meeting standards organizations usually have a process by which they need to help that person improve or eventually fire them which is a lot of extra work for that manager.

In other words it is a way to force managers into dealing with bad employees instead of letting problems fester.

emsy2• 12 years ago

I recently watched an interesting video of an austrian economy professor, who came to the conclusion that our current competition based society is in effect because in the past competition was crucial to survive, and thus people competed. Our current generation competes because we grew up in a competitive society and in order to be truly cooperative, cooperation needs to become a part of our "memes". Here's the video, unfortunately in German and no subtitles are available yet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oouoee9UvEc.

I think the main problem with group bonuses is that those who know/think they worked harder will feel treated unfairly. I have no information on how group bonuses are perceived or what their effects are. However, I personally think that the main problems come from teams who don't share the same spirit/culture and thus, those problems also exist in individually rewarded teams.

idlewords• 12 years ago

"People like Japanese or Chinese"? Seriously?

rational-future3• 12 years ago

Seriously what? Is it politically incorrect to mention racial differences at all now?

lumberjack• 12 years ago

I do not think it has much to do with culture as much as it has to do with the incentive structures in place. I have never studied outside Europe but even in Europe I have experienced grading systems were you are praised for your achievement with respect to your mates and others were you are praised for your achievement objectively. Honour titles are usually objective, and very hard to get while grants and scholarships are subjective, there is a quota set per year and it goes to the best that that year has to offer.

But yes, sometimes the incentive structures set up are really counter productive. If the work is supposed to be a team effort then you shouldn't praise anyone less than the whole team for their achievement. Otherwise, what incentive do the team members have to work together?

jeffreyrogers• 12 years ago

It would be interesting to look at the places where sharing has been very effective (Wikipedia, linux, open source software in general, etc.) and see if we can learn anything from them about structuring things in such a way to facilitate sharing. I guess it's mainly an issue of aligning incentives... people who keep more to themselves are more likely to look intelligent and be promoted/acknowledge by their bosses (or they think that's what will happen at least).

rando289• 12 years ago

I wouldn't call those places where sharing has been very effective. A certain level of knowledge is shared due to it's nature: open source, sometimes remote, sometimes volunteer run. But beyond that, domain experts who do not share their knowledge publicly or very freely are just as common as anywhere else.

whoisthemachine2• 12 years ago

I have a burning curiosity to know if there are any out there who are not very competitive (such as myself) who don't mind sharing and then get treated as a fool because I share knowledge so freely? It doesn't really bother me since I consider solving the problem the most important part of the job but it seems to happen at each job I've had in software development.

paulhauggis2• 12 years ago

You can be very non-competitive. But, be warned that you might be replaced by someone who is cheaper and uses the knowledge you learned yourself to get or keep their job.

I was non-competitive..and eventually it cost me my job.

TeMPOraL11• 12 years ago

I'm extremely anticompetetive and if I know something that could help someone, I share without thinking (and often help if I have time to spare). Fortunately I haven't experienced any negative consequences of this yet - quite the opposite, I tend to end up in friendly groups in which everyone helps others.

I think such pay-it-forward behaviour is contagious, so it is a small way to make the world a better place.

whoisthemachine2• 12 years ago

Yeah I definitely have no problem helping someone, as long as it doesn't take away time for me to do my job.

Nursie• 12 years ago

This is just unprofessional behaviour.

Passing on knowledge and helping each other succeed is just part of the job. I'm glad I haven't had the misfortune to work with people who deliberately obstruct each other.

ysopex• 12 years ago

You've obviously never worked in an environment with intentionally ignorant or lazy workers. I'm all about sharing knowledge and supporting your teammates. But I've recently discovered people who are simply leaches. They've discovered that they can get by on generosity of others. My boss sat me down earlier this year and reprimanded me for spending too much time essentially doing other people's work for them. It never occurred to me that people would do this intentionally but now that it's been pointed out to me I see these people everywhere.

junto• 12 years ago

I had an interesting chat with a colleague the other day (team lead) who asked me to pair up with a permanent employee rather than a contractor on a development task, so that my knowledge of the particular system I was working on would stay in the company. I noted that in reality, the only member of staff I could safely count on to stay at the company was called 'wiki'.

mgkimsal2• 12 years ago

I kept a daily blog at a company I was at - I kept all my notes in there about what was said at meetings, why certain code was done certain ways, etc - far more than you could put in a commit message, for example.

I got (a bit) laughed at by teammates. After I left, one thanked me because it was a huge help for trawling through the mess of stuff I left behind (which I'd inherited from someone else in an undocumented state). Did I leave it in a perfect state? Of course not, but all the external factors that played in to why things were done certain ways was searchable (meeting notes, pointers to tech articles, bug reports, etc).

kps2• 12 years ago

  > I noted that in reality, the only member of staff I could
  > safely count on to stay at the company was called 'wiki'.

True, but that flies in the face of Agile™ dogma: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

Plato similarly argued against literacy. He didn't tell me that face-to-face; someone wrote it down.

lotsofmangos5• 12 years ago

It was Socrates that argued against literacy and Plato who wrote it down.

"Nothing that has ever been written whether in verse or prose merits much serious attention."

I also think that Plato writing it down was one of the earliest post-modern jokes.

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

I'm surprised that this is surprising.

That said, there's a difference between malicious "holding out" and being reserved with political information. I'm not going to hide something that's purely technical, but political information is (a) dangerous to share, and (b) often incomplete, meaning you could unduly bias someone with your own half-knowledge. Besides, while everyone will "listen to" a gossip, no one will ever defend one.

However, there's a certain room for reciprocity. If I trust that someone will look out for me, I'll look out for him or her. Your odds aren't good, in the long run, if you try to walk through this world alone.

I think of modern corporate life as post-apocalyptic, like in The Walking Dead. The HR drones who implement stack-ranking, the mindless backstabbers, and the self-destructively sadistic middle managers out there are the zombies. In numbers, inferior but ravenous beings like zombies can overwhelm the living and strong, and they do so, so often, that they're a primary landscape feature of this new world. (One place where this metaphor breaks down is that it's not clear, in the real world, who are the living and who are the zombies. But bear with me.) For those who haven't figured it out, zombie horror is really about "tyranny of the majority", which is a formidable enemy within an organization.

You have to know who your friends and your enemies are, and sometimes you have to make decisions quickly. While you "fight" the zombies (except, you do it by making them click on ads and mindlessly support brands you invent, not killing them) you also have to fear the living.

If our parents and grandparents knew what little politicians and fire-starters we are, as a generation, they'd be horrified. We're not actually morally any worse. In fact, we're probably better in many ways (less racist, less sexist, and unlike the Boomers we didn't cause widespread organizational failure because we were still children during the Reagan Era). We're just post-apocalyptic (and OK with that). We know that the people in power aren't looking out for us, so we don't give a shit about them. Compared to our elders, we care more about people who we actually know and can (sometimes) trust, but less about organizations and society.

aaronem• 12 years ago

Ironic that this article in particular should lie behind a pay wall.

cateye• 12 years ago

This is a very one sided article from the perspective of the higher management.

The real contradistinction is that organisations try to reduce costs of the "workforce". The employees try to maximize their income and value. It is true that the maximalization can also occure on group level and that this is not contractually or formally supported in our current economic model. But treating employees as costs individually or as a group will shift the problem.

It can be questioned that it is not such a radical zero sum game but at the other hand it feels like this is the most effective and simple behavior.

The inverted question is, what do organisations do to maximize the income of their employees?

serve_yay• 12 years ago

It's also disappointing when you try to share things with people and they're not interested. Then later on they say "well I don't know how this works!"

justizin• 12 years ago

This is called the "Tyranny of Competence", here's a related excerpt from the book "Deep Change" ( http://books.google.com/books?id=NDkvbRX9dGQC&pg=PA115&lpg=P... )

The arguments for competence are powerful and often overshadow or mask a problem area. An example of such an argument is the comment along the lines of, "We couldn't survive without Mary. No one else can sell that thing, and it represents 30 percent of our business." This statement is often so self-evident that no one thinks to point out the cooperative effort that should be the essence of the organization has already ceased to survive. People come to work, but there is a lack of communication, commitment, and cooperation. The process of slow death has set in.

In one organization, a man of enormous technical competence was allowed to gain a lot of power, and many of his actions poisoned the climate in the workplace. People around him hated to come to work and went to great lengths to avoid dealing with him. Their bad feelings, irrationalities, and inefficiencies were costing the organization large but undocumented sums of money. Finally, the situation grew so bad that people united and demanded change. A senior person intervened in this Tyranny of Competence and tried to coach the man. The recipient found the feedback incomprehensible and argued that he was doing his "job" better than anyone else in the place. The organization was simply out to get him for personal and political reasons.

Note the accuracy of his argument. He was doing his "job" well, and the organization was out to get him for political and personal reasons. The problem was his definition of the word "job". His job did not include relating to other people. Organizational relationships, with their interactions and political processes, are as real as physical objects. Not disciplining oneself enough to maintain good relationships is, in fact, destructive behavior.

This man eventually left his job, convinced that he had been politically rejected (which was correct) for unjust reasons (which was incorrect). The day he went down the stairs for the last time, people came out of their offices, held hands, spontaneously danced, and sang, "Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead!" They discovered that this irreplaceable person was indeed replaceable. The top executives marveled at the increase in overall performance. They vowed not to make the same mistake again.

zw123456• 12 years ago

I ran into this phenomenon first had recently when working on a knowledge engineering project. The idea was to use a rule based system to enhance network troubleshooting. The "experts" who had the knowledge were very suspicious and reluctant to share their knowledge because they thought eventually they would be "replaced by a machine". But I also noticed that they were very proprietary between each other as well or others, especially people they considered "outsiders", outside of the little cabal they had set up. It was a very interesting dynamic. It reminded me very much of a sports metaphor that the most valuable players are the ones that make their teammates better. I can definitely saw the antithesis of that in play at this particular organization. I think it would be a major challenge in implementing AI in certain situations.

Aloha2• 12 years ago

Often this is not an intentional action on any one actors part - its an institutional thing - I work for a major european telecoms vendor, and inside my company almost no one has big picture visibility, projects are sliced up so many ways from sunday, that to get something that even resembled a big picture you need to talk to tons of people and maintain a large social network (the good ol' boys network).

The natural reaction to this lack of visibility is to create process for everything, and major european telecoms company is a very process oriented company, everything has a process, and a document thereof (assuming you can find the document, remember the part about poor visibility) - they are also very very fond of one-size-fits-all solutions to problems, so everyone gets the same laptop build, no matter who your end customer is, or what your job is (from field engineers to accountants).

The key to productivity is knowing when it's best to let the process, no matter how slow moving it is - bump and grind along at its own pace and become a self resolving problem, and when to directly (and openly) short circuit it, whereas other times you might want to call on the 'good ol' boys network' to solve a problem or get information.

To defend this way of working - there is some logic to these systems, they provide stability and a largely autonomous system that (albeit slowly) will provide a resolution to most of the problems the business will run into - they fail worst when dealing with rapidly emergent problems, exigent circumstances, when expanding to a new line of business or any time you run into a problem that can't be grouped into a existing category. Even a process driven environment however has some ability to adapt, even if it does fall completely outside the system at first, and so long as you have a reasoned argument, people often won't tell you no either (even if they might sit on your request for a bit), so while I dislike the amount of red tape at times, I've also learned how to work thru it, and around it when absolutely needed.

When Those Who Know Won’t Share

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