Why I believe in sharing culture

Working with a company that promotes a knowledge sharing culture is a huge prerogative. It makes me a more proficient developer, a more effective leader and even a better person.

For the last 9 years I've been working for a company that has not only enabled, but promoted this kind of culture with its employees. I've been encouraged to present talks, write articles and to share what I know since day one, and it's done wonders for both my own and my colleagues' careers.

But what characterizes a knowledge sharing culture? And why exactly makes it so beneficial to pursue?

"Knowledge sharing culture" is one of those widely used expressions that can mean a lot of things, depending on who you ask. Therefore, this definition will be a bit anecdotal in nature.

In my mind, a knowledge sharing culture (or sharing culture, for short) is an environment where what you know is shared freely between peers. It's a place where we cherish and promote honing your own skills, while learning from other people doing the same thing. What you know isn't a personal asset you need to protect, but a common asset to be shared between all of your colleagues.

Sharing what you know with your colleagues empowers both them and your company as a whole to do better work. And when everybody prospers, everybody wins!

When you're surrounded by people that freely share their experiences and expertise, you're in an environment where you'll be able to learn a lot in a short amount of time. The time you spend onboarding to new teams, technologies and methodologies decrease drastically, and you get to

When you share your own knowledge, either directly with a colleague or through a medium like a article or podcast, you also end up solidifying your own understanding of what you're sharing. You need to reframe what you know in a way that'll reverberiate with whoever you're sharing with, and understand that topic a bit deeper than you did going in.

Bekk – the consultancy I've proudly called my employer for the last 9 years – does a lot of things right when it comes to this culture creation. I guess that should be a prerequisite for a business whose whole purpose is to employ and educate the greatest talent in the business.

But what do we do? What actions do we take to make sure we're enabling this sharing of knowledge in practice?

Firstly, we have a concept we call competency groups ("faggrupper" in Norwegian). Each year, we have a call for proposals for topics we want to discuss for the following year. We typically end up with around 40 different topics, which we have different internal meetups every month. These meetups can be anything from sharing experiences in a discussion based group to in-housed workshops and talks. Using this stage to get both old and new colleagues to share their knowledge and experiences is a great way to systemically help us get smarter.

Secondly, we have created a lot of low-effort platforms and traditions for sharing. We have several weekly and monthly blog post series, a low-key discussion podcast, and this wonderful adcent calendar. Having a lot of people participating in these platforms makes it easier to participate in future sharing experiences.

Thirdly, we have three internal conferences a year, where we ask people to do a talk, a workshop or create an exhibition. About one fifth of the company joins as contributors, and we never ask external speakers to fill our slots (we've had a few external keynotes though). This is a great way to promote people to share their knowledge and experiences, and a wonderful way to both learn and bond as a company.

We also have an incredibly active Slack. We ask all of our colleagues to share both questions and experiences through this low-key communications channel, and we often refer back to old threads and known knowledge.

Finally, we have an internal service where you can add talks, articles, discussions and other resources you find interesting. We're currently looking into opening it up to the public, and sharing what we love with the community as a whole.

Creating any lasting change within a company is never done in a heart beat. It can take years to get people sharing their hearts out, but that doesn't mean there aren't things you can do that will get you started on that journey. Here are some ideas to get you going.

The first piece of advice is pretty simple. Start asking people to share. Whenever they have done something cool, ask them to share. Whenever they screwed up, ask them to share. Whenever they learn something new, or finish a course, make sure somebody tells them to tell their colleagues!

As it turns out, asking people to share what they know is an extremely efficient technique to make them do just that. It won't work all of the time, of course, but not asking at all is definitely not going to get you anywhere. And when you ask, make sure you ask specifically enough for them to understand the scope of what you're asking, and why you're asking them.

Whenever people actually do share something, make sure the leaders in your organization are made aware, so that they can praise whoever shared what they knew publicly. Showing that this kind of behavior is rewarded – either through promotions, bonuses or just good ol' words – is a great way to get more people on board.

This has a great network effect as well. Once people start receiving praise for a certain behavior, they'll typically start praising others for doing the same! Soon, you'll get lots of people across your organization making sure sharing what you know is rewarded with people telling you that you rock.

If you're going to ask your coworkers to start sharing what you know, you need to make sure you're sharing your heart out from day one. Showing that you're both willing and able to do the work without any of the (initial) upsides, will seed trust in your peers and help them say yes whenever you do ask them.

Having leaders share what they know will also have a wonderful side-effect, where you'll see people from all across the company sharing the same stage. It'll make for a flatter, closer company, and improve the trust between the management and individual contributors.

Sharing what you know is one of those win-win scenarios. It'll make you understand whatever topic you talked about better, your colleagues will have gained some new insights, and your leaders will probably think better of you, too.

When entire companies do this well, magic happens. I hope you get to experience that too.