Best organizations are quick to adopt newest technologies and equipments. That is first step to success in our digital, global era. At the same time the path to genuine sharing in organizations is a demanding route for each of us to proceed. This blog (and other relating blog posts) examines the issues which are important when individuals and organizations strive to develop sharing culture. You find more below:
4.3.2
Fears
which relate to others
4.3.2.1. Fear
of ruining positive atmosphere
Apparently
we all wish to work in a pleasant environment, in a nice atmosphere with
collaborative colleagues. And certainly nice and supporting atmosphere can be a
success factor of its own right, it nurtures creativity, innovation, it
energizes and it provides many other positive things to all involved and to
whole organization.
In this
setting you may anticipate that taking up certain matters might for some reason
mildly or perhaps drastically harm the positive general atmosphere. Therefore
you may decide to go with the silence and avoid taking up certain matters.
Apparently
selecting silence can a reasonable choice if you have reached that conclusion
by applying special kind of a “cost-benefit
analysis”. In other words you have estimated what would happen if you would
raise certain topic and how things would most likely continue in case you would
choose silence. And you have reached a conclusion that in this particular case
you go for a silence. That is a decision, and like with all decisions you may
have made an excellent or not so excellent decision.
On the
other hand when choosing silence relates heavily to maintaining good atmosphere,
it can be counterproductive. Often genuine development requires also critique,
and in case the need to preserve good atmosphere hampers a possibility to
criticize it is time to evaluate what is important what could be less prominent
role in organizational life. Perhaps a lot of efforts could be put up so that
the capability to give and take constructive criticism would reach a higher level
in organizational discussion culture.
It is, however, understandable that there are
situations where any of us might predict that bringing something up might cause
a mess and confusion in our organization. We all know that organizations are
pretty delicate creatures on what comes to the maintaining trust and keeping
discussion channels between people open. It has been said that individual is
strong but organization is fragile. This suggests the idea that organization is
a trust based network and the trust between actors may brake easily and it is
very difficult to restore. So also here we have to conclude that sometimes some
level of silence is perhaps the best solution. Perhaps this is no true in ideal
world, but it can be very true in real world.
4.3.2.2
Fear that the connection with others fails
In his
excellent book about relationship marketing (From the 4P’s to 30R) Evert
Gummesson writes how he noticed what is the essence of marketing is in
professional organization. The crucial challenge is to find a place, position and
acceptance among colleagues. Only after adequate acceptance as new member of
the network your new colleagues will ask you to join to different projects and
you can gradually become part of the functioning network.
In fact, it
would be touching (and difficult) to study how many executives and other
professionals on different levels of organizations are not really part of the
functioning organization. Perhaps, for instance, a boss was fired a long ago,
not officially, not publicly but in a way which almost all seem to know - at
least silently. Here firing means that working collaboration with others has
severed, perhaps not totally but to the extent which seriously reduces the real
working possibilities. Also these lines lead us to suggest that sometimes in
some organization it may happen that people in a way have gradually fired each
other, as a result they inhabit the same organization but the genuine
connection between people may have been lost on the way. How could they reach a
situation where they in way could recruit each other back to work?
Thus a genuine
connection with a network is very important, often a necessary factor before
you can actually do anything productive in any organization or in business life
in general. Sometimes the network could be a colleague, sometimes few
colleagues, sometimes a team or a department, sometimes the whole organization,
sometimes some other formation of people. Typically in order to maintain and
strengthen your position in any network you are expected to show some loyalty
towards your network.
Hence,
quite often the deepening collaboration with any network creates also complex configurations
which cunningly start to suggest that member of any network should be silent
about something. Typically some kind of we-them - setting emerges. Often
organizations are divided to different departments and units. It is not rare
that these different units start to compete with each other. One negative
result of the rivalry which grows intensive is that flow of information between
the competing units may not stay at the level where it could be. As a result
for instance some new business opportunities may be lost because of unwarranted
silence between different organizational units emerges.
In general
a person may fear that sharing something which is somehow considered as a
secret in her/his network might result in negative reactions and actions by
others. Hence a person would be prone to resort to silence on those occasions.
In the mild form this can mean that organization does not learn as quickly as
it could if information were shared more openly. In a strong form we are talking
about more difficult situations where cover up can be serious thing (a short
discussion about whistle blowing is in the later blog post).
4.3.2.3
Fear that sharing would ruin customer relationships
It is also
important to emphasize that there are a lot of occasions where silence is
actually part of proper professional conduct. For instance, even law may
require silence about some customer related matters in some businesses. Also, in
general prudent handling of customer information is part of any laudable work.
Again we
notice that silence is a complex issue. Quite easily there would a tendency to
think that silence is something negative and we must get rid of all silence.
However, often silence is unavoidably part of the professional work. It is easy
to see that some work would be actually impossible without silence, for
instance in some cases you have to trust your strategic plans to outsiders and
you could not do that if you feared that they would not obey very prudent
silence concerning your vital business secrets.
