Why do you think the so-called "professional" work environment seems to discourage informal information exchange and how do we move away from the territorial feel of following the "official" information exchange process?
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Information exchange processes
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Good question Stephanie. At work, I think people generally want to feel like they're 'following the rules'. This seems to be a natural inclination to not be perceived as being a bad employee, but often, people also follow rules that they perceive as being implicit rather than explicit.
People actually do share a great deal of information during the day, but usually it's only in small, closed networks. For example, I might email human resources to figure out how to fill out a form, not understand their answer, and call a friend at work to ask them how to do it.
So I think the real problem is that there are no mechanisms for getting that feedback to HR. HR never knows that their answer is hard to understand, so they keep giving out the same answer.
An audit of business processes and perceptions within the organization is a big, ugly and necessary thing to do. But there's really no point in doing the audit unless the organization is actually willing to change (usually organizations only become willing to change after a major crisis, much like individuals).
Posted 2 years ago #`Login to Send PM
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Thanks for your thoughts Luke.
There often seems to be a divide between leadership's vision and the employees' daily grind to make that vision happen. Any thoughts on how employees can lead an organization to enact changes in daily information exchange practices before a crisis happens and leadership is forced to respond? Or is organizational change, much like organizational culture, impossible to alter?
Posted 2 years ago #`Login to Send PM
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In a sense, organizational change may not always be the desired outcome. While employees sometimes get into bad habits, they usually have a good reason for doing things the way they do. Perhaps you never tell so-and-so down the hall anything, because you know they cannot keep things to themselves.
Even this is a type of information exchange (or in that case, not exchanging information). It's good to keep in mind that organizational change is not always desirable, and is, in many cases, going to create more problems than it solves.
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