Of Chickens, Eggs, and Knowledge

A new study summary, Building Better Teams in MIT's Sloan Management Review, offers further evidence of the positive business results from internal and external knowledge sharing by work groups. The summary reports two major findings: teams with more knowledge sharing performed better; and more diversity among team members (including "structural diversity") led to increases in both knowledge sharing and performance.

The summary author poses "the 'chicken or the egg' question: ... did knowledge sharing result in higher performance or did better performance lead to more knowledge sharing?"

Since I like both chicken and eggs and since you can't have one without the other, my initial reaction is, Who Cares? Knowledge sharing and better performance by knowledge workers go hand in hand.

Of course, we can learn much more about how to promote either or both in specific settings and how to apply them to different problems. So continuing to study the linkage should teach us a great deal.

But by now it should be taken as proven that KM and better performance are linked. All knowldge organizations (which means ALL organizations) should be engaged in figuring out which knowledge management tools and techniques work best for them. Lawyers included.