David Gurteen on Incentivizing Knowledge Management

David Gurteen talks on how incentivizing knowledge management (KM) can kill intrinsic motivation and negatively affect the true value of the practice. He covers two aspects first, if one is not careful, rewards can make KM seem like something special, something additional, rather than a part of one's work. He goes on to explain that incentivizing KM can send the message of KM being unpalatable and hence the need to sprinkle some sweetener in the form of goodies. The second important point that David makes is that often times rewards push people to game the system, that is, they will cheat to get the reward. And David's final point is that people need to see the value (what's in it for them) if they are going to share knowledge - bribing or coercing isn't how one can or should be incentivizing knowledge sharing.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• knowledge management
• motivation
• KM
• David Gurteen
• David
• eClerx Services
• incentivizing KM
• rewards
• Alakh Asthana
• eClerx
• knowledge sharing

[firetangent]

I Googled up the link to your blog that has the complete reply. What you're suggesting is clearly very logical, albeit not easy to do. I guess designing an incentive plan is easier to do than what you have suggested, and hence most companies go along with the incentives. Thanks for the reply.

[dgurteen]

@firetangent I have replied to your question on my blog on my website. I can't reply here as I am limited to 500 characters and I cant give you a link to my reply as YouTube  doesn't seem to allow it! The bottom line to my answer is "stop trying to do things to them and start working with them!"

best wishes David

[mattbm34]

firetangent - you design your km program so it gives people real benefits up-front so you don't need to bribe them with stuff!

[firetangent]

So if traditional incentives can have a negative impact, what's the workaround?