My department, Data and Knowledge Management Department (DKMD), has recently concluded a corporate-wide event: The Knowledge Management (KM) Awareness Week 2009. It was held from 29 May 2009 to 5 June 2009, featuring 3 KM experts: Dr. Alton Chua of NTU, Mr. Kan Siew Ning of Singapore Police Force, and Mr. Ng Kok Chuan, the current president of Information and Knowledge Management Society (iKMS).
When I was busy preparing for the third talk, a complete stranger – a technician who was on duty to manage Auditorium and was not part of our company – shared his knowledge on improving lights and audio in our vodcast. Here is an account of what happened and the take-away from the incident.
On 3 June 2009, my colleague, Jaslyn, and I were rehearsing for the KM Awareness Week event the next day at the Auditorium. A technician from One Marina Pte Ltd was helping us to setup the projector and the speaker. When we tested the CEO vodcast on his thoughts about knowledge sharing, the technician suddenly pointed out that the image in the video was ‘soft’ – a term used to indicate that the image is too dark – and the sound was not clear.
Remembering that one should give constructive criticism instead of just criticism, I asked the technician on how to improve the video and the sound in that video. To my surprise, he told us that he used to work for a broadcasting company, and he shared that to improve the video, I could use a reflective material – such as paper or Aluminum foil – to direct the room’s light to highlight the speakers’ face, and to improve the audio, I should have placed the voice recorder closer to the speakers’ mouth. The technician shared his knowledge further by demonstrating the effect of light reflection, using a paper, on Jaslyn’s face.
I was delighted, not because he told me the image and sound quality weren’t good, but because he shared a constructive criticism – a practical knowledge on how to improve things. I had received similar feedbacks on the video’s image and audio before, but without knowledge on how to improve them.
I believe that people appreciates knowledge sharing in general, but some of us – like me – dislike negative feedbacks or comments without improvement suggestions. The issue is less on the ability to receive criticism, but rather on having the knowledge to improve our work. We, at the receiving end of criticism – or knowledge sharing for some of us, usually know that certain aspect of our work can be improved, but more often than not, we don’t know how to improve our work.
Another interesting aspect of the knowledge transfer that happened between the technician and me was the fact that we barely know each other and he shared his expertise for free. In today’s commercialized world, most of us tend to believe that we ought to know and reward the person, who has the knowledge that we wanted, before that person shares his or her knowledge. But, the story above tells us otherwise. Knowledge sharing can happens between strangers and without extrinsic rewards – such as money, performance ratings.
