The LEXICON Framework Part 5: Cultivate a Knowledge-Sharing Culture

Originally posted 16-Oct-25

This is my fifth post in a seven-part series based on the comprehensive LEXICON Knowledge Management (KM) framework created by legal KM specialist Clare Bilobrk. LEXICON is equally valuable in workplaces other than law firms, and is an acronym for:

Link KM to daily workflowsEmpower championseXplain the valueIntegrate with existing systemsCultivate a knowledge-sharing cultureOptimize for ease of useNurture feedback loops

In this post, I’ll focus on Clare’s fifth point:

Cultivate a knowledge-sharing culture — Recognize contributions, from formal content creation to informal expertise-sharing, in visible and meaningful ways.

Elements of a Knowledge-Sharing Culture

In my experience, a workplace knowledge-sharing culture includes three critical elements:

Knowledge reuse is valued over reinvention.Sharing knowledge helps you advance in your career.In the process of innovating, failure is encouraged — as long as the lessons learned are shared so that similar failures are prevented.

To cultivate a knowledge-sharing culture, create a vision of how things should work in the organization. Explain how sharing, innovating, reusing, collaborating, and learning should be done. Have the senior executive and the leadership team communicate the vision widely and regularly. And visibly recognize and reward those who contribute their knowledge.

To help sustain a knowledge-sharing culture, ask your senior executive to endorse, communicate, and exemplify the following credo:

I will practice and reward caring, sharing, and daring — caring for others, sharing what I know, and daring to try new ideas.I will look for opportunities to help, thank, and praise others.I will regularly recognize those who share their knowledge, ask questions in communities, and provide answers and support to others.Recognize Desired Behaviors

Knowing that you have earned the attention, respect, and admiration of others, especially senior leaders, can be very gratifying. And you are more likely to repeat desired knowledge-sharing behaviors if you know that important people will take notice.
There are many ways to provide employee recognition, including:

Personal notes from leaders who notice contributions.Newsletter articles about those who achieve success in using KM processes.Success stories posted to websites.Invitations to attend prestigious events hosted by the senior executive.Scheduling time with senior technical leaders for exchanges of ideas.Being praised and asked to talk about their efforts related to KM in calls or meetings.

To take advantage of the competitive nature of many individuals, an incentive points system can be implemented to award points for desired behaviors, rank those earning points, and report on weekly, monthly, yearly, and lifetime standings. The points awarded can be used for recognition, tangible rewards, or for demonstrating achievement of goals for performance reviews and promotions. The point totals and rankings can be reported on websites, in newsletters, and via messages to employees and managers.

Each desired task can have a certain point value, which can be granted automatically as a result of performing that task. The points earned can be displayed on a website to create a friendly competition among all users. They can visit the site to see how they stack up against their peers, the idea being to create some fun, to show that people are in fact spending some of their time on KM, and to recognize them for doing so.

For example, points can be granted for the following:

Contributing a document to a knowledge repository.Posting or replying to a threaded discussion in a community.Posting a story on the benefits of reusing content from a knowledge repository or a community.Thankful Thursdays

Another way to nurture a knowledge-sharing culture within your organization is through peer recognition. If you have an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) or an online community, a good way to encourage peer recognition is to promote a weekly theme called “Thankful Thursdays.” Encourage people to post once a week using the hashtag #ThankfulThursday to recognize colleagues who have demonstrated good knowledge-sharing behaviors. And lead by example by posting every week.

Praise people for:

Answering questions, responding to queries, or supplying needed resources.Sharing information, Working out Loud, or suggesting good ideas.Creating content and contributing it to communities and knowledge repositories.Presenting at meetings, community calls, or conferences.Posting queries in the ESN or online community instead of via email so that others can answer and benefit.

Next post — Part 6: Optimize for ease of use

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