Share Your Knowledge

If you're going to be a great Engineer, there's no point keeping it to yourself. Take every opportunity you can within the scope of your work to share your knowledge with other people around you who can benefit from what you know.

Sharing your knowledge not only assists other people in getting their work done, but it helps you to concretise what you already know, and assists in developing your professional reputation as a valuable asset in your organisation, community and world.

Knowledge is a form of security. There are two diametrically opposed ways of attempting to gain job security when it comes to knowledge: one is to hoarde what you know, in the hope that the company will always keep you around because your knowledge is vital to their business. There are several problems with this approach. It is a recipe for personal stagnation, for one thing. For another, nobody will even know that you have vital knowledge if you don't share any of it. And what good is knowledge that is only locked up in your head anyway? The sad fact is that nobody is indispensible, regardless of how vital your knowledge may be. Any company which relies heavily on knowledge locked up in its employees heads is heading for disaster and would rank poorly on every organisational capability metric known to the project management fraternity.

I advocate that you share your knowledge as freely as you are able, without adversely impacting your "real" work. By doing so, you will become widely regarded within your organisation as a valuable asset and an excellent team player. You will also open the lines of communication to other Engineers, and become known as a role model for others to emulate. Sharing your knowledge will empower your team to achieve things that you could not possibly do all by yourself.

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