In my experience, knowledge risks are often not problems in themselves but actually consequences of other management decisions or policies.

One example I had was a sales team that refused to teach the other state sales teams how to sell better. Upon investigation I discovered there was a fixed $120k bonus pot for the country. We didn’t have a knowledge hoarding problem, we had a bonus structure problem and they weren’t willing to share. We changed to an open-tiered bonus model and suddenly everyone was willing to pass on their sales expertise.

Rather than trying to fix knowledge hoarding, now I always start by asking what the motivations are for them not to share, even when encouraged to do so. Sometimes you won’t find it unless you are will to “get in the trenches” and work with these people. In this case I found out about the bonus pool in pub at 11pm after spending two days building trust by working on an unrelated problem they were having.

I hope this story gives some of your readers an idea of how they can tackle this issue.