Sharing.

That’s right - Sharing. Not sharing staplers or a filing cabinet drawer. I’m talking about sharing information.

In his book The Collaborative Organization, author Jacob Morgan says collaboration efforts have a direct impact on business performance. The results show as high as 36 percent. Morgan explains the result is linked to the role collaboration plays in helping employees solve company problems.

Studies report that high-performing organizations are more likely to use shared workspaces and wikis than low-performing firms. Workers in high-performing organizations are also more likely to say that social media boosts collaboration and improves knowledge sharing.

Basically, high-performing companies share more knowledge. Having more knowledge makes the company smarter and therefore, perform better. When you add social media tools to enhance the sharing of information…well, everything seems to just fall into place.

There’s a lot of conversation about how people must be on social media. That it’s absolutely necessary for your professional career. The truth is no one can convince you to be active on social media. That’s your decision alone to make.

And I’ve talked for years about the strategic marketing advantage companies get when they build a presence on social media. It can help immensely with brand awareness, customer service and recruiting.

But now, correlations are being made between an organizations’ overall performance and their ability to share information. Organizations might currently have great mechanisms in place to share info. What if they can be improved via social media? Would your organization value getting better information quicker? How would the company feel if their biggest competitor was sharing knowledge in a better, faster way?

I’ve always thought that high-performing companies were the ones that continuously transformed themselves, as in Peter Senge learning organizations. Is it possible social media is part of that transformation? Can employees leverage the sharing of knowledge on social media to achieve personal mastery, and can the company, as a result, learn faster and perform better than its competitors?

​In this fast-paced, tech savvy society, how will high-performing organizations keep their competitive advantage if it’s not with speed and technology?