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Breaking Silos: How to Manage Cross-Domain Knowledge Sharing in a Large Product Org
In any large product organization, knowledge is both an asset and a bottleneck. Teams work in their own domains, building expertise, solving unique problems, and shipping features. But when knowledge stays locked within teams, inefficiencies, duplication of work, and misalignment creep in.
So, how do you ensure that insights, best practices, and learnings flow freely across teams? How do you build a culture of knowledge sharing without overwhelming people with unnecessary information?
Here’s a structured approach to tackling this challenge.
1. Recognizing the Knowledge Gap
Before jumping into solutions, it’s important to understand the problem.
- Siloed teams: Engineering, design, product, marketing, and operations often operate independently. One team may have solved a problem that another team is struggling with.
- Duplicate efforts: Without proper knowledge sharing, different teams end up reinventing the wheel.
- Decision-making delays: When teams lack access to relevant insights, they either take longer to decide or move forward without complete context.
- Scaling challenges: As an organization grows, onboarding new teams and maintaining alignment becomes harder without structured knowledge-sharing practices.
Now that we’ve framed the challenge, let’s look at how to solve it.
2. Build a Culture of Knowledge Sharing
Tools and processes can help, but cultural change is what drives real impact.
- Make sharing the default: Encourage teams to document their key decisions, learnings, and retrospectives in shared spaces.
- Recognize and reward contributions: Celebrate teams or individuals who actively share insights.
- Lead by example: When leadership openly shares their thought process, it sets the tone for the rest of the organization.
A knowledge-sharing culture is built over time, but it starts with setting the right expectations.
