Who are more valuable, OSS hoarders or teachers?

Any long-term readers of this blog will have heard me talk about tripods, and how valuable they are to any OSS team. They’re the people who know about IT, operations/networks and the business context within which they’re working. They’re the most valuable people I’ve worked with in the world of OSS because they’re the ones who can connect the many disparate parts that make up an OSS.

But on reflection, there’s one other factor that almost all of the tripods have who I’ve worked with – they’re natural teachers. They want to impart any and all of the wisdom they may contain.

I once worked in an Asian country where teaching was valued incredibly highly. Teachers were put on the highest pedestal of the social hierarchy. Yet almost every single person in the organisation, all the way from the board that I was advising through to the workers in the field, hoarded their knowledge. Knowledge is power and it was definitely treated that way by the people in this organisation. Knowledge was treated like a finite resource.

It was a fascinating paradox. They valued teachers, they valued the fact that I was open with sharing everything I could with them, but guarded their own knowledge from anyone else in their team.

I could see their rationale, sort of. Their unique knowledge made them important and impossible to replace, giving them job stability. But I could also not see their rationale at all. Let me summarise that thought in a single question – who have you found to be more valuable (and needing to be retained in their role), the genius hoarder of knowledge who can perform individual miracles or the connector who can lift and coordinate the contributions of the whole team to get things done?

I’d love to get your thoughts and experiences working with hoarders and teachers.