There’s a natural human instinct, we know something special and, as a result, we feel like we’re special. That’s why people get hired, after all. So, we keep things to ourselves, so that we’ll be hired again and again and again.
After all, if you give them the secret sauce, why do they need you again?
Sadly, this attitude is far too common. I’ve even worked in countries where near 100% of everyone working there has this attitude. The Knowledge Hoarder, we could call it. Perhaps the Knowledge and Document Hoarder.
Here is one of the most common situations in which I’ve seen this. Perhaps this is the example of this:
You created a file for a client, like a design you did for him. You keep the high-res originals for yourself and only give him the smallest, lowest-res version. “He doesn’t need more,” you reason to yourself.
Now, as usual, let’s re-think this from the client’s point of view.
First, any sophisticated client will think having the original version is essential, and they will ask you for it. This only introduces a needless back-and-forth loop.
Secondly, any sophisticated client, upon realizing you’re not giving it to them, will ask themselves, “Why isn’t he giving me these key files I’m paying him to create for me?” It makes him question your credibility, and it gives off the impression that you don’t have the client’s best interest in mind.
Third, a stronger version of the previous point is true. If you’re paid for your work, it feels very asshole-ish (on the emotional level) from the client’s eyes to not be proactively given what he paid you to do. Imagine you hire someone to do a portrait of your family and they sit there laboriously for hours and paint it like they’re Rembrandt—only to give you a photo printout of the painting. Would you want the original painting? (Hint: if you don’t, then that’s fine if you expect that for the lowest price-points. But do you really want to be the cheapest, most low-end vendor? Probably not.)
Fourth, any unsophisticated client may not realize they need this. This means that you can take this opportunity to proactively give them things they need without even asking, and teaching them why having high-res versions of the originals is important for them. That builds trust and loyalty!
Fifth—and this is perhaps the most important—good chefs publish their recipes because they know the magic isn’t in the recipe itself. A good recipe in bad hands results in disaster. It’s the hands, not the recipes, that is magical.
The last point is the key one, so it’s worth explaining. The inexperienced, unsophisticated, and low-quality workers overwhelmingly think that the magic is in the “secret sauce” so they go to great lengths to keep the secret sauce to themselves.
Sometimes, that is true. There are many reasons why Coca Cola is a trillion-dollar brand, and their top-secret formula is one of them. Secret processes do exist and are helpful.
But this is only true in a very tiny number of exceptional cases. Only when you’re the boss—not the freelancer nor the employee—is when the tables are turned. You’re not Coca Cola, you’re the guy paid by Coca Cola to help them out.
You’re paid for the secret, but because you know all the tiny details of how to apply the secret—that is the definition of the expert. If you don’t, then you’re probably not yet enough expert in your career and still need to grow more—and the question is, what do you want to become an expert in?
Think about whom you’d rather hire. The doctor who is renowned for helping his patients heal? Or the doctor who is renowned for helping his patients heal, and when you meet him, goes out of the way to explain to you his processes and how he approaches situations like yours, the academic medical studies that have influenced his thinking and his choices for treatments, and his files and records regarding you (HIPAA-complaint, of course!) The later one, every time. The latter knows the secret that the experienced and the high quality know. You don’t hire him because he happens to know that one point to tap, but because he knows precisely how to do that, and a thousand other tiny details—because you can understand how he thinks which means you can gain deep amounts of confidence. The latter turns from a mere doctor to a magical, craftsman’s hands.
Or maybe not; maybe the power of sharing documentation and processes is so strong that it can overcome vast quality differences and it becomes much more than a mere tie-breaker. Every case is different, but taking the metaphor of the doctor literally and direction: I’ve even known people—more than one—who chose the “worse” (or at least, substantially less renowned) doctor for critical cancer management and treatment, precisely because they wanted that oversharing of how they think and work, so they can embark on making the right decisions for that particular case—your own life—together.
