You would think that today's organizations would find the learning process much easier than it used to be. Given the ability to communicate and collaborate across an office, between offices, and with people and information resources around the world, knowledge-sharing should be fast and easy, right?

In fact, it seems that the organizational learning process is ridden with more pitfalls than ever. In many organizations, the more executives promote companywide learning practices, the more employees resist sharing their knowledge, skills, and the secrets of their successes and failures. And with the greater access to people and resources that the Internet gives us come greater responsibilities for evaluating their credibility.

At the center of these learning challenges is the challenge of trust. Can we trust our co-workers enough to share with them what we know? Can we trust those we meet on the Internet enough to learn from them?

Until about fifty years ago, when information was first stored on computers, learning was a matter of finding the right books or mentors. That was, in itself, a complex operation, perhaps even requiring a university education. Today, with literally billions of web pages and vast amounts of information available on the Internet, learning is about understanding how to extract relevant knowledge out of a swirling sea of news, opinion, entertainment, and propaganda. The bombardment of stimuli – inside and outside of the office – is far more intense than at any time in history.