Paul Coyne :: Blog :: culture

 

I've been thinking a lot about how to foster more successful Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Interest. A couple of key questions emerge:

How can I make my community of practice truly effective?
How can I prevent my network becoming a "notwork"?

Communities of practice (networks) lie at the heart of successful knowledge management in most organisations. They are the lifeblood of informal exchanges of knowledge. Typically, communities go through a series of stages as they develop. This article, drawn from a best-selling knowledge management fieldbook by its author, identifies the key steps involved in creating and sustaining a successful community of practice, providing practical hints and tips for every part of the lifecycle.

The guidelines below are drawn from the book "Learning to Fly - Practical knowledge management from leading and learning organisations" by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell), and sets out a number steps to launching, energising and sustaining communities of practice (networks) in an organisation.

1. Planning Gather together a list of potential participants. Use referral - ask individuals if they can recommend others in the organisation who should participate. Consider a broader membership to introduce diversity. Would your network benefit from having members NOT closely associated with your domain of interest - to bring in a different perspective?

2. Decide: go/no-go Check for duplication or overlap with other networks/groups, verify the need for the network and make a clear go/no-go decision. Is the scope realistic, or is the subject area too broad for a single network? Take some soundings from potential members and consider splitting to form two or more sub-networks if appropriate.

Getting started

3. Hold a face-to-face start-up workshop Ensure that this includes a social activity to build relationships and trust. If most of the interactions are likely to be via e-mail or telephone, it is important to build relationships face-to-face.

4. Draft a "charter" collectively Develop a simple "charter" which may include:

• the rationale and scope for the network,
• the key roles (facilitator, sponsor etc.),
• the expectations in terms of people's time commitment (do members need help in securing "air cover" from their managers?),
• a "code of conduct" - how members will work together, and key processes/tools,
• a sense of "what success looks like", and any appropriate KPIs. (but avoid over-burdening a network with measures at the early stages of its growth)

5. Consider tools for support Check the available tools and their distribution across the members, particularly for a network which crosses organisational boundaries.

6. Appoint a facilitator The responsibilities of the Network Facilitator, some of which, in practice, may be shared with others in the network, may include:

• organising network meetings/teleconferences;
• maintaining network distribution lists;
• owning and ensuring the maintenance of shared information/knowledge resources;
• monitoring the effectiveness of the network, and stimulating and prodding network members when appropriate;
• acting as a focal point for the network, both internally and for those outside the network

Note - a network facilitator need not be the "subject expert". Far more important is the ability of that person to involve and include others, and to work behind the scenes to keep the network "on the boil".

7. Set up an e-mail distribution list and send a launch e-mail Establish an e-mail distribution list for your network comprising the potential membership names identified. This should facilitate further communication. The Network facilitator should be identified as the owner of this, and can add or delete people from this distribution themselves. Send an initial e-mail to kick off the dialogue.

Building momentum

8. Seed the discussion with some questions Establish the behaviours by asking a question on behalf of a member with a particular need (have the members do it themselves if possible). In the early stages it is important to demonstrate responsiveness. The facilitator should be prepared to pick up the phone and press for answers behind the scenes.

9. Publicise the network What communications media exist within your organisation? Can you write a short news article in a relevant internal or external magazine which describes the network and its aims?

10. Advertise quick wins When you get answers to questions, or the transfer of ideas between members, celebrate and make sure that everyone knows

11. Monitor activity... Monitor the discussion forum/Q&A effectiveness:

• Frequency of contribution,
• Frequency of response.
• Number of unanswered questions
• For larger networks - number of joiners/leavers

12. Maintain connectivity Schedule regular teleconferences, summarise successes, develop a list of "frequently asked questions" and a shared team space/website.

Renewing commitment

13. Refine the membership For large networks, send an e-mail to existing members reminding them to let you know if they would like to be removed from the list. Better to have a smaller group of committed members, than a larger group with variable commitment.

14. Maintain face-to-face meetings Consider an annual face-to-face meeting to renew relationships and introduce any new members

15. Keep the focus on business problems Continue to solicit questions and answers - publicise more success stories.

16. Review performance How is the network performing in relation to its performance contract, mission, KPIs? Are there still regular examples of success stories?

17. Test commitment Don't be afraid to threaten to "switch off" the network and test the response of members. People will soon object if they strongly believe in it!

Is it time to "sunset" your community? Or to reinvent it? Consider Options Decide for the future:

• Continue?
• Celebrate & close?
• Redefine the deliverables/scope?
• Divide into sub-networks?

Conclusion

Launching and supporting successful communites of practice is one of the most effective ways to sustain your investment in knowledge management. It takes thought and effort to get started, but with the right people, and the steps outlined above, they can bring KM to life in any organisation.

A quick posting to record some thoughts on this extremeely useful and personaly satisfying day.

The OU hosted an event organised by the South East Leadership Academy yesterday on the value of Communities of Practice and Leadership. The day was split it two halfs; the morning for presentations from Ettiene Wengner, Nigel Paine and the team at LEAD in Lancaster University. The afternoon we broke into groups and discussed what CoPs meant to us, the issues and challenges surrounding their growth, adoption and so on. We returned for a panel session in which the breakout group questions were put to the panellists. All very good stuff and I enjoyed it enormously!

Met some very interesting and knowledgeable individuals, but the highlight for me was meeting Ettiene! And, he asked me to share my own story with the rest of the audience during the panel session! Don't laugh but I feel like the first guy picked for the footy team! In your face, £$%$£ [name removed for privacy reasons] –

Very interesting discussion on the nature of tension, conflict and the management of personal agenda in horizontal communities along with some practical insight and advice. A good day.

Have to go and prepare my own big day for Emerald now. Dr david Lamon will be here soon to help me facilitate a company wide conversaiton on the value, indeed the very idea of, community and what it means to su and to Publishers. I'm looking forward to it very much.

 

 

Below is that list; I hope you'll find it useful and leave comments helping to extend the conversation further. In my mind I'm thinking of everything from RSS and wikis to Twitter, Facebook and blogging. Online tools that leverage social connections.

Last month we wrote about an initiative called The Working Group where people trying to bring about innovation in big companies. Many readers probably know about Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang's fantastic blog, where he explains social media in a business context, often in a format you can take directly to the boss. There are lots of different resources available online to help the intrepid early adopter and I hope this list will be one of them.

Ultimately, I'm not yet convinced myself that persuading anyone is the way to go. If you can make time on the side to use new tools and you can perform - perhaps the benefits can best speak for themselves. If that's not the case inside of a company, I'm sure it is between two companies with different attitudes towards adoption of new social technologies.

ROI is the elephant in the middle of the room, and it's addressed a bit in item number ten below. It's a topic I need more people to chime in on; I live and breathe this stuff and can articulate the benefits of it to a great degree, but it just speaks for itself to me too. So if you're an ROI-head, pipe up. Links, traffic, mindshare, connections between people and early access to actionable information are the things I usually cite without quantifying.

Let's get into the list though, and please do feel free to add your own thoughts as well.

A List of Objections, Replies and Concessions Regarding Social Media and Tools

1. I suffer from information overload already.

Possible replies:

Try just skimming messages in some fora - you may need to look closely at every email you get but you don't have to look at every Facebook friend's update.

The right tools for you will feel helpful in time, not like a burden. Experiment for awhile with new tools and stick with the ones that deliver you the most high-quality information, whether those tools are high-quantity or not. (Thanks to Aaron Hockley and Ruby Sinreich for these thoughts.)

Check out tools like AideRSS and FeedHub - just two examples of services aiming to improve the signal to noise ratio.

Times change and so do information paradigms. Get used to it. The amount of information you had access to 3 years ago was infinitely more than people at any other point in history and we're in the middle of another huge leap right now.

Concession: If you think consuming all this new information is a challenge, wait until you try to find the time to make sense of it! (Thanks to Nancy White for that thought.)

2. So much of what's discussed online is meaningless. These forms of communication are shallow and make us dumber. We have real work to do!

Possible replies:

Much of it is not meaningless, but if you feel overwhelmed with meaninglessness - try subscribing to a search for keywords in a particular service and using that as your starting point for engagement.

Having a presence and starting a conversation is rarely a bad thing - bring quality conversation to a space and you'll find others ready to engage. (Thanks to Banana Lee Fishbones, obviously a fan of open, non-anonymous public communication :) for this articulation.)

Personal information can be very useful in understanding the context of more explicitly useful information.

If learning how the market feels about your organization, engaging with your customers and driving traffic to your web work - all very realistic goals for social media engagement - aren't work, then I don't know what is. Even in the short term, strategic engagement with online social media will have a clear work pay-off.

Concession: The signal to noise ratio will be easier to maximize if you can find an experienced guide to learn from. Just jumping into social media and new tools on your own will not neccesarily lead to a meaningful experience. It could, but it will take longer.

3. I don't have the time to contribute and moderate, it looks like it takes a lot of time and energy.

Possible replies:

If you aren't going to eat that lunch of yours, I'd be happy to, thanks.

With practice, familiarity and technology fine-tuned with a little experience you'll find the time required will decrease.

You might consider this time spent on marketing or communication with existing customer base - perhaps there's something else in that department that isn't working well and could be replaced with online work.

Concession:
Doing anything well does take time and energy. You've obviously been thinking about this stuff a lot, it is important - and it's going to take time and energy.

4. Our customers don't use this stuff, the learning curve limits its usefulness to geeks.

Possible replies:

You might be surprised to learn how many of your customers do already use these new tools. Even more will do so in the future.

The best designed tools are designed like good games - you can get small rewards right away and then learn more advanced skills to win bigger rewards. Among online services that are intended for general audiences, only poorly designed ones are too geeky.

Many of these tools provide value vastly disproportionate to the literal number of people they reach. These are like high-value focus groups where you'll gather information and preparation to engage with the rest of the world.

Try asking someone near you to give you an in-person demonstration of one of these tools. You'll find it much easier to learn once you've seen the right paths taken to show what it can do.

5. Communicators [bloggers, tweeters] are so fickle, better to stay unengaged than risk random brand damage. We don't want hostile comments left about us on any forum we've legitimized.

Possible replies:

If you need to, you can require that any comments left on your own site be approved before they appear. This slows down the conversation but if it makes conversation possible for you then do it.

There are far fewer people who will take the time to say hostile things, even on the internet, than you might imagine.

Engage - you'll be appreciated more for it. People are going to say what they are going to say - you can either let any criticism go unanswered or you can be the bigger person/brand for responding well.

Conversations are going to happen online, better to be engaged than to have it happening behind your back. (As articulated by Rick Turoczy.)

It's ok, no one believes that anyone is perfect anymore. Swing for the fences sometimes - you might strike out, but sometimes you'll hit a home run.

Even if you're not responding publicly, you should watch closely so you know what people are saying. Maybe you don't have a blog, but subscribe to a blogsearch feed or alert for your company's name. Maybe none of your people are on Twitter - you can subscribe to a feed for a search via Terraminds.

Concessions:
Some of the critical things that get said about you online might not warrant a response. Just decide which ones do and file the rest away somewhere.

Communicating in this different context is very new and challenging for traditionally trained business people. Good luck.

6. Traditional media and audiences are still bigger, we'll do new stuff when they do.

Possible replies:

They already are, from blogging to online video to social networks to mobile to microblogging - big, established brands are already doing all of it. They may be experimenting but they will bringing all their market dominance into the most useful social media sectors as soon as it suits them. Will that be too late for you? It might be.

Traditional media audiences are also more passive - online audiences can engage with, rebroadcast and otherwise amplify your communication efforts.

Concessions:
That's true and fair, if you think your business can thrive while taking that attitude towards a period of intense social and economic change then you just rock on with your bad self. I'll be taking my love of innovation to the employer down the street.

7. Upper management won't support it/dedicate resources for it.

Possible replies:

A lot of technology adoption has for some time had to happen despite this reality. People adopt new tools on their own at work, without permission. They discover powerful ways to solve their problems and then they share them horizontally.

Compared to other expenses, meaningful engagement with new online technology does not have huge costs.

Concessions:
Meaningful engagement with new technology does require some expenditure of time, energy and money. If you're not willing to do this then you'll be unlikely to see big benefits.

8. These startups can't offer meaningful security, they may not even be around in a year - I'll wait until Google or our enterprise software vendor starts offering this kind of functionality.

Possible replies:

The skills you build and the connections you make will remain with you, though. This is a paradigm shift underway more than it is about any particular tool.

Chose your tools carefully - expect data export as an option so you can back up or switch services whenever you need to. This isn't widespread yet but the best tools allow it.

Concessions:
You do need to be careful, but if you do so intelligently then the benefits can really outweight the risks. It is very possible that any one of these services might shutter in a year or two, but you'll get a lot out of them in the meantime and hopefully won't lose access to your data if that happens.

9. There are so many tools that are similar, I can't tell where to invest my time so I don't use any of it at all.

Possible replies:

A little experimentation goes a long way.

Try asking people in your field who have some experience what tools they are using.

Try searching for keywords related to your work in various sites. You'll find out that way which sites are best suited for you.

Concessions:

It's true, it can be very confusing and very few people are able to keep up with all the new services that are launching. Don't worry about it, just do your best.

10. That stuff's fine for sexy brands, but we sell [insert boring B2B brand] and are known for stability more than chasing the flavor-of-the-month. We're doing just fine with the tools we've got, thanks.

Possible replies:

Some of these things, RSS and wikis for example, aren't passing social fads - they are emerging best practices and the state of the art.

ROI is very hard to measure, but try allocating a little energy over time to experiment and see what kind of results you get. From connections between people and projects, to search-friendly inbound links, to early access to important information - the benefits of engaging in new social media go on and on.

Conclusions

There are no conclusions, this is just a conversation. Please feel free to add your thoughts in comments and check out the comments to read what others suggest as talking points when faced with these objections.

I really like this post. From Henry Jenkins. Never again will it feel a futile exercise to post to these pages! Thanks Henry. 

Quote: We should not reduce the value of participatory culture to its products rather than its process. Consider, for a moment, all of the arts and creative writing classes being offered at schools around the world. Consider, for example, all of the school children being taught to produce pots. We don’t do this because we anticipate that very many of them are going to grow up to be professional potters. In fact, most of them are going to produce pots that look like lopsided lumps of clay only a mother could love (though it does say something about how we value culture that many of them do get cherished for decades). We do so because we see a value in the process of creating something, of learning to work with clay as a material, or what have you. There is a value in creating, in other words, quite apart from the value attached to what we create. And from that perspective, the expansion of who gets to create and share what they create with others is important even if none of us produces anything beyond the literary equivalent of a lopsided lump of clay that will be cherished by the intended recipient (whether Mom or the fan community) and nobody else. –Henry Jenkins