MAKING ‘COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE’ WORK

There are three main types of CoPs, shown in the table below. All three share know-how (expertise), know-what (intelligence) and know-who (contacts), using electronic tools and databases to supplement face-to-face meetings, to accomplish set objectives:

In many organizations, the majority of communities are focused on shared problems, such as the achievement of sales targets, bringing a new product to market, or improving the quality or efficiency of manufacturing or distribution.

Most successful CoPs have clearly defined goals, roles, and processes. The goals depend on the purpose of the CoP (see above) and on the specific mandate set by the organization’s, project’s, or community’s leaders. Goals may evolve over time, but they should be clearly articulated.

Roles depend on the size and scope of the community, but most successful CoPs define at least six essential and distinct roles for community members and the organizational teams that support them:

• The Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are the acknowledged leaders of the community. They are responsible for ensuring that it achieves its purpose, and that community members have the knowledge they want and need to fulfil their roles.
• The Core Community members are those that ‘wake up worrying’ about the goals of the community and are measured and rewarded on the achievement of these goals. They generally have ‘author/editor access’ to the community tools and databases.
• The Extended Community consists of others with a stake in achieving the goals of the community, and those that provide critical knowledge or expertise necessary to its success, but who are not involved with it on a day-to-day basis.
• Knowledge Stewards or Content Coordinators are responsible for assessing the knowledge content needs of the community and ensuring that knowledge is captured in the community tools and databases, often acting as intermediaries for the SMEs to that end.
• Researchers are those charged with collecting or creating the knowledge content to fill any gaps in it identified by the Stewards.
• Network Coordinators or CoP Facilitators are responsible for optimizing the flow of knowledge to and from community members. This entails arranging community meetings, canvassing community members, assigning work to researchers etc.

It is important that community members understand their, and others’, roles, and that they receive the necessary training, budget, and other resources to fulfil them. It is equally important that clear success measures for each role, leading to the achievement of the community goals, be articulated, and that those in each role be rewarded or recognized for attaining these measures.

The community must then decide on its operating processes, its modus operandi. Like goals, processes will evolve, but they need to be defined to ensure cohesion of effort towards the community’s goals. In shared-project communities, the processes will often be explicitly set out in the project plan or charter. In shared-problem communities, process decisions will include how, and how often, the community will meet, and how its work will be apportioned and carried out: who will do what by when.

Intranets and other new technologies now allow communities to use a variety of tools and databases in a shared electronic workspace, to further the achievement of their goals. Here are the most common types of these I’ve seen:

Project communities often use additional tools from the project manager’s toolkit.

Finally, here are the ten organizational and operating principles that seem to lead to highly effective and efficient communities of practice:

1. Let CoPs organize themselves. Don’t impose organization on them. They know how to do it.
2. Let CoPs manage themselves. Involvement of people in communities is largely voluntary, whether the boss likes it that way or not, and nothing kills a voluntary organization faster than someone outside telling the members what to do and how to do it.
3. Content quality is critical. The quality of the knowledge and expertise that is made available to community members will keep drawing community members back and keep them involved and engaged.
4. Keep it simple. Don’t make the tools so powerful and complex that they intimidate the extended community members.
5. Keep it fresh. Just like with a Weblog, you need something new and interesting everyday to keep the community energized and momentum high.
6. It’s the people, stupid. Don’t get so enamoured with tools and databases and processes that you forget that human interaction is the most valuable and most important mechanism for knowledge transfer.
7. If it’s dying, pull the plug. ‘Indefinite’ life for a community doesn’t mean ‘infinite’. If enthusiasm and engagement in community activities is flagging, figure out why, extinguish the ‘old’ community, and if there is still a critical problem, project or shared interest there somewhere, self-organize a new community around that.
8. Understand members’ knowledge behaviours. Some people insist on doing everything face-to-face. Others love working with virtual tools. Still others want relevant community knowledge pushed out to them. Accommodate them, don’t try to change them.
9. Make sure the network coordinator is a star. He or she plays the pivotal role in the community, connecting people to people and people to knowledge. That takes enormous people skills, exceptional energy, and a solid knowledge of the subject matter.
10. Have fun. If the community is fun to be part of, members will put up with lots of other imperfections as you get the kinks worked out.