collaborate or perish leveraging cops for organizational development
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Building and Sustaining Communities of PracticeTRANSCRIPT
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Many Verbs – One Noun!!
Surya Prakash MohapatraHewlett Packard
Going Back to History…
• The term “community of practice” has been introduced by Wenger and Leave in the first ‘90s
• They noticed that learning is not just a one-to-one relationship with a master, but a relationship with a whole community of people, with apprentices at different levels
• The intuition came across their minds observing a group of Xerox’s copy machines technicians gathering around vendor machines and spontaneously sharing their “tricks” and telling each other stories regarding repairing experiences.
• Technicians, before checking on handbooks or “official” learning material, used to contact colleagues in order to find information and suggestions for their jobs. The group was in some way the primary context where any new technician could form his own expertise.
The Emerging Paradigm
Before We Start, We must Keep in Mind..
• Nature of Content / Community
Is it an established topic, A concept making big waves or an entirely New idea
• Type of Organization
Hierarchical Individual, Hierarchical Distributive, Distributed Individual & Distributed collective
• Purpose of Community
Target Driven, Generic knowledge sharing etc
Customize Community with knowledge at hand – However expect this to change!
Communities Have a Lifecycle Too..
Plan
Initiate
LaunchDrive
Self Driven
StartPlan: Identify stakeholder & Vision
Initiate : Group meetings on community core objective (could be anything ranging from People, Process or Technology)
Launch – Grab attention
Drive: Steer direction on Events, Contributions & Results
Self Driven: Self sustainable in participation & contribution
© Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.6
How Communities Evolve through Lifecycle?
© Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.7
What Stalls this Evolution?
• Momentum dies after the initial enthusiasm
• Business Leaders often do not see a tangible RoI
• Cultural, Language, Geographical barriers come as a show stopper
Here is How to Reverse the Trend
Designed
Start-Up
Active Support.
Limited
participation
Full
Commitment
Limited
ProjectArrangement
Active
Participation.
Limited support
Stand By /
Dead
Spontaneous
aggregation
Spontaneous
Start-up
Organization’s Commitment
Member’sInvolvement &Participation
Tips & Tricks to move from -1 to 1Organization-Provide resources to organize the community launch.-Identify someone who coordinates the initiative.-Provide a physical space and/or a technology tool that facilitates the connection, access and contribution to thecommunity.-Define clearly domain and boundaries with regards to members’ competences.
Member-Draft documentation to testify community behavior and results.-Leader to make himself responsible of community activities towards the organization.-Leader to Realize documents & report in a qualitative way potential benefit from the community.
-1
1
2
-1 1 2
Tips & Tricks to move from 1 to +2Organization-Organize event or draft reports in order to show publicly the community value.-Allocate part of the working hours of the individuals to participate in the community activities.-Accept slight domain variations.Allow community’s resources self-governing.
Member-Identify the most active members. Motivate them and let their contribution recognizable to the other members.-Pay attention to new needs in terms of technological tools, social relation or contents.-Maintain vivacity supporting the building of strong one to one personal relationships
Sustain #2 by adapting, engaging, monitoring & developing an historical sense of the community
© Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.9
Arrow and Cloud
Projects and Teams
Communities of
Practice
Questions/P
roble
ms
Answ
ers
/Solu
tions
Two Interesting Case Studies:Case Study- 1: CoP in an Italian Bank
Myth that recognition & direction is needed for community
In a big Italian bank is the community of the accounts for those customers who have a personal estate between 100.000 and 500.000 euros. It was born with the aim of increase market and emergent trend knowledge, share competitor’s information, foster interaction between individuals geographically far away and support social learning.
In few months, the project provides good results in terms of number and, in particular, quality of the information shared. It was missing, anyway, tools as research engine or to classify knowledge and, when the animation activities and the stimuli providing was suspended, the community has gone in such stand by phase.
It is still on line, but all the activities are strongly reduced.
In the same bank, it is the community of the call center operators. This community was born to coincide with the launching of a learning course when, with a limited budget, was developed a web platform with forums.
Members are mostly university students, the average age is around 24 and the turn over rate is quite high. Participation, even it is supported by the call center manager, is not directly stimulated by the organization with formal recognitions and there are no animation actions.
Members participate because they perceive this community as something useful and necessary for their work: they can find suggestions, news about bank products, solution to recurring problems, etc. It is now one of the best communities in terms of involvement andfrequency of interaction of the bank
Two Interesting Case Studies:Case Study- 2: Virtual Online Community
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My Mantras
• Define a Structure
• Define Roles- Have Community Champions
• The trick lies in having Variety- have something for everyone to participate
• Breaking Monotony is the key
Remember. It is not just about the Practice. It is about the Community as well….
United we stand, Divided we fall..
Anything that is digitized and that is using analytics, the initial cost is high. Its replication cost is close to zero. And so those who are able to scale up very
fast can capture the customer very fast. They have the advantage of setting a lower price because the replication cost is close to zero. That is how this
business works.
-Ram Charan
“One of the paradoxes is that informal communities are the real dynamos of knowledge. If you build strong boundaries between formal and informal
communities, you get increased knowledge flow. But if you try to break the boundaries down, the informal knowledge goes offsite because people don’t feel
secure
-David Snowden
“In 2001, we found out that
Communities of Practice were central in
all successful KM initiatives.”
–Carla O’Dell
“Nurturing and expanding existing
communities of practice is easier than
establishing new ones.”
–Barbara Lawton
“The group process contains the secret of collective life. It is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for every individual to learn, It is our chief hope for the political, the social & international life of future.”
Mary P. Follett