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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

13

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