KM Six Pack #6

Networks: Power of sharing, learning, discovering together.

By Jerry Ash.

This is the sixth and final column in a series of six articles introducing newly engaged employees and managers to the basics of knowledge-based enterprise.

In the early 1960s, a U.S. senator was making a surprise tour of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He encountered a uniformed cleaning woman and asked, “What is your job, Miss?”

“I’m part of the team that’s going to send a man to the moon,” she replied.

A sense of being an important part of the greater good of the company and a culture of conversation are bedrocks of a knowledge-based organization. Everyone has a part to play and everyone is a key player. The Community of Practice (CoP) has become the place where that happens.

Early architects of CoPs were concerned the knowledge-hoarding culture of the industrial past would make the formation of knowledge-sharing communities difficult.

However, they discovered, like knowledge itself, natural social networks already existed. The water cooler, the lunchroom, after-hours gatherings, online groups – these are a few examples of natural venues for knowledge sharers.

Companies are now recognizing the need to support and gain better results from network potential by actively proposing and endorsing explicit communities of practice. The difference between interest groups and CoPs, however, is that CoPs are not just social. Communities of practice are about practice – work practices.

They are the places where collaboration and generation of ideas, new knowledge and innovation can improve the reach of people and the effectiveness of the company.

They are open spaces outside the organizational chart where specialists converge or mix with people in other disciplines – not workgroups with short term tasks to accomplish, but natural networks with the long term ability to think creatively, unencumbered by preconditions.

While CoPs are generally part of the corporate initiative, they work best when they are voluntary, self-governed, separate from the company’s organizational structure and a natural part of the way people work.

Nevertheless, the company gets involved by endorsing, connecting and sometimes funding useful CoP activity. Existing social networks can be recognized as CoPs if they engage in knowledge sharing important to the critical success factors of the organization.

A CoP built around an existing group has the advantage of an established knowledge-sharing culture. A CoP may also grow out of task groups, such as project teams wanting to extend and enhance relationships and lessons learned. In other cases, the company may sponsor the formation of a CoP and recruit the right people to get it started. But in all cases, effective CoPs are grassroots networks of people engaged in work.

Human networks are presented as the final installment of this series because networks are where the five standards of KM practice merge – purpose, technology, company, people and networks.

The missions of CoPs are to improve competitiveness, innovation and productivity; provide safe and rewarding places for open knowledge sharing; act as effective user groups to improve technology as an essential KM support system; and work in partnership with companies that enable collaboration and truly see its people as intellectual assets, the most critical of the success factors for the company.

This concludes the basic KM tutorial. All six columns can be accessed in Smart People magazine issues 2-7.