a). Describe the role of “Communities of practice” in Knowledge management.

Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice Lecture 5: Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice Recap: KM Cycle Processes  Knowledge Capture  Knowledge Creation & Contribution  Knowledge Codification & Refinement (inc. Sanitize) & Reconstruction (e.g. synthesis)  Selectively filter contributions  Knowledge Modeling  Knowledge Sharing & Pooling  Knowledge Organization &Access  Knowledge Learning &Application  Knowledge Evaluation & Re-Use OR Divest 2 Overview Knowledge Sharing ◼ Communities of Practice Building blocks ⚫ Types of communities ⚫ Roles and Responsibilities ⚫ ◼ Directories of Experts Yellow pages ⚫ Skill mining ⚫ ◼ Mapping the Flow of Knowledge ⚫ Organizational networks and Sociograms 3 What is a Community of Practice (CoP)? Traditionally, we have shared knowledge through ‘word of mouth’ (e.g. master to apprentice) While socializing comes ‘naturally’ to us, there are fewer opportunities in today’s much larger, much more global companies It was easy to do in the past: coffee/smoker cliques, water cooler conversations….. 4 But: In Today’s Working Environment Multi-lingual Multi-site Multi-cultural More & Faster More Global KM More Mobile More Connected 5 What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?  Definition of “Community” ◼ ◼ ◼ “A group of people having common interests: the scientific community, the international business community” Similarity or identity: a community of interests Sharing, participation, fellowship American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Ed. 1996. 6 Community Definition (continued)  “The body of people in a learned occupation: “the news spread rapidly through the medical community” ◼ ◼ Common interests Agreement as to goals Merriam-Webster Dictionary 7 Community Definition (continued)  The word has been in the English language since the 14th century ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ Comes from the Latin “The quality of holding something in common” A sense of common identity and characteristics More direct, more immediate and more significant relationships than in formal organized societies Sharing of common goals, values, identities; participatory decision-making 8 What is a virtual community?  “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships” Knowledge is social as well as individual (The Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold, 1993) 9 What is a Practice?  A customary way of operation or behaviour  Translating an idea into action  The exercise of a profession  Knowledge of how something is customarily done Merriam-Webster Dictionary “There can be no knowledge without a knower” Knowledge is dynamic in nature 10 What is a Community of Practice in the KM World?  “A group of individuals informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise” (Snyder and Wenger)  Peers in the execution of real work. What holds them together is a common sense of purpose and a real need to know what each other knows” (John Seely Brown)  “Focused on the more professional nature of work. It’s trying to find a better way of doing work” (From the field….) 11 Putting the pieces together  The term “community” suggests that CoPs are not constrained by typical geographic, business unit or functional boundaries but rather by common tasks, contexts and interests.  The word “practice” implies knowledge in action – how individuals actually perform their jobs on a day-to-day basis as opposed to more formal policies and procedures that reflect how work should be performed. Lesser & Prusak, IBM Institute for KM 12 Community of Practice A group of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise 13 Source: Etienne Wenger Dimensions of Practice as the property of a community Joint enterprise Mutual engagement Shared repertoire 14 Dimensions of Practice as the property of a community Joint enterprise Mutual engagement Shared repertoire What is the “work” of community members? e.g. KM practitioners Heterogeneous Complementary 15 Dimensions of Practice as the property of a community What are the accepted objectives of the community? Joint enterprise Mutual engagement Negotiated consensus Mutual accountability Shared repertoire What is the “work” of community members? e.g. KM practitioners Heterogeneous Complementary 16 Dimensions of Practice as the property of a community What are the accepted objectives of the community? ‘Knowledge is local, sticky and contextual” Joint enterprise Mutual engagement What is the “work” of community members? e.g. KM practitioners Heterogeneous Complementary Negotiated consensus Mutual accountability Shared repertoire Artifacts: routines, tools, stories, ways of doing things, language, concepts, history, discourse Shared virtual space 17 How are Communities of Practice Different? Community of Practice Work Group Project Team Informal networks Purpose Exchange knowledge Membership Self select Deliver product Accomplish specific task All under manager Assigned or selected Pass on business information Friends & business acquaintances Glue Passion, identification with group Job & common goal Project milestones and goal Mutual need Duration As long as the interest lasts Until restructured Project completed As long as reason exists (excerpt from “Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier, by Etienne Wenger) 18 A Community of Practice Experts, Mentors *LPP – Legitimate peripheral participant Members Lurkers* 19 Multiple Communities Lurker in one, mentor in another Overlapping Communities A community waiting to happen Knowledge brokers 20 Multiple Communities Boundary objects Artifacts: tools, documents, models shared by CoP’s. Discourses: a common language that can be shared across CoPs Processes: shared processes, routines, procedures that facilitate coordination of and between CoPs 21 The Value Added by Communities of Practice The help drive strategy They start new lines of business They solve problems quickly They transfer best practices They develop professional skills They help companies recruit and retain talent 22 Source: Etienne Wenger Benefits of Communities of Practice  For the organization ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ Help drive strategy Solve problems quickly Diffuse best practices Cross-fertilize ideas, increase opportunities for innovation Build organizational memory 23 CoP Benefits (continued)  For the community ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ Develop professional skills Develop a common language Improve continuously LEARN 24 CoP Benefits (continued) • For the individual • Help people do their jobs & save time • Building a sense of community bonds within organization • Helps people to keep up to date • Provides challenges and opportunities to contribute 25 Why are CoPs important now?  Knowledge increasingly recognized as a strategic intellectual asset  Cannot be left to chance – need to actively, systematically organize, and disseminate knowledge  CoPs are a good way of doing this  CoPs need librarians, archivists, taxonomists….”knowledge stewards” 26 A Paradox of Management Although communities of practice are fundamentally informal and self-organizing, they benefit from cultivation. How to cultivate them: ◼ ◼ ◼ identify potential communities of practice that will enhance the company’s strategic capabilities provide the infrastructure that will support them and enable them to apply their expertise effectively use nontraditional methods to assess their value 27 Community Building Blocks  Collective identity  Community type  Community roles and responsibilities  Community membership  Collaborative work environment 28 Community Types  Helping Communities ◼ Provide a forum for community members to help each other solve everyday work problems  Best Practice Communities ◼ Develop and disseminate best practices, guidelines and procedures for members’ use  Knowledge Stewarding Communities ◼ Organize, manage, and steward a body of knowledge from which members can draw  Innovation Communities ◼ Create breakthrough ideas, knowledge & practices 29 Community Roles and Responsibilities  Functional sponsor ◼ Believes in and promotes the value of knowledge sharing and community membership  Core team  Community Leader  Community Facilitator  Logistics Coordinator 30 Community Core Team  Use their knowledge of the discipline to judge what is important, groundbreaking and useful  Enrich information by summarizing, combining, contrasting and integrating information into the knowledgebase  Establish a taxonomy for the knowledgebase 31 How Knowledge Workers Spend their Time Other 22 % 18 % Production 60% Research & Validation EDS 1996 32 How do we find information online? Phase I : on-line search Phase II : off-line search Succeed 5% Fail 10% Fail 95% 45 minutes spent on-line: Searching: Surfing: 5 min. 40 min. Succeed 90% After phoning for help, they find what they are looking for 90% of the time in less than 5 min 33 Directories of Experts  Research shows that even in companies with welldeveloped KM infrastructures, people still turn first to other people as they seek solutions to problems and knowledge ◼ ◼ Knowledge flows are primarily through people What knowledge flows? ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ Direct answer to question Metaknowledge Help in reformulating the problem….. 34 Skill Mining  Similar to data mining  Purpose is to identify who within an enterprise has the expertise required to help a knowledge worker with a specific issue ◼ ◼ Manual – Knowledge Support Offices Automated – Abuzz, Autonomy, Dataware  Tends to be better suited to ‘hard’ or technical skills 35 Yellow Pages – Expert Network Example Trading strategy Intelligence analysis Investment strategy Economic forecasting Portfolio theory Technical analysis Portfolio selection Company analysis Securities selection Industry and competitive analysis 36 Yellow Pages Activity  See handout FOR INSTRUCTORS: you can develop a list of about 20 items such as: “knows how to fix a lawnmower”, “can name 3 types of potatoes”, “has run a marathon.” Draw a line next to each item. Ask students to find someone in the class who has this type of “expertise”. This is a method of developing yellow pages. 37 Social Network Analysis (SNA)  SNA is a diagnostic method for collecting and analyzing data about patterns of relationships among people in groups ◼ ◼ ◼ Can identify patterns of interaction such as average number of links between people in an organization or community, the number of subgroups, information bottlenecks, knowledge brokers Can help to improve knowledge flow, identify key brokers and hoarders E.g. 6 degrees of separation 38 SNA (continued)  Example: if your goal is to build a more cohesive knowledge network so people can access and interact with one another more quickly, more easily: ◼ ◼ ◼ How well do you know and understand the skills and experiences of other members? Is the type of knowledge held by this other person important to the work that you do? Do you find it easy to access other people when you need help? 39 Knowledge Flow Analysis Example: Finding Hidden Experts Rosa and Thomas are `hidden` experts Orphaned database 40 SNA (continued)  Based on the results of the analysis, you may decide to: ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ Reorganize Introduce new specific roles e.g. moderator to assist in knowledge transfer Technologies to support expertise location, virtual meetings, as well as face-to-face meetings Introduce a shared goal they can work towards or theme of interest for discussion Self-awareness may be enough (“yikes – I am a knowledge black hole!) 41 Mapping the Flow of Knowledge Portal Jack Sue Knowledge request Knowledge response 42 Sociogram Example  Draw a sociogram of a community you belong to: ◼ ◼ ◼ Family Friends Peers – e.g. have you exchanged knowledge with anyone in this class? How? (email, conversation, phone) for what purpose? (assignment) with anyone outside the class on the topic of CoPs/KM? Who? ◼ ◼ Hobby groups Interest groups 43 Next:  Knowledge Acquisition and Application 44 Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice Lecture 4: Knowledge Capture and Codification Overview  Knowledge Capture ◼ For tacit knowledge  Knowledge Codification ◼ ◼ For explicit knowledge Organizing knowledge in a knowledge taxonomy 2 KM Cycle Step 1:Knowledge Capture and Codification Tacit Knowledge Capture & Codification ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ Ad Hoc Sessions, Roadmaps, Learning History Action Learning, Storytelling Learn from Others, Guest Speakers, Best Practice Capture Interviewing to elicit tacit knowledge 3 Approaches to Knowledge Capture and Codification  How to describe and represent knowledge ◼ ◼ ◼ Depending on the type of knowledge E.g. explicit knowledge is already well described but may need to abstract/summarize it Tacit knowledge on the other hand may require significant analysis and organization before it can be suitably described and represented  Tools range from linguistic descriptions and categories to mathematical formulations and graphical representations 4 Tacit Knowledge Capture Techniques  Tacit Knowledge Capture ◼ Ad Hoc Sessions, Roadmap, Learning History, Storytelling, Interviews, Action Learning, Learn from Others, Guest Speakers, Relationship Building, Systems Thinking  Tacit Knowledge Codification ◼ ◼ ◼ Proficiency Levels and Knowledge Profiles Abstract Concept Representation (mental models) Concept hierarchies (associative or semantic networks) 5 Learning History  Useful to capture tacit knowledge  A retrospective history of significant events in an organization’s recent past, described in the voices of people who took part in them  Researched through a series of reflective interviews, transcribed in Q&A format  Systematic review of successes and failures “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santanya 6 Learning History Questions     What was your role in the project/initiative? How would you judge its success? What would you do differently if you could? What recommendations do you have for other people who might go through a similar process?  What innovative things were done or could have been done? 7 Learning History Documentation  Record and transcribe interviews  Analyze data to identify like themes and subthemes as well as quotes to be used  Document key themes and validate quotes (e.g. make sure they are not anonymous nor taken out of context)  Summarize and publish 8 Learning History Template Theme Title Part 1 Overview of the Theme _________________________________________________ Part 2 Commentary, conclusions and potential questions to be asked that relate to the adjacent quotes quotes representing key responses to interview questions __________________________________________________ Part 3 Brief summary of quotes, additional questions to provide more clarity to theme 9 Storytelling  An organizational story is a detailed narrative of management actions, employee interactions and other intra-organizational events that are communicated informally within the organization  Conveying information in a story provides a rich context, remaining in the conscious memory longer and creating more memory traces than information not in context  Can increase organizational learning, communicate common values and rule sets 10 What’s the Moral of the Story?  Fables are short fictional folk tales used to indirectly tell truths about life ◼ ◼ They have a level of meaning beyond the surface story They are an excellent example of what organizational stories should be like – except they would tell truths about life working in company X…  Some examples: 11 The Chicken and the Jewel  A chicken, scratching for food for herself and her chicks, found a precious stone and exclaimed, “If your owner had found you and not I, he would have taken you up and put you in your first jewelry. But I have found you for no purpose. I would rather have one kernel of corn rather than all the jewels in the world.” The ignorant despise what is precious only because they cannot understand it 12 The Crow and the Pitcher  A crow, perishing with thirst, saw a pitcher, and hoping to find water, he flew to it with delight. When he reached it, he discovered to his grief that it contained so little water he could not possibly get at it. He tried everything he could think of to get to the water, but all his efforts were in vain. At last, he collected as many stones as he could carry and dropped them one by one into the pitcher, until the brought the water within his reach and saved his life. Necessity is the mother of invention 13 The Donkey and His Shadow  A traveler hired a donkey to convey him to a distant place. The day being intensely hot, and the sun shining in its strength, the traveler stopped to rest, and sought shelter from the heat under the shadow of the donkey. As this afforded protection for one, and as the traveler and the owner of the donkey both claimed it, a violent dispute arose between them as to which of them had the right to the shadow. The owner maintained that he had let the donkey only, not his shadow. The traveler asserted that he had, with the hire of the donkey, hired his shadow also. The quarrel proceeded from words to blows, and while the men fought, the donkey galloped off. In quarrelling about the shadow, we often lose the substance. 14 Try it out….  Form groups of 3-5  Try to write the moral of the story from one of the three fables handed out  Write these down and read out your results when it is your group’s turn NOTE TO INSTRUCTORS: provide students with paper or electronic versions of any fable from Aesop – you can an use the following – remove the morals from the slides you provide to students 15 The Man & His 2 Sweethearts  A middle-aged man, whose hair had begun to turn gray, courted two women at the same time. One of them was young, and the other well advanced in years. The elder woman, ashamed to be courted by a man younger than herself, made a point, whenever her admirer visited her, to pull out some portion of his black hairs. The younger, on the contrary, not wishing to become the wife of an old man, was equally zealous in removing every gray hair she could find. Thus it came to pass that between them both he very soon found that he had not a hair left on his head. Those who seek to please everybody please nobody. 16 The Farmer & the Stork  A farmer placed nets on his newly-sown land and caught a number of cranes, which came to pick up his seed. With them he trapped a stork that had fractured his leg in the net and was earnestly beseeching the farmer to spare his life. “I am no crane but a stork, a bird of excellent character – look at my feathers – they are not the least like those of a crane!” The farmer laughed aloud and said, “It may be all you say, I only know this: I have taken you with these robbers, the cranes, and you must die in their company.” Birds of a feather flock together 17 The Oak & the Reeds  A very large oak was uprooted by the wind and thrown across a stream. It fell among some reeds, which it thus addressed: “I wonder how you, who are so light and weak, are not ent …
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