4 Key Issues/Challenges in Championing Innovation

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Roan Yong

I’ve been thinking about Innovation lately. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about Innovation since I started working about eight years ago.

I believe key challenges in championing innovation can be summarised into four.

The first key challenge is defining innovation and prioritising areas for innovation in the organisational context. Different people define and interpret innovation differently. Without a common understanding on innovation, the organisation can’t spur innovation. So the challenge here is about creating a common understanding of what innovation means, how to do it, and what the priority areas are. To address this challenge, I suggest conducting focus groups to seek inputs from staff and top management, to merge the definitions of innovation, and to prioritise areas for innovation.

The second key challenge is engaging staff to innovate. According to 2006 Gallup study, engaged staff are more likely to innovate. Thus to spur innovation, organisations will have to engage their staff. Although there is no easy sure-fire way to engage staff, engaging staff is not an impossible feat. Based on my experience, the best way to engage staff is by conducting regular staff communication sessions between staff and top management – for e.g. Townhall meeting – where staff can have a dialogue with the top management on organisational issues and on ideas to improve business processes

The third key challenge is creating safe-fail environments in the organisation. Innovation requires collaborative and supportive environments where passionate like-minded staff can connect, can prototype ideas, and can innovate upon each other’s ideas. Alas, nurturing such environments in the organisational context is difficult. To address this challenge, I suggest cultivating communities of practice, i.e. communities of passionate like-minded people who meet regularly to solve organisational issues. Thriving communities of practice create safe-fail environments that encourage experimentation and give people time to fully develop innovative breakthroughs.

Last but not least, the fourth challenge in championing innovation is incentivising innovation. Rewarding people with monetary rewards or other extrinsic rewards isn’t sustainable, because people will soon demand for bigger extrinsic rewards. On the flip side, giving intrinsic rewards such as recognising and/or giving resources (time and fund) to staff who propose innovative ideas, can spur and sustain innovation. Thus, to address this challenge, I recommend designing recognition system which raises the profile of staff who propose innovative ideas, and setting up innovation funds to provide staff with the necessary resources for innovation.

What do you think? What’s your experience in championing innovation?

Quelling the Rise of Terrorism: The KM Way

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Roan Yong

Another day and yet another news of terrorism. An Iraqi-born Swedish citizen, Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, 28, blew up his car, then himself, in Stockholm, Sweden. I think I’m starting to get used to hearing “a nice-and-quiet muslim man got radicalised and blown himself up”. This may seem as another terrorism news for you, but quelling the rise of militant islam is a wicked problem – which every KMer should be interested in.

The fact that there are: (1) ”Al-Qaeda-inspired” terrorist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah (JI), AQAP (Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula) and (2) “self-radicalised” terrorists like Taimour – the Stockholm suicide bomber – means the rise of militant islam is a systemic problem, i.e. wicked problem, rather than contained problem.

Unfortunately, wicked problems have no clear solution. The then US president, George W. Bush, attempted to quell terrorism by “disrupting” the terrorists operations in Afghanistan. Almost 10 years passed since then, and yet terrorism remains a global threat and it is as vibrant as ever. Now, the global citizens have to contend with the growing threats of “home-grown” terrorism.

So what went wrong? sure, all of us could point finger at Bush and said “this is his fault!” But surely KMers could do better than just looking for someone to blame. For the record: I’m not a Bush fan. But, I think Bush made an “honest mistake” that all leader made at some point of their career. Many of us could share an anecdote of leaders who look for a “quick-fix”, only to discover the unintended consequences later on. If there is anything to learn from Bush’s failed war on terrorism, it would be this: Stop looking for quick fixes to solve wicked problems!

The issue of terrorism is basically a war of ideology. Having “zero tolerance” towards all non-muslims (radical islam) at one end, and living side-by-side with the non-muslims (moderate islam) at the other end. Promoting moderate Islam, is akin to promoting KM in the organisations because the change-required involves getting people to adopt a certain behaviors. So, here is how KMers would advise politicians / relevant authorities on quelling the rise of terrorism:

1. Identify champions - role models that exhibits behavior that we want to promote, for e.g. religious tolerance, knowledge sharing (in KM, we refer to them as knowledge champions). One of the criteria of champions is having wide influence. And that means, champions have to be well-respected figures in the target group. There are several ways to identify them:

check out if they have twitter account (I know this may sound silly, but nowadays everyone embraces new media. Perhaps, there are IT-savvy and influential moderate muslims out there? I’m not a terrorism expert, I’m a KM expert. So I have to start with what I know). And then use Twitalyzer to analyse their influence. The influencer type of champions are usually Trendsetters or Thought Leaders in the Twitalyzer.
use Social Network Analysis (SNA). To conduct an SNA, you would need to distribute a survey which contains questions like who do you seek advice to? from whom do you get information required to do your work? the champions profile in SNA is usually the unsung heroes (high in-degree / out-degree centrality), boundary spanners (high betweenness centrality), and information brokers (high closeness centrality). You can get a visual look of the social network by using free software like NodeXL, SocNetV, NetDraw or Pajek.
ask around and observe if the person is well respected in his / her community. Usually champions are the people who speak during community event or whose name being mentioned many times by the community members.

2. Change the incentives. Why would suicide bombers commit the act despite having a loving family? because they are promised rewards (in the afterlife). This may not make much sense, but hey, that’s beside the point. The point is, devising incentives / rewards is the most powerful means to change people’s behaviours. So, an effective counter-terrorism would offer incentives / rewards that people crave, for e.g. good reputation in the religious community, stable job.

3. Cultivate communities. There is no better way to build positive relationships and trusts other than getting involved in the communities of interests, or communities of practice (CoPs). Communities connect one champion to the others, and attract followers / lurkers. Champions spread their influence via communities – either online (for e.g. via blogs, twitter) or face-to-face (for e.g. in the professional associations, societies). Relevant authorities – either the senior management or the politicians – could put their “stamp of approval” on the communities by praising the champions (the community leaders) publicly, and giving the necessary resources such as funds, buildings, tax-free status, etc.

References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8198043/Sweden-suicide-bomber-Taimur-Abdulwahab-al-Abdaly-was-living-in-Britain.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1337930/Sweden-suicide-bombers-wife-I-knew-husband-terrorist.html

http://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFMAC64146720101216

http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=551264

KM in A Singapore Bank (OCBC)

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Roan Yong

On 15 November 2010, I was fortunate enough to be selected for a learning journey trip to OCBC Bank – one of the three local banks in Singapore.

The presenter, Ms. Yap Aye Wee, who heads the Quality and Service Management (QSM) department in the Bank, shared with us about how the Bank strives to improve its customer engagement metric. She explained that the customer engagement metric was a measurement of how much the customers love the bank. It was beyond customer satisfaction. Ms. Yap continued and shared the Bank customer engagement framework:

People X Process X Innovation

People. OCBC invests in training and development, especially customer-service related trainings. Staff can go for in-house trainings as well as external trainings. Beyond trainings, according to Ms. Yap, the Bank management is expected to lead by example. Even the CEO is not exempted. He reads and replies to customer complaints. OCBC also sets a working environment where people are empowered and inspired. To cultivate such working environment, Ms. Yap and her team launch many internal campaigns, such as ‘It’s Our Pleasure’ – a campaign to cultivate service mindset, and ‘Dare to Care’ – a campaign to encourage staff to challenge status quo and outdated policy. In any internal campaign poster, the models featured are real OCBC staff who live by the Bank values.
Process. Ms. Yap and her team map the customer experience through four stages: (1) Pre-engagement; (2) Engagement; (3) Fulfillment; and (4) Welcome Back. She called this mapping process as Moment Mapping Process. In each stages, the QSM team brainstorms on how to: (1) minimise ‘white spaces’ – waiting time; (2) minimise ‘combustion points’ – moments that can get customers frustrated; (3) increase ‘emotional cookies’ – opportunities to delight customers.
Innovation. Ms. Yap and her team analyse trends to get business insights and to innovate new services. For example: the Sunday Banking service. It is an insight from several trends culminating like increasing number of double-income families (husband and wife are working) in Singapore, and government plan to build more malls outside the Central Business District (CBD). In addition, Ms. Yap recognises that there is a need to pilot test ideas before they get implemented throughout the Bank. Therefore, the QSM team sets up a Community of Practice (CoP) called the Learning Lab. In this CoP, staff could test out their ideas, get real data from customers using surveys, and improve (or dump) ideas.

As I sat down and listened to Ms. Yap, I kept thinking that the customer engagement framework is a form of KM strategy. Yes, I’m convinced that OCBC is leveraging on KM to improve their customer engagement metric. And I think OCBC does KM pretty well. The best part is, OCBC knows what they want to achieve out of KM. In other words, OCBC’s KM has a sense of purpose: increasing customer engagement – which allows the QSM team (the KM team) to zoom down on what kinds of knowledge to capture, create, transfer, and reuse.

You are probably wondering why I’m convinced that OCBC is doing KM, although Ms.Yap didn’t mention – not even once – the dreaded word ‘KM’. I have three reasons for that:

People Development. The QSM team administers capacity building on customer-service skill sets. Through these trainings, in-house or external, staff would be able to develop their competencies on customer service. Knowledge is transferred from the experienced staff to the less-experienced ones. As the collective competencies increase, there would be more quality exchanges of ideas (knowledge creation) and eventually lead to more Innovations. People is always the key in any KM initiative. By developing people, you are essentially increasing the corporate knowledge stock (the collective intelligence).
The Moment Mapping Process. This easy-to-understand process is essentially a sensemaking process – in which knowledge gets created, transfered, and/or reused. It sets the stage for quality conversations so that staff know: (1) what to talk about, (2) how to discuss things, (3) and why are they having this conversation. Furthermore, Ms. Yap stressed that this process wasn’t meant to look for someone to blame. It is not a point-fingering session. It is about tapping on collective intelligence, in order to improve business processes so that customer experience improves. I’d say the Moment Mapping Process has somekind of ‘After Action Review (AAR) smell’ on it, wouldn’t you agree?
The Learning Lab as a Community of Practice (CoP). This is a give-away. The moment, ‘CoP’ is mentioned, you would know that this is a KM initiative. What I like most about the Leaning Lab is that, it allows the members (the staff) to build prototypes, test them out, act on real-customer feedbacks, and build better prototypes. In other words, the Learning Lab is some sort of safe-fail environment where staff can do quick prototyping and have empathy on customer experience (sounds like Design Thinking, doesn’t it?). Good ideas need time to develop, and until they are developed fully, they have to be protected. And this can only be made possible in a safe-fail environment.

So I hope I have convinced you that OCBC is doing KM, eventhough they don’t use the term ‘KM’. The fact is, KM exists in many organisations in various forms. But not everyone labels it as KM.

Oh, and one last thing. I also think that OCBC is practising an empathy-driven KM. I called this form of KM as Design-Driven KM. Notice the way they position KM and how they design the KM initiatives. The Moment Mapping process is designed in such a way, such that staff would be able to see (or empathise with) the customers’ point-of-view. The same goes for the Learning Lab.

Three Kinds of People to Start Innovation Epidemic in Singapore

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Roan Yong

I have always loved Singapore. One of the reason is the government’s foresight of what lies ahead. But here is a dilemma: the government could feel that the locals are getting restless with the increasing number of foreigners, but at the same time Singaporeans are not reproducing enough to sustain the nation’s growth. The earlier solution of dandling carrots to encourage Singaporean couples to have babies, does not seems to be very effective. So what’s next? increase productivity and encourage innovation so that Singapore could achieve more with less.

To do so, the government forms a think-tank group called Economic Strategies Committee (ESC), and tasks them to come up with a framework to push the nation into the next stage of its growth. One of the proposals put forward by ESC is to make innovation pervasive in the whole country. Singapore Budget 2010 committee has taken up ESC’s recommendation by setting up Productivity and Innovation Credit – basically a set of tax reliefs to spur productivity and innovation. The Budget 2010 committee has also indicated that the government would boost the R&D sector in order to drive innovation.

I think the government’s strategy has hit the nail on its head. To move forward, Singapore definitely needs to rely more on innovation. However, telling our fellow countrymen that we need to be more innovative to sustain the nation’s economy will only draw curious looks, but not sufficient to win the commitment necessary to spring pervasive innovation. To better engage the population, both the government and citizens need to find out: (1) who should rally majority of Singaporeans to live and breathe “Innovation”? and (2) where could we find these “heroes” ?

To start innovation epidemic, we need to sell the value of innovation in a language and terms that could be understood by the majority of people, without toning down the importance of it. In other words, we need “salesman”. In addition to “salesmen”, we also need “connector”, that is someone who have above average number of connections across all walks of life. Last, but not least, we have to have “maven”, that is someone who gather and develop cutting-edge knowledge. Mavens are often thought leaders that promote breakthrough / new ideas.

Now that we have the answers to first question, where could we find these three kinds of people? The short answer is they could be found in communities. Not any kind of communities though, but a very special kind of community – the community of practice (CoP).

In a CoP, there are regular discussions among people with same interests or passions, but the members do not necessarily have the same level of expertise in the domain knowledge. The experts in the community are the mavens. In addition to the mavens, as in any other communities, a member of a CoP may also belongs to other CoPs. These people are connectors, and they link CoPs through multiple membership and getting to know people from other CoPs. Last but not least, any thriving community would have salesmen – people who promote the community and explain complex knowledge in the community in a way that is easily understood by non-experts.

To summarize, the government has come up with an excellent roadmap to create conducive environment for innovation, by boosting R&D sector and providing tax relief for innovative organizations. In addition to these two strategies, the government should also encourage the “main street” Singaporeans to cultivate communities of practice in Innovation, so that we could help to spread the message and win commitments from fellow Singaporeans, and being recognized for our efforts. For a start, how about identifying the three kinds of people and appointing them as “Innovation Champions”?

References

http://www.esc.gov.sg/attactments/ESC%20Press%20Release%20Annex%20A%20-%20Summary%20of%20Key%20Recommendations%201%20Feb_0346.pdf

http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/download/FY2010_Budget_Highlights.pdf

http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/speech_toc/download/FY2010_Key_Budget_Initiatives1.pdf

http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/speech_toc/download/FY2010_Key_Budget_Initiatives2.pdf

Thought Leadership is part of Knowledge Management

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Roan Yong

There seems to be a lot of buzz around the term “Thought Leadership”. Thought leadership is an important concept and nurturing thought leaders would impact your organization in several ways. First, thought leaders cultivate innovation culture, because they generate ideas or promote innovative ideas. Thought leaders are innovation catalysts because they could inspire others to improve on / build upon their ideas. Second, thought leaders build the organisation’s brand, because they offer solution for problems that the target audience may or may not realised. The thought leaders in the organisation would also foster reputation as experts or the authorities in the their domain of expertise. An example of this is Warren Buffet and the company that he leads, Berkshire Hathaway.

Despite the excitement around the term, it is not a new concept and it is definitely not the holy grail of management / marketing. But what is thought leadership? and who are the thought leaders? The management thinkers put forward the idea of thought leaders as people who promote new ideas through examples, demonstration, and / or logical argument. This implies that thought leaders are not necessarily wordsmiths, as long as they can convince others of their idea’s merits. Thought leaders are also people who quick to champion others’ good idea, although they may not be the ones who carry out the idea / proposal. Other than the management gurus, the marketing experts are also quick to embrace the term “Thought Leadership”. In marketing, it is defined as a marketing strategy, where thought leaders educate the potential market on the unique selling point of their products / services, via white papers, magazines articles, and new media (web 2.0), for e.g. blogs, twitter.

The essence of thought leadership, either from management perspective or marketing perspective, is about sharing information. Thus, thought leadership ends when the target group of people – fellow colleagues, bosses, or customers – accept the idea that thought leaders promote (sell). And since thought leaders are not necessarily people with exceptional communication / persuasion skills, the information that thought leaders shared needs to be palpable. It follows that in product-based industries, thought leaders are either innovators or early adopters, while in service-based industries, thought leaders are mavens – those who gather knowledge.

As interesting the concept of thought leadership as it may be, having useful information alone is not sufficient for an effective thought leadership strategy. As mentioned earlier, thought leaders also need to publicize their information, either through traditional or new media publication, for the target group consumption. Hence, thought leadership strategy consists of two parts: acquiring information and sharing information, and the strategy would be deemed successful if the target audience appreciate the value of the information.

As a corollary, thought leadership strategy depends on whether an organisation could leverage on their corporate knowledge effectively. In other words, the strategy necessitates the organisation to know what they know. If this seems like knowledge management, it is. An organisation with sound knowledge management strategy in place, would not only be able to identify their thought leaders and tap on their expertise, but also be able to safeguard the thought leaders’ expertise and promote it through communities of practice (CoPs) or knowledge portals. Thought leaders in knowledge management lingo are the core members of CoPs and the knowledge champions.

It is obvious that thought leadership is part of knowledge management. Thus thought leadership strategy needs to take knowledge management strategy into consideration.

Communities of Practice (CoPs): Benefits and Frequently Asked Questions

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Roan Yong

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are informal groups of people who share the same passion or concerns and they interact regularly to deepen their understanding of their domain of interests¹. We know that the presence of CoPs are crucial for any organisation, in order to manage change. Since there are social bonds among the CoPs members, innovative ideas spread and get accepted more quickly².

The proliferation of web 2.0 tools – such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums – also makes CoPs as one of the most easiest KM tool to implement³. Furthermore, CoPs are natural repositories for corporate knowledge / memory†, and help to connect people who seek knowledge (buyer) to people who have the knowledge (seller). Thus, it is easy to see CoPs as the heart of any Knowledge Management initiative.

Though every KM professional – like us – is familiar with the concept and benefits of CoPs, we still having hard times convincing our colleagues and superiors on the value of cultivating CoPs in the organisation. While there are no easy way to persuade the management to manage CoPs, we still need to familiarise ourselves with several frequently asked questions on CoPs.

Q: what is the difference between CoPs and teams / other work units?
A: There are many differences between the two. Three prominent differences are: (1) CoPs’ focus is on knowledge exchange, while team / work units are centred on completing projects; (2) CoPs’ membership is voluntary, while team / work units are nominated; (3) Unlike team / work units, CoPs members’ roles and responsibilities are dynamic.

Q: Since participation in CoPs is on voluntary basis, why does the management need to manage CoPs?
A: CoPs exist in any organisation whether they are managed by the management or not. However, if the management does not provide resources for the CoPs, they may not develop beyond friendship among colleagues. As a result, there would be knowledge silos in the organisation and the CoPs that spring-up may not manage critical corporate knowledge.

Q: How do you initiate CoPs?
A: First, you would need to find CoP Champions – people who are very passionate about a domain of interest, and respected by their colleagues. The CoP Champions would then need to invite potential members to meet. In the first meeting, the members would have to define the CoP domain, vision and CoP main activities. A good way to do so is via Open Space Technology (OST) meeting.

Q: How to persuade people, given their busy schedule, to form a CoP?
A: There is little need to persuade people to form a CoP. It is a human nature, wanting to discuss your problems with your fellow colleagues whom you trust. By sharing and discussing common problems regularly, you are essentially part of a CoP whether you realize it or not. An important point to remember is that whenever someone tells you that they do not have time for CoP, it means that you have not identified the correct domain of the CoP.

A note from APQC Best Practice Report 2008:
CoPs are one of the most easiest KM tools (3.8 / 5.0)

References:
1. Wenger, E., Mcdermott, R., and Snyder, W.M. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard Business School Press.
2. Gladwell, M. (2002). The Tipping Point. Back Bay: London.
3. (2008). The Role of Evolving Technologies: Accelerating Collaboration And Knowledge Transfer. APQC Best Practice Report.
† Storck, J., & Lesser, E.L. (2001). Communities of Practice And Organizational Performance. IBM Systems Journal 40 (4).

Why Every KM Professional Should Care About Climate Change Issue

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Roan Yong

When I told my colleague that Combating Climate Change (CC) requires Knowledge Management (KM), she said she couldn’t see the relationship between the two subject matters. Her reaction is not surprising, many KM professional don’t consider Climate Change as a KM issue. However, as APQC 2008 study has shown, the essence of Knowledge Management is about fostering collaboration among knowledge workers¹.

Who are the knowledge workers in climate change issue? they are the scientists, politicians, and activists. It is undeniable that these various parties need to collaborate to tap from each other’s experiences and resources, so that the world could avert the danger of climate change. A fact that was recognised by Australia’s PM, Kevin Rudd, who stated that collaboration is the key to combat climate change².

Collaboration, however, is always easier said than done. Not so long ago we know that even within the scientist community itself there was a big disagreement of whether climate change could be considered as crisis³. Though via the Kyoto protocol and Copenhagen accord, the politicians mostly agreed that climate change was threatening all life on earth and it needed to be curbed, they have differences on “how” to combat climate change, i.e. who should bear the cost? how to monitor the commitments that the leaders had made?

It is clear that climate change is a global collaboration issue, which is also a KM issue. Thus, every KM professional needs to be involved in combating climate change. To do so, we can join communities of practice (CoPs) in the domain – climate change.

You may be wondering how to find CoPs in climate change. Though the CoPs do not refer themselves as such, they are usually bottom-up organisations and often founded by people who are very concerned about climate change. They have presence both virtually and physically. For example: 350.org, WWF.org. While, the CoP concept purists may not categorize these organisations as CoPs, we know that web 2.0 enables people to find others with the same interests / passion.

In short, the emergence of web 2.0 allows like-minded people to form CoPs more easily¹. This surfaces another reason for KM professionals to be involved in the climate change issue. We – the KM professionals – could help to cultivate and provide consultancy to the bottom-up organisations like the ones mentioned in the above paragraph. The return for us, other than saving the world, would be an opportunity to practice and promote KM, especially on CoP.

References:

(2008). The Role of Evolving Technologies: Accelerating Collaboration And Knowledge Transfer. APQC Best Practice Report.
Singh, G. (2009). Rudd Says Collaboration Key to Tackle Climate Change. Bloomberg.com.
Lott, J. (2009). Why You Should Be Hot And Bothered About ‘Climate-Gate’. FOXNews.com. email gate in scientific world. climate change.

Notes:
Here are some of the important points from APQC Best Practice Report 2008:
1. Collaboration is the heart of Knowledge Management.
2. There is a shift of focus from collecting contents to connecting people to people.
3. As the digital capability to connect people to people expands, the definitions of collaboration and communities of practice are blurring.

What I have Learned from Dr. Etienne Wenger

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Roan Yong

Dr Wenger and Me

I recently attended a Community of Practice (CoP) Masterclass by Dr. Etienne Wenger on 12 August 2009, at Grand Hyatt, Singapore. It was held just before the two-day KM Singapore 2009 themed “Knowledge Workforce – Knowledge Economy”, organised by information and Knowledge Management Society (iKMS). I learned a great deal from Dr. Wenger, not just about CoP but also about Knowledge Management in general. Here are some key takeaways:

On Knowledge Management

Dr. Wenger highlighted two issues of Knowledge Management (KM):

1. There is a lack of strategic conversation. Strategic conversation, according to Dr. Wenger, is conversation that revolves around two key questions: (1) “What are the capabilities that we need to be good at?”; (2)”Who needs to have these capabilities?”

2. There is insufficient attention given to KM at strategic level. Dr. Wenger was in the opinion that organisations shouldn’t operationalise KM, because the value of KM is at strategic level.

He opined that uncooperative middle managers were part of KM issues that the senior management needed to resolve. It was absurd for the senior management to leave the entire KM work responsibilities to the junior management.

On CoP and its measurement

Dr. Wenger believes that although CoP has indirect relationship to organisational performance, organisations should always try to link CoP with performance management. While justifying CoP’s ROI is a struggle, organisations implementing CoP should have a reasonable estimate to justify CoP.

On Starting CoP

Dr. Wenger mentioned that he noticed an increasing trend of CoP that started from bottom-up and top-bottom at the same time. One of the reasons of CoP starting from bottom-up and top-bottom was to avoid issues that each approach brought. The problem with bottom-up approach is lack of management support, which translates into lack of resources such as time, manpower, fund. While the issue with top-bottom approach is the tendency to over-manage CoP using numbers (KPIs) that could stifle the CoP development.

On Keeping CoP Alive

Dr. Wenger opined that there was a need to maintain candidness when members of a CoP share knowledge. He noted that some CoPs have no manager-level participants, a condition which allowed candid knowledge exchange among the members. He mentioned that the practice of CoP was the one that drawn people together to form a community. The practice itself became the curriculum that set the CoP direction.

He further shared that CoP required Sponsors – someone who possessed sufficient authority (power) to advocate and drive the KM initiative across departments and divisions. Sponsors were usually more than one people at different levels of management, who had the right amount of influence to manage KM.

He cautioned the audience not to encourage participation in a CoP that was caused by geographic, gender, or other things that were external to their relationship with knowledge domain. He also urged the audience to give the CoP’s peripheral group a chance to hold CoP leadership.

Q & A with Dr. Etienne Wenger

Q: What if the subject matter expert is not willing or does not have time for CoP?

A: You may need to find a junior person, who is interested to do the actual work of community facilitation, but this person needs to be endorsed by the senior person, otherwise nobody wants to join the junior person.

Q: How to best launch a CoP?

A: First, talk and find out what worries the operational managers. Second, find a community leader. This community leaders need to have two characteristics: (a) this person has wide personal network; (b) this person has legitimacy. Third, Make strategic argument and connect it with the organisation’s strategy. For example: CoP is one of the way to develop the organisation’s strategic capabilities.

To ensure we didn’t leave out any details when we planned to initiate a CoP, Dr. Wenger recommended to use the community-design template:

Key issues	Why important	Key activities	Purpose / outcomes
.	.	.	.

For more information on CoP, you can check Dr. Wenger’s website or read his books. I personally enjoyed his second book, “Cultivating Communities of Practice“.