Harnessing the benefits of online communities of practice (CoPs) My experience in an engineering consultancy firm

John Tropea – Hatch AssociatesArk group Oct 2009 PerthKM for the Energy, Engineering and Resources Sector connected forums and workshops

2

Hatch Associates

Hatch is an employee-owned multidiscipline firm that provides custom process design; business strategies; technologies; and project and construction management from 65 offices around the world for clients in the Metals; Infrastructure; and Energy market sectors. Programs and projects under management by Hatch have an aggregate value of $50 billion.

CLIENTS/PROJECTSQuebec Iron & Titanium, Transnet, Gorgon, BHP Billiton, Xstrata, Alcoa, Rio Tinto, Bluescope Steel

JOHN TROPEAGlobal CoP Coordinator (Knowledge Management)

3

The issue

“…knowledge workers spend 15-30% of their time seeking specific information and these searches are successful less than 50% of the time.” – IDC

Research

Approx 10% of labour costs

Employees spend a day a week

searching for people and information

4

The challenge

Distributed global consulting company– Relies on expertise, technological improvements,

and relationship building

“The challenge is to quickly connect staff with other employees in the organisation who retain specific knowledge on our clients, global practices, methodologies, and workflows – everything that we do as a company.”- Glenn Sakaki, Managing Director, Execution Technology at Hatch

5

All starts with visibility…

…dispersed group

…no central body

…communities…adding value

…never met or heard of Alex

…solutions…others…already solved

…reduce overhead

6

…and participation

"I was recently faced with a Materials Handling questions and found the Materials Handling CoP a very powerful resource. When I posted my question in their CoP over 100 community members received an email informing them that someone needed help. Within minutes I had responses from community members pointing me in the right direction and using their personal networks to answer my question. This shows the power of a CoP in leveraging off internal resources." - Justin O’Neill

7

…and cascades

SHARING requires TRUST, which is built via CONVERSATION

Key – create conditions for conversation

8

That was then…

No pilot No guidance

• Already in production when I came on board

• “Build it and they will come”

• Ghost town

• Lacked good practice

9

…this is now

I’m your global facilitator, how can I help?

• 50 CoPs

• 30 on request

• All word of mouth

• Recent global email announcement

• Requests for external parties

• Bottom-up request, Top-down creation

INFORM, CONSULT

GUIDE, SUPPORT

10

Social tools are different

• Deploy, and run…NOT!

• Who should own it

• Not built for a specific purpose

• Interactional vs Transactional

• Guidance is paramount

• Social network pilots require network effects, groups don’t

11

If I could go back in time…

• Discover and fix tech issues before release

• Discover and assist user issues

• Dedicate time to assist/workshop use cases

• Discover good practices, codes of conduct

• Embeds good use to model on, and sustained use

12

Beware of shiny new toys

• Not run like teams

• SME needs to be facilitator

• Flashy looking CoP syndrome

• Teams want CoPs

• Push Adoption vs Mutual attraction

• Lacks a social network, and demand for ad-hoc tasks

13

Enables the sweet spot

• People really want this stuff

• Grass roots (opportunities)

• Intranet not timely/formal

• Email lacks sense of place

• Coping mechanism

• Sense-making

14

Physical space doesn’t scale

OR

"A bulk materials handling specialist in Brisbane justsolved a problem with a conveyor design. But the

only people who know about this are the people in thesame room or email list”

"An engineer in Mississauga may be stuck on aconveyor design task, and isn't aware that a bulkmaterials handling specialist in Brisbane has the

knowhow to help them out“

15

The current survival tool

• Email as the survival tool– Exceptions to business processes– Sharing/Communicate– Coordinate/Collaborate

• Hidden in inboxes

Need to make these exceptions visible

in order to cope and adapt in a more

productive and effective way

16

The NEW survival tools for….

BlogsTips/Experiences/InsightStatus/ProgressNews/Announcements

ForumsDiscussionAsk Questions

WikisCollaborationWebsite

one-to-many and many-to-many communication

17

Work is already social

Hey, do you know where to find…?

Hey, do you know how to…?

• When we have a need we turn to our informal network of people we trust

• Without this a firm would fail

18

Amplify offline behaviour

• Always on

• As it happens

• Perpetual conversation

• Corporate memory

• Re-use existing work

• Finding like people and accidental collisions

19

Context & Connect

We believe true sharing happens when we cultivate conditions for connections and conversations. A community space allows people to get to “know each other” over a series of interactions. It enables people to more easily probe and clarify information they find and re-frame information into their context. These are conditions for optimal communication.

20

Will I search a database?

Will I ask people (CoPs)?

PEOPLE (Community of Practice)Quick, Referrals, Re-frame to your context, Peripheral information

MACHINE (database) Not quick, Assumes shared context, May not exist, May be outdated

Into procedures, as common practice, or complementary wiki pages (workarounds, informal practices)

Form

al a

nsw

er in

data

base

Answer is new information

Subscribers learn as it happens

Facilitator to feedback integral new information

Answer exists

in CoP

First ask people in the Community of Practice (CoP)

Person may point: to an existing answer or a useful bit in the database, or within the CoP itself where the raw contextual information lives

An answer to the question may create new information

If worth capturing as a new common practice, then put that information into the database (with links back to the raw CoP content eg forum post, and vice versa)

If it’s new insight into existing information, forum thread is resurrected, and then update common practice

New information can even be fed back into procedures

Perhaps procedures need a complementary wiki to list workarounds for different contexts

Just-in-time vs Just-in-caseSENSE-MAKING MODEL

21

Just-in-time vs Just-in-case

Member to share information, lessons, experience, tips

Will I share it in the CoP, as it happens?Eg Blog, wiki

Asked to codify what I know into a database!

MACHINE (database) Conscripted (resisted), What’s in it for me, Hoarding knowledge is power, Will it be seen or used, Time intensive, Expensive exercise, Lose context/content, Need triggers for context, Outdates quickly

PEOPLE (Community of Practice)On my own terms (engaged),Recognised, Intrinsic motivation, Sharing is power, Comment feedback (may generate new information), Subscribers learn as it happens, Have impact, Feel ownership and connected, As it happens agility, Adapt to uncertainty, Get to know people, Easy-to-use tools, Audience

Capturing knowledge thatmatters (and creating new knowledge) as it happens; rather than stock piling knowledge just in case

Facilitator to feedback integral new information

Into procedures, as common practice, or complementary wiki pages (workarounds, informal practices)

Promotes collaborative (engaged), rather than competitive workforce

SENSE-MAKING MODEL

22

Social Productivity

We like to think that people in Hatch aremore than just their job descriptions. Weall have many and varied talents, andwe all have a need to be able to draw onthe talents, skills and experience ofeach other.

This is what we call "social productivity".

23

Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William Snyder (Cultivating Communities of Practice)

SOURCE http://snipr.com/3295d

24

Components

Domain

Community

Practice

Participation

Sponsorship

Support

Nurture

People (Members) – Relationship, Learning

Body of knowledge - Technical, Role, Issue based CoPs

Stories, toolkit,Good practices

SOURCE Etienne Wenger

25

Types of CoPs

Improvement - Improve a process

or strategy

Helping - Troubleshoot, Support,

Problem solve

Innovation - Diversity, new ideas and approaches

Common topics - Cross-functional

common knowledge

26

CoPs vs Networks

Networks• My profile and my contacts• No constraints• Requires network effects

Community• Shared identity• Shared space/House rules• Coming together for a

purpose

27

CoPs vs Teams

  Team/Task Community of Practice

Purpose Tasks

Processes

Outcomes

Learning/Sharing

Ad-hoc

Emergence

Members Defined roles Informal roles

Manage Manager Facilitator

Participation

Required participation

High interdependency

Encourage participation

Trust

The online tools don’t define how the group operates (many teams are using CoPs)

28

Organisational groups

BU Report to Shape organisation

Team Working on Execute tasks

Networks Connected to Form relationships

Community Learning together Develop knowledge

SOURCE Etienne Wenger

29

More than CoPs

Cross-functional (Share & Learn)Bulk Materials Handling

Cross-functional (Task/Fix a process)Office Security Matrix

Team (Task)Upgrade to a new software release

Team (Communicate, Troubleshoot, Share & Learn)Document Management

Role-basedProject Managers

Crowdsource (Ideas/Feedback)Execution Technology Ideas

Communicate/Support (General/Group)Design tools

New initiatives/PilotsProject Lifecycle Process

Office site/EventsBrisbane Office

Special InterestBicycle Users Group

30

What’s in it for me?

• Sense-making (re-use, find, ask)

• Build your reputation/recognition

• Sense of belongingness and having impact

• Shorter/Less meetings (more about action)

• Share on my own terms (audience)

A MORE ENGAGED WORKFORCE

31

The value of working together

SHORT-TERM VALUE LONG-TERM VALUE

MEMBERS Help with challengesAccess to expertiseConfidenceFun with colleaguesMeaningful work

Personal developmentReputationProfessional identityNetworkMarketability

ORGANISATION

Problem SolvingTime savingKnowledge sharingSynergies across business unitsReuse of business resources

Strategic capabilitiesKeeping abreastInnovationRetention of talentsNew strategies

SOURCE Etienne Wenger

32

I create online spaces, not CoPs!

“A man can no more create a community filling in a form on a webpage than he can make a fruit tree by taping fruit to twigs and twigs to a stump”- Matthew Sweet http://bit.ly/BgNIe

The manager who thought he

could create a community

Appoint leader

Select members

Select topic

Select name

Select outcomes

Congratulations!

Create an instant community

√√√√√

“If a community has value it will form and the technology now allows that.” - David Snowden

Instead CoPs are:• Voluntary• Emergent• Self-selecting

33

A website alone is not a community• Without conversations it’s just a website

• Don’t over design look upfront (time waster), instead nurture participation, and design as you go

• Someone has to run it and encourage participation

• Facilitate, don’t manage

• Unlike email, it has a sense of place, and needs to be tendered and cared

• Intrinsic motivation, no rewards

34

It’s about the group, not the topic

Social computing is messy

• Overlapping topics vs formal prescribed place

• Merging may reduce participation

People will participate when they share the same wavelength, stimulation, comfort, confidence, and trust

35

Don’t need network effects

Growing a community is like making risotto- Rachel Happe http://bit.ly/13bTyF

• Absorb members in small doses

• Capacity to devote attention

• All you need is a small group of people who want to participate, trust each other, and have a shared identity

• Increasing size may cause congestion, dilution and noise

• Networks are different because they are not group spaces

36

What does a member mean online?

Offline• Turning up shows commitment• Feel more obligated to contribute

“There’s really only one rule for community as far as I’m concerned, and it’s this – in order to call some gathering of people a ‘community’, it is a requirement that if you’re a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went”

- Adam Fields

Tips!• Use a

registration question

• Offer a visitor book

• Hold a telecon, see who turns up

Online• Do nothing, be

noisy

• Give & Take inbalance

37

There is no average contributor• Power law (L-curve)• Average user doesn’t really exist…heavy

contributors skew a useful average meaning.

SOURCE http://bit.ly/12S2ll

Tip!Nurture those who are already contributing

38

The low down on participation

Design (intuitive / stickiness)

Frequency of content

Email interaction / bookmarklet

Peer to peer influence

Champions / Role models

Viral approachPost, and send

link

Attract comments

Re-purposing email

Hand-holding

Raids / Barnraising

In-the-flow

Feedback (Reputation/Recognition)

Group building

Confidence/Comfort/Safe

Trust

Relationships (Give and Take)

Personal relevancy

39

Activities you can try are…

Offline to online

Member Intros

Lounge forum

Blog carnival

Polls

Guest posts

Coffee Corner/Fill in the gap

Member of the month

Weekly roundup

Personal stories

People travelling

Blog columns

Engaging media (video)

Email signature

Newsletter

CoP link love

Events

Portal

40

Seed, feed, and weed

SOURCE http://bit.ly/193dxQ

Garden

Design

Communicate

Welcome

Assist

Support

Prompt

Correct

Guides

Promote

Re-purpose

Suggestions

Feedback

Congratulate

Barnraise

Monitor

Listen

Personal needs

Subscribe

Specialise

41

Subscribe, Listen, Facilitate

“...next time you should blog this, and then send people the link

Reason being is you are sending a signal to the people in this email to use email rather than the CoP when sharing links...this becomes amplified since we are role-models”

“When sharing links, if you have time, it's a good idea to review the article and add your opinion.

People will react to your review, especially if you have an opinion...this could lead to a comments discussion”

“This sounds more like a blog post (announcement) rather than a forum topic (question/discussion)…”

“A quick tip - spoil your subscribers by including a link to what you are talking about”

It's of utmost importance that a Community Manager is subscribed to every blog and forum in every community.

42

Global Village…answers, ideas, diversity

An idea was posted about a database that would identify what training you required for your role

The first reply was in the form of an answer that came within 20 minutes

A question was asked about plotting and printing errors

The IT CoP ran an ideas program in a forum

Within a month they got close to 500 contributions

A person in another team, on the other side of the world, informed that such a database is in the works and referred to the person responsible

Within the same hour there were four replies around the globe

Ideas were sorted into various forums, run by champions to bring some of these into fruition

43

Global Village…sharing, serendipity

A forum request was made in the Machine Design CoP for examples of designs done by Hatch to show a supplier

Hey, lets use a wiki

It’s great to see what others are doing

What 3D printer was used for the image in the wikipage, we want to purchase one

Great timing, a supplier created that print-out for free and is visiting tomorrow

How many people have clients who would want these 3D print outs to help justify a ROI in buying one

It turns out that a CoP administrator came across this forum topic and emailed about an open source product rather than spending $60,000

44

Global Village…connect, collaborate, cooperate

A Mechanical Lead in Canada emailed the designers in his group to review a Plant Layout Design Criteria

A reviewer informed him of the Plant Layout CoP

As a visitor the lead is able to Ask-A-Question in this CoP

He says he would like his team to get involved in the Hatch Standard Layout Design Criteria

His request was welcomed

45

My Checklist

• Request form (gets them thinking)

• Read the conceptual guide• Aware of the use policy• Create and Consult• Online Support/Communicate• Presentations• Subscribe to everything• Facilitate• Post-consult (Health check)• Reporting• Promote/Flyer (I don’t do

any)• On the look out• Annoy the vendor

46

First things first

Are you already a community? If so…

If not… Are you wanting to grow a community?

• How do you currently share, communicate, coordinate?

• Email? Meetings? Lunch time chats?

• Do you have interested people?

• Harder to get off the ground

• Perhaps start off as a forum in another community

47

Key Ingredients

• Do you have a substantial enough topic that warrants it’s own community?

• Do you have a community leader with passion and time?

• Do you have passionate key members?

• Do you have a sponsor allowing you time to run this community?

• Do you have a shared identity on what you want out of the community?

• What is your purpose? (learn, coordinate, crowdsource, support)

• Who is your audience?

48

Stuff to think about

90% relevant to a random member

Your own place and identity (rather than buried)

Visible in the directory

Local vs Global

Community indicators

The community leader must approach us

“I am a…” test

Broad communities as a fertile ground

Crowdsource a community

49

A workshop ensures…

• Bottom-up

• Ownership and Relevancy

• Members

• Building relationships

• Who has passion and time to run the place

• Role models

50

What’s our orientation?

51

A Pilot ensures…

• Proficiency

• Structure

• Guides

• Stickiness factor

• Populate content

52

Living and breathing

SOURCE http://bit.ly/4ypMEo

53

Time for a health check

54

Homepage

55

Information Desk

56

Facilitators Community

57

This is a waste of time

Buy inCase studies

Investment is cheap

IT rogues vs more secure

Flow is the new edge

Do you want to… …know what the employees think and

feel?

…have employees connected?

…attract new talent?

…retain what we know?

ValueMetrics (Heartbeat)

Anecdotes

Improved a process

Hard to measure conversations, emergence, opportunities

We all complain that……we cant find stuff

…we don’t know what others are doing

…we re-invent the wheel

58

What’s next?

• Social networks lead to more CoPs

• Group spaces for tasks– Your CoP or mine– Cumbersome to set up and buried– No sense of place– We end up using Outlook

• Self serve ad-hoc groups– Lookout Outlook

• Synchronous to asynchronous– After meeting, create the group

59

Connect

Library clipshttp://libraryclips.blogsome.com

LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/johntropea

Twitterhttp://twitter.com/johnt

Emailjohntropea@gmail.com

60

Questions

• Will sharing/learning CoPs (forums) be replaced by internal social networks (blogging, microblogging, bookmarking, wikis)?– Social networks don’t require group engagement to

succeed

• Are middle management OK with you spending time off tasks or related to tasks?– How does this tie into performance reviews?– Can you afford time to help others if you are not

measured?

• Social Networks with ad-hoc groups vs Intranet