The first people had questions, and. they were free. The second people had answers, and they became enslaved.

--WindEagle and RainbowHawk, The Earth Wisdom Teachings

The past century has seen quite a transformation in the dynamics of how business is done and the key factors that result in its success. Businesses have focused on different issues and factors of production at different times in the last 100 years. While capital was the de-facto factor of success for businesses, organizations have awakened to the power and capability the human factor of production can bring to business performance. In the current economy - knowledge economy, companies today are eagerly trying to harness their manpower to their fullest. There is an awakening about organizational knowledge and what it can do to business performance. Knowledge is embedded not in processes or products of company's business but in its people. And one sure way to nurture this knowledge lying with the workforce of organizations is by tapping in the power of human structures called Communities of Practice (CoPs).

What are CoPs and why are they so hot?

Communities of practice are informal networks of people in organizations that share information and knowledge with each other over a particular aspect of work (practice). Communities of practice can exist physically or even in virtual spaces. When production engineers of an organization continuously exchange knowledge about latest machinery in the market and their use or when sales executives in a consumer goods company exchange customer notes and experiences they are creating a community in which they share and distribute information or knowledge about their practice.
The term communities of practice was coined by Lave and Wenger at the Xerox funded Institute for Research on Learning (IRL).
Communities of practice is akin to "Ba" a Japanese concept introduced to the business world by Ikujiro Nonaka (Xerox Corp) which denotes a shared space where learning happens.

Organizational learning by CoPs

Organizations grow and develop by learning - just as human beings do. Organizations are made of people and hence the similarity is extensive and obvious. There are different ways organizational learning takes place - it can be either personal (role modeling or mentoring) or public (communities of practice). Hence instead of discouraging communities of practice in organizations under the presumption that time is being wasted because of these informal networks, it is in the organization's interest to nurture them and give them space and time to grow and develop.

There is strength in numbers!

Today no one person can fight back challenges offered by the business environment in his or her own capacity and industry. However shared knowledge from a network of professionals with different backgrounds or experiences proves immensely valuable in doing tasks in time and performance pressures.

Communities of practice are also known as knowledge communities. However they are different from other organizational structures such as a task force or a team in respect to their life and lifecycle. While a task force or a team starts with an assignment and ends with it, a community of practice may continue in unofficial ways far beyond the original assignment.

Tacit - explicit - tacit

The idea behind developing and nurturing Communities of Practice is because of the understanding that tacit knowledge that resides in the human minds in terms of lessons learned and experience gained is much more valuable than the explicit knowledge that is available in company manuals and documents. Organizations should nurture CoPs to make as much tacit knowledge explicit by bringing it into an open sharing space and subsequently enabling this newly gained explicit knowledge to become tacit again in the minds of people who have learned it by process of internalization. The focus hence is to capture, share and use collective knowledge.

Structure & lifecycle

CoPs have an independent lifecycle - CoPs develop, evolve and sustain (or dissolve) as per the combined energy of the group and on the fact whether members are still curious and find the CoP a space viable for learning.
The magic of CoPs lies in the fact that CoPs can transcend department and organization boundaries. This is immensely helpful in creating industry wide evolution and growth. Everybody learns, everybody shares and everybody grows. Moreover CoPs are not limited to any particular industry - organizations from as diverse industries such as automotives, technology, hospitality, finance benefit from CoPs. Case in point: Xerox - a photocopier company (which became a document management company after embracing the knowledge revolution), GM - an automotive giant, Motorola - technology company.

How to build one in your backyard?

Identify existing CoPs

Organizations needing to generate learning from CoPs often do not have to build them anew. CoPs are existent in almost every organization - they have to be identified, encouraged and fuelled with proper organization support.

Vision and concrete objectives

On the very onset, a community of practice needs a goal, a mission just like the organization that houses it. There needn't be a time bound target to achieve, however members of a CoP must understand very clearly what knowledge are they suppose to share.... and why!

Short term results - long term goals

Human patience wears out fast. To keep interest levels up and to convince members inside and outside the CoP of its worth and value, it ought to aim for short term results. The goals of the community should no doubt be holistic and long term but the community should see itself inching towards that state and environment of collaboration and communication in milestones achieved in short phases of time.

Management support to nurture in its initial stages

Communities of practice are often assumed to be in totally independent without any needed support from outsiders. It has its own mind and heart, it creates its own policies and schedules. It makes it own decisions. True…however every community needs nurturing in its initial days. And this is the responsibility of the organization that houses it. AT&T, when it built its knowledge community identified communities of practice already in existence and provided them with Information and Knowledge Exchange (IKE), full time editors to keep the communities knowledge up to date and a facilitator.
CoPs must be allowed to operate independently without any bureaucratic policies hindering their growth. CoPs best function like businesses within businesses, having their own operational command and processes.

Important part of KMS

Communities make an integral and important part of an organization's Knowledge Management System. Knowledge Management initiatives by organizations involve information dissemination in the form of documented knowledge bases and more importantly knowledge communities that share and exchange experiences with each other and make use of documented knowledge base. However a sharing culture should precede the knowledge infrastructure that is built. Often companies build intranets and then expect employees to jump in and log hours on the system. It is reported that consulting giant Andersen Consulting too committed a similar mistake with its initial version of intranet.

End note

Finally, organizations should realize that employees are not going to share if they are just told to. Members of the organization need to be motivated and shown real value add in sharing their knowledge with others. This in turn requires the organization to be transparent to its people in its processes.

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