Corporate Communities
(posted by Holly Pendleton)
• Most learning happens from connecting with another person, by screwing up and learning from it …
• Why do organizations then put 80% of their $ into formal learning when most learning happens in informal learning settings
• Community members are like professional chefs … (an analagy)
Communities must:
• Support a corporate strategy / strategic priority / vision …
• Cross formal organizational structures (i.e. are NOT a formal organizational structure)
• Become a strategic resource to drive organizational priorities, however…
• Must balance the needs of the community members (which may or may not directly tie to a current organizational priority)
• Provide tangible value to members or they won’t participate (since it’s not a formal structure and is something to do on top of their typical job, it is competing for employee time)
• The Manager must have an understanding of the domain
• Professional organizations have typically done this pretty well and were very early adopters – connect all business process consultants together when they might formally be aligned by industry
• Communities provide a structure to immediately “extract” value from new employees – We typically look to hire the best, but then we bring them in and teach them “our way” and it takes a while for them to be in a position to bring new experience to the table. Communities offer a way to help them better know how to do their job (quicker orientation) and to have a venue to immediately offer their expertise.
Where do you learn:
• www.APQC.org (American Productivity and Quality Center) has best practice papers (open to public 6 months after publication) on use of communities of practice in a corporate environment (I’m disappointed with their agility recently, but the papers they have are foundational, core, and highly recommended).
• Cultivating Communities of Practice bv Wenger, McDermott, & others
• ona-prac @ yahoo
• com-prac @ yahoo
• Cpsquare (community of practice for community of practice professionals) – has a community of practice online workshop
• Company Command by Nancy Dixon
Jay Cross:
Page Last Updated: Jun 7 8:26am by Jay Cross