Preparing
for Conversations with Hubert Saint-Onge
Chapter 11
Communities as Catalysts for Change
Draft May 1, 2 ,3+
Note: This is a draft
of the final chapter of a book co-written by Hubert Saint-Onge
and his colleague at Clarica, Deb Wallace. The book is scheduled
to be published in September, 2002. Please note also that several
graphs which will be used in the published book have been omitted
in this presentation. As always when documents are long,
the subheads are hyperlinked as anchors to assist searchers.
Chapter Note: From data to information
to knowledge. From processing to compiling to collaborating.
From conceptual to tactical to operational. In all areas of the
economy, we are on a developmental trajectory, moving at rates
never witnessed before in our history. With market demands shaping
the way organizations interact with their customers and each
other and technology innovations driving changes in how organizations
function, we indeed live in interesting times. Understanding
the value of communities of practice to an organization and identifying
ways to support and nurture them are only preliminary steps in
the developmental process underway in the knowledge era. We've
provided a context for the need and outlined an approach for
generating capabilities and applying knowledge, based on our
experience of building communities of practice situated in a
strategic context. But where are communities going? How will
this new way of thinking about an age-old social structure influence
the evolution of organizations and spawn new business models?
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 From Under Your Nose to
Norm
As practitioners,
our purpose has been to provide a context for our work and illustrate
a course of action from a variety of perspectives that was grounded
in our experience. Our challenge has been to provide a strong
conceptual framework and outline a concrete application while
highlighting the contribution of knowledge-focused work to improving
the performance of an individual, a practice, and ultimately
an organization.
In organizations
that have turned the corner and embraced the challenges and opportunities
of the knowledge era, the "What's in it for ME?" value
proposition for supporting communities of practice is not difficult
to identify. But we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of
possibility that communities present.
With this last chapter,
we'd like to suggest a developmental cycle for communities of
practice within an organization -- a transition to a new organizational
model where communities of practice become a complimentary structure
to the traditional accountability hierarchy. We'll begin with
a look at a maturity model that presents a path for this transition
and then discuss the components of the new structure. We'll also
look at the role that communities of practice can play as the
agent for change in the transition to the new organizational
structure that we're suggesting. And finally we'll look at the
changes to roles and challenges to successfully completing this
transition.
It's highly probable
that communities of practice at some point in the range we discussed
in Chapter 2 already exist in your organization. You many not
be aware of them, but groups of people who have a common interest
in collectively meeting challenges in the workplace are getting
together on an informal basis to talk about ways of improving
their practice. Recognizing their existence and the value they
create is the first step toward leveraging this valuable structure
that is an inherent part of your organization.
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Sporadic Emergence of Communities
At the earliest
stage of development, an organization becomes aware that communities
of practice exist. Through the entrepreneurial spirit of individual
community members or the keen eye of a business unit manager,
the value of these communities that are working under your nose
is recognized. A curiosity may spark further discussion about
what these communities are "up to." How do they operate
with little structure to provide capability-generating forums
that improve practice? What was the need that brought them together?
How do they collaborate to find solutions to their problems?
How do they share the new knowledge that they create? What effect
do they have on their members? What new approaches have they
been able to introduce to their practice?
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Systematic Building of Communities
As we progress through
the maturity model, the value of communities of practice as vessels
for learning and collaboration has been recognized by people
at the senior management level. It's unlikely that there will
be unilateral acceptance, but a "toe hold" is established,
and a champion for sponsoring a systematic approach to community
building provides the leadership and resources necessary to develop
a strategy.
The organization,
existing community members, and other interested people enter
into a collaborative learning process of their own -- a joint
effort to learn about communities of practice. What's the best
way to nurture existing communities? How do we put a foundation
in place to support the creation of new communities? What pieces
do we have in place already? How do we communicate the value
of communities to the rest of the organization -- to put communities
on the radar screen?
At this point, the
efforts to support community building take two paths -- directions
that may be simultaneously developed, but have distinct, yet
intertwined, purposes. The first direction is focused on the
development of communities. The organization must create the
foundation for communities -- all the logistics that we identified
in Chapter 6 to get communities up and running or to increase
support for existing communities. The second direction is focused
on the organization -- the development of a strategy that recognizes
communities as part of the organizational fabric.
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Communities as an Inherent
Part of the Organization
As capability generation
continues to become more ingrained in the organization's culture
and the enterprise-wide technology platform integrates more tools
for collaboration and communication, the organization begins
to rely on communities of practice as a primary source of learning
and knowledge creation. The community also facilitates the acquisition
and enhancement of meta-capabilities that enable individuals
to accelerate their own rate of learning, which in turn contributes
organizational capabilities. The organization's knowledge capital
is also increased, growing in value as the community generates
new knowledge and adds these objects to repositories for reuse.
Trust has been improved
and is operating at a higher level than ever achieved before.
The value proposition to the individual, the community, and the
organization has increased to the point that customers and shareholders
are recognizing performance improvements and strengthening their
relationships with the organization. And the speed and agility
with which the organization can innovate to find new integrated
solutions are contributing at a significant level to realizing
the organization's strategic imperatives.
At this stage, the
organization has the partnering mindset and capability to successfully
participate in the value creation networks that we discussed
in Chapter 4 -- a strategic advantage for succeeding in the knowledge
era.
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Effective Balance Between
Existing and New Organizational Structures
As the organization
continues its evolution through the maturity model, it has now
implemented a new organizational structure. The traditional hierarchical
accountability spine still exists as the bricks of the organization,
but the mortar is now made up of a network of communities that
come in all shapes and sizes.
This new organizational
structure has a high degree of integration of its culture and
its technology, has broadly embraced the meta-capabilities of
learning and collaboration as the way to generate new knowledge,
and relies on communities of practice to innovate at the speed
necessary to meet the demands of its marketplace.
Communities of practice
have become an integral part of the organization -- a strategic
tool that has enabled the organization to outperform its goals.
Recognized as world-class in its area of expertise, the organization
is well positioned to meet the next set of challenges that will
fuel its continued evolution.
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Communities of Practice
Intertwine with the Organization's Accountability Spine
In order to create
an organization that is fully realized in the knowledge era,
we need to rethink our organizational structure. The traditional
lines-and-boxes framework of the hierarchical organization is
not able to maximize learning and collaboration or effectively
participate in value creation networks that provide integrated
solutions to customers. It needs to be complemented with a structure
that creates a highly effective environment that fosters the
development of these meta-capabilities.
Wrapped around the
accountability spine and integrated with the existing hierarchical
structure of the organization, communities of all shapes and
sizes will provide the muscle and flesh needed to perform with
a speed and an agility that keep the organization ahead of market
demands -- to participate in a sense-and-respond model that meets
customer needs as opposed to a make-and-sell model that falls
short of customer expectations.
We don't believe
that there will be a single leap to this new structure. Rather,
over time as communities of practice (as well as other types
of communities) are appreciated for the value they provide the
organization, they will gain recognition as an essential component
of the organizational structure. Communities will function at
multiple levels with various purposes and different levels of
attachment to the accountability spine of the organization.
Communities will
become the focal point for learning, relying on the expertise
of their members who have in turn fully embraced a self-initiated
learning culture and taken full responsibility for increasing
their capabilities.
As networks of communities
emerge as an integral structure, organizations will keep an accountability
spine that will be flatter and more empowering to ensure that
the checks and balances inherent in current accountabilities
are effectively addressed throughout the organization. Various
communities of practice that represent the many forms of communities
in the range we discussed in Chapter 2 will come to complement
the traditional organizational structure, filling needs that
it was never designed to meet. The combination of the two structures
adds up to an entirely new form of organizational design, one
that takes advantage of the complementary strengths of both approaches.
They co-exist in support of each other, building-in a level of
coherence and resilience that would be unattainable by either
structure on its own.
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Communities of Practice
as Catalysts for Change
Communities of practice
are at the core of the organizational transformation that has
already begun. They are one of the primary agents of change that
will prepare organizations to more successfully operate in the
knowledge era, in which knowledge capital will be readily recognized
as a core asset of an organization and strategies will be focused
on generating that capital through learning and collaboration.
We'll move beyond
thinking of knowledge capital in terms of intellectual property
rights, patents, and formulas that currently count toward the
financial health of an organization. And organizational capabilities
(strategy, systems, structure, culture, and leadership) will
reflect the value of an employee as an asset rather than as a
cost or liability to the organization. As catalysts for change,
communities of practice can help the organization evolve in significant
ways.
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Build Internal Capabilities
Parallel to Marketplace Factors
If an organization
is going to be able to keep up with its marketplace, staying
ahead rather than lagging behind market demands, it must be able
to align its capabilities with factors seen in the market's environment.
For example, if the market is demanding an integrated solution,
then the organization has to have the capabilities to develop,
provide, and support an integrated solution. It needs to develop
the capabilities to participate in a multiple partner value creation
network. If the market demands Internet options for completing
transactions and obtaining support via the Web, then the organization
must have Web-enabled capabilities to offer the necessary systems,
products, and services.
To create an effective
sense-and-respond model, the organization must clearly know what
the customer wants, which underscores the importance of building
and sustaining high-quality customer relationships -- a key element
of an organization's knowledge capital.
Whether gathering
outside expertise to inform a resolution to a problem in practice
or market intelligence to inform strategy development, communities
of practice function as conduits into the organization. They
channel external information that is then analyzed and used to
create new strategies based on customer needs and environmental
factors. Communities can directly affect the organization's ability
to stay ahead of market demand by practicing internally what
is expected externally. In a sense, communities of practice inoculate
the organization with factors from the marketplace -- they provide
the catalyst for creating organizational capabilities that will
enable the organization to put the right strategies and systems
in place in order to stay relevant to their customers.
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Communities
Strengthen Customer Relationships
Communities of practice
play a significant role in building an organization's customer
capital. The community model need not only include internal members.
We've already seen the value of creating customer communities
in consumer-driven organizations like Hallmark. Customer communities
can act as conduits to an organization. But to have successful
customer communities, the organization must have the internal
capabilities necessary to create and grow communities.
At Clarica, one
of the organization's goals with the Agent Network was to segue
to customer communities. By participating in a community of practice,
agents could increase their own capabilities -- learning how
a community functions, how to encourage participation through
purposeful facilitation, and how a community creates value. In
turn, agents could establish communities of their own customers.
Within these communities, agents could interact via multiple
channels, strengthen the customer relationship, and create a
collaborative learning environment that engages the customer
more directly in the organization. The opportunity to learn with
the customer is a significant strategic advantage for any organization.
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Communities
Build Meta-Capabilities Needed to Increase Individual and Organizational
Capabilities
We can't emphasize
strongly enough the need to build the meta-capabilities of collaboration
and learning within the organization -- the generative capabilities
that enable the organization to gain the required capabilities
and increase its knowledge capital. Communities are highly functioning
platforms for learning and collaborative problem solving. These
meta-capabilities are strengthened each time a productive inquiry
leads the community on a journey to find an appropriate answer,
situated in past experience, informed by new insights, and guided
by tacit knowledge that has never been articulated.
More and more we
are convinced that an organization's performance is based on
the quality of its conversations -- internally with employees
and externally with customers, potential customers, and partners.
Through conversations we learn what customers want, where the
marketplace is heading, what expertise is held by other organizations
-- the collective knowledge of the economy. Without quality conversations,
we are not able to challenge assumptions, make decisions, or
innovate in a meaningful way. Conversations are central to community
building. The value isn't in mining existing data, but in talking
with experts to learn from experience, extend ideas, and create
new knowledge.
A vibrant organization
must continue to challenge its assumptions, creating the healthy
tension that encourages individuals to "sharpen their saws"
and collaborate on the development of new integrated solutions
that contribute to the growth of the organization.
Communities of practice
provide their members and ultimately their organizations with
the meta-capabilities they need to manage the demands for continuous
learning.
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Communities
Increase the Capabilities an Organization Needs to Participate
in a Value Creation Network
In a networked economy,
organizations that do not participate in a value creation network
will quickly fall behind their competitors. Customers are demanding
complex, integrated solutions that few organizations could produce
in isolation.
The value chains
that organizations are most familiar with consist of linking
internal capabilities to provide a single solution. With the
emergence of knowledge-driven business networks, the costs associated
with transacting across organizations have gone down dramatically.
As a result, it is now more cost effective to partner across
organizations that excel in particular aspects of the value chain
than it is to have to develop all the capabilities required within
one organization. The integrated solutions that will satisfy
customer needs will be generated through partnerships of organizations
that bring to the table a world-class advantage in their respective
area(s).
Communities of practice
create and enhance the capabilities needed to fully participate
in a value creation network. The art of productive inquiry that
stimulates collaborative problem solving by accessing existing
knowledge, validating that knowledge in the experience of its
members, and creating new knowledge for effective action is at
the center of a community's ability to advance organizational
capabilities to partner and jointly innovate.
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Communities
Leverage the Next Stage of Technology Capability
In Chapter 4 we
discussed the maturation process of technology, showing how technology
has developed from data management to information management
to knowledge management. With communities, technology advances
another step in the support of collaboration, which requires
the close integration of culture and technology's efficacy.
The key challenge
to technology is to move people to the next level of quality
virtuality. The tools that exist today still fall short of supporting
the social needs of human interactions. The socio-technical integration
required hasn't developed to the level that can support the richness
of human encounters. However, organizations can't afford to wait
until this integration is achieved. Organizations have to enter
the technology arena and evolve with the advances. Otherwise,
they will be so far behind in incorporating technology into their
work processes and culture that they will never be able to catch-up.
As agents of change,
communities of practice introduce new methods for collaborating.
Blended with other channels of communication, technology provides
an opportunity for collaboration at a different level -- in instances
where geography, physical handicaps, or work demands make face-to-face
and other forms of communication impossible. Communities using
virtual spaces will help us better understand ways to address
the challenges of building trust, supporting spontaneity and
serendipity, and leveraging the dynamics of human interchange
within a virtual environment.
Not only do communities
provide an opportunity for organizations to leverage their investment
in a technology platform, they test the capabilities of the next
stages of technological advances.
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Communities
Represent a New Value Proposition
Participation in
communities of practice represents a new value proposition to
the individual. As a resource, a learning space, a place to test
ideas and innovate with colleagues outside a work-focused team,
communities serve to enhance the attachment of the individual
to the organization. The community meets personal needs that
cannot be fulfilled in the standard organization format. Rather
than finding themselves as anonymous parts of a performance machine,
members of a community of practice find that they share commitment
for the realization of their collective purpose and for enhancing
one another's capabilities. The commitment of communities to
their members is at a significantly higher level than that of
cross-functional work groups who come together to complete a
project and regroup for the next task at hand.
Communities make
a commitment to steward the knowledge base of the practice and
engage the participants in value-added activities that increase
individual capabilities. This new value proposition extends to
the long term; it doesn't stop at short-term needs.
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Communities
Shape a New Organizational Structure
We've come full
circle to our opening point -- communities of practice have the
potential to form an integral part of a new organizational structure
where a network of communities complements the existing accountability
structure. The transformative potential of communities has a
relatively low threshold of entrance. Communities of some form
exist in all organizations. The building blocks to support further
community development are also more than likely available to
some degree in an organization.
What may be missing
is the recognition of the value of communities -- though not
from the point of view of members. They already know the value,
otherwise they wouldn't be participating at the level that they
do. The recognition of potential value more than likely needs
to be realized at the management level and then engendered across
the organization in a systematic way through a developmental
approach similar to the maturity model we outlined at the beginning
of this chapter.
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Community Maturity Model
At the early stage
of community development for the organization, we noted that,
in order to incorporate a systematic approach for building communities,
the organization not only needs to put the logistics in place
to build communities, it has to develop a strategy that situated
community development as a strategic tool -- part of the organizational
structure.
While we've spent
the majority of this chapter outlining the value of leveraging
communities as change agents in the transformation of the organization
to a new structure, we need to take a step back and look at the
maturity model of communities themselves. The organization's
evolution to a new organizational model with a highly integrated
accountability spine and complementary network of communities
is totally dependent on the development of the communities that
create that network.
. . . (T)he network
is made-up of all different communities from the full range of
community types we discussed in Chapter 2. However, to achieve
the highest level of integration of community and accountability
models, a significant number of communities of practice will
need to be functioning at the structured level. And within these
structured communities, a high degree of effective performance
will be needed to support the balance of the complementary components
of a new integrated organizational structure.
To maximize the
value of communities, we have to proceed in a systematic manner,
building communities through the steps we outlined in the community
development process (see Chapters 7 and 10). We also need a strategic
context in the organization that will foster the development
of these communities (see Chapters 3 and 4).
For the structured
communities to contribute at this level of organizational development,
roles of people working in and supporting communities need to
evolve:
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Leadership
The exercise of
leadership will evolve from a "command and control"
to a partnering culture, where leadership is focused on actively
engaging the employee through stewardship and appreciation in
order to elicit commitment and ownership from employees. New
leadership capabilities will be needed to replace the traditional
model, where the dominance style of leadership has produced a
passive following characterized by an attitude of compliance
and entitlement in employees -- cultural norms that are still
well entrenched in many organizations.
With the new integrated
organizational structure, leadership capabilities are not reserved
for executives and managers -- they will be needed by all individuals
in the organization. A leadership culture of self-initiation,
interdependence, and shared success through the achievement of
others will be required.
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Individual
In a network of
communities structure, employees will belong to multiple communities
and subcommunities. They will need to develop their interpersonal
skills, learn to effectively collaborate and participate in the
community, and increase their abilities to multitask and innovate.
The demands on time and attention will require self-management
of schedules and energies. A new feeling of self-satisfaction
from the success of the community as well as individual achievement
will strengthen an individual's commitment to participate.
The community will
be the employees' focus for learning. Their responsibility to
contribute to the community's knowledge will require a knowledge-sharing
rather than knowledge-hoarding mindset. This will be in large
part fostered by a leadership culture that engenders high levels
of trust and shared ownership for the success of the organization.
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Managerial
Mangers will need
to learn to manage without direct control. The resource management
process will need to evolve to a different level where resources
are allocated to projects and/or communities. The management
of resources will have to be monitored from the perspective of
the whole rather than focused on a segment, as in a traditional
department or business unit. A single manager may not control
or even have accountability for the outcomes. As a result, it
will become even more important for managers to find the right
people with the right capabilities to be able to function in
a context where success depends on personal responsibility and
self-initiation.
As the organization
gradually becomes more and more networked through communities,
an added challenge will be to facilitate a robust interchange
internally and externally with customers and partners. This will
require that managers give up direct control, remain fluid, and
yet maintain coherence. In optimizing performance, the key managerial
contribution becomes that of creating the right organizational
context and ensuring that interdependencies are effectively managed
through partnering.
As an agent of change,
communities of practice prepare an organization to not only survive
in the knowledge era, but to thrive and continue to grow. Just
as the industrial revolution left behind companies that couldn't
successfully automate their processes, organizations that can't
collectively share and create new knowledge won't survive the
change that is fueled by market and societal demands.
With an ability
to realize the benefits being a knowledge-driven organization,
to span the knowing-doing gap, to effectively use knowledge assets,
and to maximize advances in technology, communities provide a
vehicle for leveraging expertise through quality conversations
that increase individual and organizational capabilities and
affect performance.
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Challenges to Communities
as Change Agents
The evolution to a new organizational structure is not without
its challenges. As practitioners involved in numerous changes,
we rely on history and our own experience to show us that any
organizational change has challenges at multiple levels. Clarica
is at the beginning of the maturity model we discussed earlier
in this chapter. We're currently building momentum for a systematic
approach to community building at the enterprise-wide level.
Identifying the challenges helps inform the process and build
on the precursors for success that we discussed in Chapter 4.
We can look at challenges
to communities as agents of change from the many perspectives
that exist within the community structure.
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Challenges
to the Individual
As we transition
to communities of practice as a key organizational structure,
individuals will face challenges, especially people who have
not developed their interpersonal skills nor have an affinity
for collaborating. Within a community structure, individuals
will need to learn how to distribute their attention and energy
across multiple communities as part of their time-management
approach. Self-organizing skills that manage priorities and ensure
that commitments are met may need to be further developed.
New mindsets will
be necessary to manage a network of relationships that may have
blurred lines of responsibility and accountability. Individuals
will also need to honestly recognize their own capability gaps
and initiate learning that is aligned with accountability and
performance. The commitment required to actively take part in
communities will need to stem from an experientially based conviction
that working collaboratively through communities brings higher
levels of capability and performance than not participating.
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Challenges
to the Community
The organization
is not responsible for the community -- the community is responsible
for itself. With this responsibility comes the key challenge
of maintaining relevance to its membership. Just as organizations
need to strengthen their relationships with their customers in
order to understand their needs, the community must stay in tune
with its members. Above all else, the community must remain relevant
to members by providing them with a high-trust environment in
which they can increase their capabilities and solve the challenges
to their practice. As communities become a more integral part
of the organization, they must also be relevant to the strategic
imperatives of the organization.
The creative tensions
that challenge the community to continue in its development are
managed by the community through facilitation and guided by community
conventions. These tensions may also need the implementation
of a liaison process between the community and the organization.
Issues that affect the community's or a member's ability to perform
will need to be resolved through a process that brings the issue
to the attention of appropriate management and facilitates a
resolution to the problem. In doing so, the community fulfills
its role as a strategic tool to the organization -- a tool that
can be used to address differences of opinion and challenges
to the collective mindset that forms the organization's culture.
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Challenges
to the Organization
Perhaps the challenges
to the organization are the most daunting of the three presented
so far. The organization is challenged to assess its core --
its organizational structure. Does it have the necessary culture
and capabilities to enter the value creation network that will
position it for success in the knowledge era? Does it have the
capabilities to identify a knowledge strategy that encompasses
a comprehensive commitment to understanding and leveraging the
true value of its knowledge capital? Does it have the energy
and resources to embrace a new way of thinking that challenges
some of the fundamental beliefs that have until recently held
it in good stead with its customers and shareholders?
Recognizing the
value of self-governed structures may be a significant challenge
for organizations. Giving up the traditional leadership model
that exercised command and control as the primary strategy for
managing human capital and processes will not be something that
can be achieved overnight. Leadership mindsets will change as
the value of communities is made clearer, but this is a developmental
process that will require significant efforts of a champion with
highly developed change management capabilities.
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Challenges
to Culture, Strategy, and Leadership
Culture has a great
deal of effect on the organization's ability to realize a strategy
because everyone in the organization is involved in its implementation.
In fact, a strategy will only have the desired effect if it affects
the actions of everyone in the organization.
The collective mindset
imposed by the organization's culture will affect how people
will react to a new strategy. If these strategies do not fit
the preconceived notions fed by the this mindset, it will be
difficult for individuals to understand the rationale for the
strategy, let alone commit to the change it represents. When
a strategy is not aligned with the culture, it can't achieve
its main purpose to unify and mobilize employees.
A certain amount
of tension is desirable for the organization -- it can bring
a great deal of focus and momentum toward faster decision-making.
When a strategy is creating considerable tension, it's important
for the leadership of the organization to play an active role
in spelling out the business imperative for change.
Leadership must
also be exercised in helping employees understand how the new
strategy will fulfill their goals to have a vibrant and successful
organization. All this must be done in a credible manner and
requires an environment where there is enough trust to openly
discuss the pros and cons of the rationale. A closed environment,
distrust, and low morale will give leadership limited room to
maneuver.
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Communities -- The New Frontier?
Are communities
of practice just a passing phenomenon that will soon be discarded
for yet another trendy management approach? Is the interest in
communities primarily a ruse for piloting new technology that
holds some promise? Like the field of knowledge management itself,
are we looking at old wine -- new bottle, a recycled approach
for business process re-engineering, or a spate of quick fixes
for an ailing economy?
Well, maybe. While
we may look at communities of practice as a new frontier, they
are in fact situated in everything we know about how people learn,
work, and live together -- how people interact, look for support,
and value experience. So from that perspective, communities aren't
anything new. However, communities are being placed in a new
context and have the opportunity to play a significant role in
evolving organizational structure.
Communities of practice
may seem unfamiliar now, but in five or ten years they may be
as common to discussions on organizational structure as business
units and cross-functional teams are today. If managers unlock
the value of communities, the boxes and lines of a traditional
organizational chart can no longer provide a solution to the
challenges of a rapidly evolving marketplace. And communities
will take a more prominent role in the creation of an organizational
structure that is able to respond effectively.
Most organizations
are facing market pressures that require a level of speed and
agility that the traditional organization can't muster. Addressing
current inadequacies requires that we take a more comprehensive
view of organizational architecture that encompasses values,
systems, and processes. Moving beyond a single-minded view of
the organization as a structure, we must create the processes
and approaches that develop the meta-capabilities of collaboration
and learning. Although developing and nurturing communities present
challenges to organizations, the potential benefits far outweigh
the costs.
The Internet has
only started to affect the economy. It will continue to be a
primary catalyst for the foreseeable future. As bandwidth continues
to increase, its effect will also continue to increase on marketplaces
and organizations. The same technological changes that are shaping
the forces of global competition can be harnessed within the
organization to increase speed and accelerate capability development.
Ironically, these
technology-driven changes are placing the need to build meaningful
human relationships at the forefront of the strategic agenda.
As the internal value chain is subsumed by external value creation
networks, the ability to collaborate across boundaries becomes
essential for internal and external success.
It's important that
organizations start taking steps that will enhance their readiness
for these new market conditions. We're not advocating a big bang
approach with communities of practice. Rather, we see leveraging
communities as one step, albeit a key step, in an evolutionary
process that has more likelihood of success than a radical shift.
Communities of practice
represent one of the steps that an organization can take without
causing excessive disturbance. Supporting the development of
communities of practice will have implications for the way people
work, and it will be necessary to carefully manage the changes
involved in this transition to a new organizational structure.
Once communities
are a more pervasive feature of an organization, they will transform
organizations at a very fundamental level. Cross-functional pursuits,
enterprise-wide initiatives, and client-service teams will become
the norm, an integral part of the organizational fabric. As this
happens, the architecture of the whole organization will shift
gradually. An increasing number of employees will experience
one or more of these self-governed entities that enhance collaboration,
learning, capability acquisition, strategic coherence, and ultimately
the performance of the organization.
As communities multiply
across the organization, this collaborative experience based
on high-trust relationships is reinforced and generalized. In
the end, communities of practice will have fundamentally altered
the DNA of the organization. This change will affect the leadership
mindsets in the organization, the processes by which work is
accomplished, and the systems that enable the organization's
efforts.
And as we develop
in our own organizational maturity model, we should challenge
people not just to build a community, but to set the organization
on a trajectory that sees communities as a key component of its
total structure.
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Conclusion
Communities of practice
need to be leveraged to enhance the collaborative and learning
quotient. As organizations move from the predominant logic of
make-and-sell to a model of sense-and-respond, they are striving
to make a parallel shift from a mechanical and bureaucratic organizational
structure to one that is more collaborative and boundaryless.
While the accountability spine of the organization will need
to remain in the form of a hierarchy of responsibilities on a
vertical axis, there is a key need to complement this structure
with a vibrant horizontal axis of cross-enterprise collaboration.
Communities of practice are the primary tool we have at our disposal
to enhance the collaborative dimension of the organization. The
need to move faster and to provide customers with integrated
solutions make it imperative for organizations to reinforce their
ability to work collaboratively.
The competitive,
fast-moving marketplaces where most organizations operate makes
the ability to generate new capability at an accelerated rate
the ultimate strategic imperative for any organization. This
is a competitive context where an organization that learns more
slowly than the other players in its industry will disappear.
Knowledge and learning are closely integrated. Learning comes
from working with existing knowledge and generating new knowledge
on the basis of understanding and insight. Communities of practice
build on the ability to collaborate and to accelerate learning
within the organization. By their very dynamics, communities
of practice provide solutions to real business issues. But more
important, they insert into the organization an on-going ability
to learn.
By increasing an organization's meta-capabilities to collaborate
and learn, the culture is gradually transformed. In the end,
this is the most important effect and lasting legacy of communities
of practice in the organization. They become the catalyst for
a shift to a sense-and-respond culture, challenging the organization
to incorporate internal capabilities parallel to the external
factors of the marketplace that results in an ability to realize
the organization's aspirations.
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