Organization’s collected knowledge is its most essential asset. The development of this intellectual knowledge from tacit to explicit, sharing and utilization forms the basis of knowledge management. Its purpose is to ensure that the relevant knowledge in people’s heads and the hard drive is captured and made available to the whole organization for the realization of an organization’s goals.

Communities of Practice (CoP) are fundamental to knowledge management (KM) framework in any organization. Their purpose is to provide to the members, flow of information, access to global peers, a platform for collaboration, innovation, reusing of ideas leading to improved business performance and delivery.

Communities are a platform for a wide variety of knowledge activities, including gathering and disseminating content, brainstorming, asking for help, solving problems, finding experts, keeping members informed of emerging trends, learning, and transferring knowledge.

Bringing to life a community can be a great first step in laying the foundation for gathering Organization’s knowledge and channelizing it for growth of employees and realizing delivery excellence. However, the real challenge is to drive these communities to success and ensuring that they adapt with the changes in business and that they do not fizzle out over a period of time.

Here are six commandments to drive successful Communities. These are not exhaustive but certainly layout the foundation stone for steering successful CoPs.

Community governance: The Community managers and stakeholders should be clear on the Community purpose, expected behavior, what they want to achieve out of it and run periodic checks to review the purpose and strategy and modify/upgrade as needed to keep the Community relevant for members. The community structure (open, close, or moderated) should directly align to its purpose/

Why should members join?:  Why will members take out time to join these communities or participate in community-related initiatives? What’s in it for them should be clearly outlined and communicated to the members. A period review of members and their activities should be conducted. Seeking feedback from them on relevancy and how you continue to keep Communities effective for them should be the key to have engaged members.

Role clarity for stewarding the community initiatives: As discussed above, there a host of activities enabled via a Community. The community manager should clearly define roles and responsibilities for everyone administering the sites including the content team, community champions, and specialists. Also, he or she needs to set up frequency for reviews, analyzing activities, seeking feedback, etc. to ensure that the Community continues to align with its business goal. If not, take a step back to review and refresh it.

Thoroughly defined content strategy: The content posted on CoP should be fresh, relevant, and reviewed regularly for taxonomy and accuracy. Policies should be in place for archiving old content, content review, and ensuring that the latest content is highlighted. Create an alert system so that members are aware when content is posted. This will ensure the regular access of content and Community by the members.

Collaboration and content harvesting activities: Collaboration and crowdsourcing are at the core of what communities. Schedule regular collaboration activities to foster knowledge sharing and innovation. See here various collaboration tools you can leverage for your communities. Also, organizing regular content harvesting campaigns leads to the gathering of content sitting on members' hard drive which could be reused by other members spanning organizational boundaries.

Performance evaluation: Regular evaluation of performance metrics helps community program managers understand what areas the community is performing well and what areas need improvement. This is essential for driving sustainable communities.

Let me know your thoughts on what other actions can help drive sustainable CoPs.

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Communities are an integral part of knowledge management in any organization bringing together people, processes, and technologies to capture, manage, find, and share knowledge. The purpose is to enable the community members to collaborate, get upskilled, making their day to day work easier and how.

Here are some of the key outcomes from well-driven Communities:

1 - Increased output:
Well run communities enable people to spend less time looking for information or recreating already existing information.

2 - Innovation:
Communities lead to increased collaboration and exchanging of ideas driving Innovation in the organization.

3 - Enhanced client value:
Communities enable employees to stay updated on the latest trend and technologies helping them to build and apply new skills to drive client value impact.

4 - Harvesting Content:
Communities play a key role in harvesting content from its members and enable the members to leverage existing assets and resources in ongoing projects.

Well driven and moderated Communities can be a key differentiator of how your workforce can expand into the next wave of innovation leading to better selling and delivering.

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This week two different people said to me: I do not know what you do. Fortunately, these were not coworkers or members of the KM community, but close friends. Answering that I work in “knowledge management” was not enough. By this time, they know this. Both of them had jokingly said at some point in our friendship that “I should manage their knowledge” which I am sure sounded very funny in their minds!

It dawned on me—what is it about KM that is so clear to KM workers but so elusive to others?

So when I overheard a group of people talking about building a ship while sailing it, my ears perked up. I love a good sailing metaphor! KM does sometimes feel like building a ship while also sailing in it. By this I don’t mean that I know how to build a ship. I do not. And if I were not on the ship, it would likely still be floating. In fact, the ship is full of highly educated and passionate people! So a floating ship, with smart and passionate people, who know what they are doing, and me—one person who doesn’t even know how to build a ship. What am I doing?

For me, being a KM worker has entailed figuring out where I can bring value to the shipbuilding and sailing process—across a complex system, with competent stakeholders, and amidst organizational ebbs and flows and finite resources. I’m part of a community of shipbuilders and sailors, but I help my fellow shipbuilders do what they are doing or co-create ways to do it better one step at a time. I help connect people from the bow with others at the stern. I can gather insights from one side of the ship and bring them to another. I help welcome the newcomer, while also sharing the wisdom of oldtimers. I can work with the crew to be attentive to our interconnections, relationships, and boundaries. And I can share with the crew just how they are working—how many connections they have, how many lessons they have learned, how much they have generated, captured, and shared with each other. I can also reflect with the crew about the kind of crew that we are.

Along our voyage together, I (and other KM workers) must shift what we bring to the shipbuilding or sailing process to meet new needs and forge across uncharted waters. Maybe I am taking this too far!

It seems like everyday at sea is new day with new and exciting opportunities. And doing this as part of a global community of shipbuilders and sailors—whether that is with fellows at IBP or GHKC or with members from our internal MSH Technical Exchange Networks (recently highlighted in KM World)—is what I truly value as a KM worker.

I am not sure if KM workers as both part of a cadre of shipbuilders and sailors makes sense, but I like it!