Summary: Conversations with Simon Lelic
Communities and Organizations: Future of KM Practitioners

Simon Lelic
Managing Editor, Ark Group

Editor's note: This is a summary of the "Conversations with Simon Lelic" held in November, 2003. The monthly STAR Series Dialogues are moderated by world KM luminaries who volunteer to discuss topics in email digests with AOK members over a two-week period.

Summary by Carol Butler

Another STAR Series Dialogue has come to an end. Our guest host was Simon Lelic, managing editor of Knowledge Management Magazine (KMM) and a couple of other related publications of the Ark Group, based in the UK. Simon Lelic is currently researching and writing a practitioner's guide to communities of practice, which will be published at the end of the year.

During the first week there was considerable dialogue on the relationship between communities and organizations, following an initial discussion of CoPs. The second week dealt primarily with the future of KMers and KM, and ended with some brief but insightful comments about the alphabet soup of KM terminology and suggestions for primary KM principles.

Ron Donaldson, business analyst, English Nature, Great Britain, offered several perspectives for considering CoPs. Simon Lelic reminded us that Ron's point about social events (and small inputs having potentially enormous outcomes) is one that crops up time and again in examples of communities that have really succeeded in engaging their members. As Shawn Callahan, one of ActKM's founders, put it, it's all about creating relationships.

Jerry Ash said: "A CoP that is not connected somehow to organizational purpose is not a CoP. It is some other kind of community -- let's say a professional community where practitioners hone their craft but do not actually practice it together for a common good -- like a professional association, for instance. It is not a question of how intrusive an organization dare become in directing the course of the community as it is in creating a trusting and collaborative relationship between communities and hierarchies that bring balance and positive outcome for both."

Jack Ring, sole proprietor, Innovation Management, Scottsdale, AZ, U.S. concentrated on what it means to share a practice, to be a practitioner. "Physicians, lawyers, musicians, race car drivers (living ones), to name a few examples, are practitioners not because they DO something but because of HOW they do it. The practitioner's challenge is to select and adapt what they know to the situation at hand. Thus they synthesize a process for the case before them."

Simon Lelic asked the group to share any stories about how established good practice has clashed or coincided with their own organization's prevailing culture. He confessed to being particularly fascinated by the question of whether/how far to align community activities with the strategic goals of the organisation as a whole. The topic generated a vigorous discussion.

Melissie Rumizen, previous STAR moderator and knowledge strategist at Buckman Laboratories, believes that organizations must have a good discussion of why they are investing in communities, and how to measure the return on that investment. "If you have the right discussion, you will see that you are investing in intangibles . . . The problem is not that you are dealing with communities so much as that you are discussing tangible measures for knowledge investment and work. The measures [of financial goals] are too limited to be appropriate."

Several agreed that when management structures fail to fully understand the potential value of communities, they are often perceived as failures. Simon Lelic shared that "those organisations that have consciously, and successfully, tied community activities to strategic goals have actively considered whether a community of practice is the best means of tackling a particular issue (as opposed to a team, taskforce, etc)."

Kurt Rieger, principle consultant, business integration, ATP Management Design, Victoria, Australia, said all types of organizations are missing a "glue" or "cement" between CoPs and an organization's hierarchy. He argued important benefits can come from creating a custom glue/cement system in your organization to link the CoP, the corporate hierarchy and management. Better connections ensure informed decisions can be made "top down bottom up," and allows the right group (in his example the CoP) to take ownership of risks. "The key to organisational success is [to identify] the right people throughout the organisation and to give them the power of knowledge to make better decisions." He also argued that since risk is difficult to measure, it is important not to measure risk, but to measure risk avoidance by the people in the CoPs.

Karyn Cullen, know-how co-ordinator, MinterEllison, Brisbane, Australia, offered her conclusions regarding the relationship between communities and organization. The organization, if it expects to benefit from community activities, has a responsibility to identify and recognize the existence of the community, to support it in helping that community reach its full potential, and to be sensitive to the unique structures and activities of the community. But as Melissie Rumizen said, "If someone invests, they deserve to ask for evidence for a return on their investment."

Simon Lelic said the most powerful incentive for employees is the knowledge that by participating in a community they will become better equipped to do their jobs.

Debra Amidon, previous STAR moderator and founder, Entovation International, Wilmington, Massachusets, U.S., introduced us to a growing interest in Knowledge/Intelligent Cities, Regions and World, and provided web resources for more information including the E100 Roundtable, held recently in Monterey, Mexico.

The discussion then turned to the question of the future for KMers. Simon Lelic expects two trends to continue. "First, that the principles and practices that we group under the heading 'knowledge management' will become ever more important and central to the activities of just about every collective body -- organisation, business venture, city, country and so on. Second, use of the term itself, and thus the existence of knowledge managers per se, will diminish."

Several suggestions for new terminology were proposed, including: Knowledge Mapping, Knowledge Production and Utilization, Knowledge Leadership, and Knowledge and Risk Management. Jack Ring wondered if KM would divide into KM for Risk and KM for Product Development, etc. Kurt Rieger feels a much deeper issue is managing the intellectual property of the organization, the CoP, and the individual.

Finally, Paul McDowall jumped in with a plea to stop the outburst of new acronyms and take a bigger picture view. He said: "If we have an alphabet soup of permutations and combinations of KM and call them all something different, what does that say about our domain? What does that say about us? And what does that say to the people we are trying to reach? My personal view is that KM is essentially a unified theory of management. If this is true, then why are we trying to segment it?"

Bob Bater shared his view of KM as an ecological issue, and of the organization as a complex adaptive system made of complex adaptive systems, and gave us a little complexity theory perspective on the subject.

Finally, Simon Lelic ended the dialogue with his own list of guiding principles to govern (or at least influence) any KM initiative:

Guiding KM Principles

1. People are the key to success in any knowledge-based process. As such, developing an effective communications and change-management strategy should be right at the top of your KM 'to-do' list;
2. Technological tools should be seen as just that - tools that should only be used if and when they help people to do their jobs better. To paraphrase Dave Snowden, too many organisations focus on trying to "bio-reengineer the hand" to fit the tool;
3. Senior buy-in is crucial, but not necessarily enough on its own - as Melissie Rumizen wrote in a recent article in the magazine, "KM is a participative sport";
4. Don't get too bogged down in terminology - describe what you want to achieve in terms that resonate with your audience (whatever their position in the organisation);
5. A KM project is never "complete" -- it is an ongoing journey that requires a great deal of stamina!

Note: The complete archive of this and other STAR Series Dialogues can be found in the AOK Knowledge Network archives at Yahoo.com. You must be an AOK Member to access the archives at Yahoo. Membership is free and you will be able to participate in upcoming Dialogues with some of the world's most successful and best known knowledge practitioners and leaders.

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