Conversations
with Hubert Saint-Onge
Conflicting
Views on Training and CoPs
Part III: Communities
in Theory; Some Broader Questions
Part
III. Communities of Practice in Theory;
Some Broader Questions
 Further Conflicting Views
on CoPs
Jerry
Ash put
forward further conflicting views on CoPs:
Hubert, during the
March STAR Series with Tom Stewart, who as you know is a member
of the editorial board of Fortune magazine (later became editor
of the Harvard Business Review) and the media's foremost
advocate of KM, Jack Vinson noticed a distinct conflict
between what Tom had to say and what you had said just a week
earlier at the AOK/Delphi Group Enterprise Learning and Knowledge
Exchange Summit in Palm Springs, California.
In your keynote
address, you discussed the idea that some communities could be
forced, not voluntary. You used a two-axis description of communities:
One axis ranged from Structured to Unstructured, and the other
from Project to Functional. Your argument was that structured
communities tend to be appointed, accountable for a specific
goal and probably part of the formal organization/hierarchy.
The following week,
Tom Stewart said company-created work groups are not communities
of practice:
"Project teams
are great things. They are where the work gets done in flat,
knowledge-based organizations. They have deadlines and budgets.
Communities of practice do not do work, except incidentally.
Communities of practice are where human capital gets created
and shared. They have no deadlines, no agendas, no fixed budget.
They have a shared passion.
"Yes, they
can overlap. Sometimes a community of practice can emerge out
of what began as a project team. And sometimes a project team
can grow out of a community of practice, when a bunch of people
who were already part of a community decide to undertake a specific
job. But they are not, not, not -- emphatically not, in case
you missed the point -- synonyms. And Hubert, whom I love and
admire, is, for the first time in his life, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Project teams and communities of practice do not belong on a
continuum or as points on a grid. They are on different planes
of existence."
Jerry
Ash: What
the two of you seem to be disagreeing on is the way CoPs form
and function -- Hubert wanting them to be company inspired and
controlled; Tom expecting them to form naturally around the water
cooler.
For me, all this
was a prelude to a story in the Washington Post about office
cliques. They form naturally, but are they CoPs? The article
didn't even mention CoPs, but painted an interesting picture
of the usefulness (not) of office cliques which are self-forming
groups.
Here's an excerpt
of that story:
"So you thought
high school was over? You can sense echoes of high school when
that gaggle of women goes to lunch every day and leaves you behind.
You know your group -- being on the tech side -- cannot mingle
with the sales group. They're too cool; you're a little too nerdy.
And those coworkers who have the boss's ear -- well, you know
never to ask to join them for lunch."
You can read more
on what Hubert and Tom had to say as well as more about the clique
story by visiting the Knowledge
Network EZine archives:
Based on what I
had heard from Hubert and Tom, the "clique" story caused
me to come down on the side of Hubert Saint-Onge. CoPs are too
important, I concluded, to leave them up to the serendipity of
self-forming and self-determining groups. I dared say Tom is
"wrong, wrong, wrong," even though I am still a bit
uncomfortable with my conclusion. For me to say that effective
communities can't succeed as democracies . . . well, for me,
that's an unnatural act!
Well, Hubert, this
is where we've been and where some of us are. Now I ask you to
take us forward. Regardless of our differences, we all agree
on one thing -- communities of practice are the key to the evolution
of knowledge-driven enterprises. But we need a clearer vision.
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Coexistence
of Hierarchical/Community Structures
Hubert
Saint-Onge: Let me see if I can paint
the clearer vision you ask for in regards to the place of communities
of practice in organization.
I believe that communities
of practice will complement the formal hierarchical structure
that is already so prevalent in contemporary organizations. We
will need both hierarchical and community structures to coexist.
The formal hierarchy is essential to the management of accountabilities.
Communities of practice are essential to the collaboration and
learning we need to weave around the formal hierarchy.
The complementarity
is undeniable. Within this vision, I see different types of communities
of practice emerging: some will be less structured, spontaneously
set up and others will be more structured, specifically sponsored
and given accountabilities to warrant the investment in their
development. I should point out that I would never see a community
of practice become an integral part of the formal hierarchy;
but, some communities of practice at the more structured end
of the spectrum will be asked to produce agreed upon outcomes.
The key difference between the hierarchy and communities of practice
is that the latter has to be self-governed. There should not
be any compromise on this principle. The attached
slides outline my thinking in more details on the above.
John
Barrett
said the slides
and the indication that self-governance is a principle across
the spectrum of types leads him to ask about the three elements
that he believes define a CoP: knowledge domain, community, and
practice:
Does the following
(mostly attributable to Wenger's "Cultivating
Communities of Practice") hold true across the spectrum?
A CoP is a unique combination of three fundamental elements:
a domain or topic of knowledge of knowledge, which creates common
ground and a sense of common identity; a community of people
who care about the domain, thus creating the social fabric for
learning, sharing, inquiry, and trust; and the shared practice
(specific set of frameworks, tools, references, language, stories,
documents, etc.) that they are developing to be effective in
their domain.
Sam
Marshall,
KM Specialist, Unilever Research,
was interested how the slides distinguish between informal, supported
and structured CoPs:
This fits well with
our own experiences in Unilever where the whole range of network
types have arisen\been created. I wondered if you had further
views on the following:
- Do you see an inherent
difference in the quality of outputs from one type (of community)
versus another. e.g. if you needed an expert community
to help solve a problem, is one type more likely to produce more
innovative answers?
- Do you have a feel
for the relative costs vs benefits of one type over another,
assuming than an organization could decide to make a strategic
choice to foster one particular type (and I don't just mean direct
costs, otherwise organic CoPs would look deceptively like a bargain
every time!)
- There's an emerging
literature on the negative sides of CoPs (e.g. their ability
to subvert change initiatives); have you firsthand experience
of this? Is it an advantage of structured CoPs that they're easier
to kill if they 'go bad' would you say?
Deb Wallace Goes
Back to Basics
Deb
Wallace:
Being at the beginning
of an emerging field of study is a fascinating time. People are
jockeying for position in describing the terminology, outlining
the basic concepts, showing the relationships between ideas,
bringing some form and function to the fundamental principles
-- some credibility, trying to understand the value, the needs
gaps, the benefits. It stands to reason that there will be conflicting
views as the language sorts itself out!
One thing I've found
useful in working with groups that are exploring the possibilities
of knowledge management strategies is to begin with vocabulary
-- if we can decide on what the terminology means (or at least
put a stake in the sand and agree that this is a starting point),
then we can move ahead with greater speed because we don't have
to stop and describe what we're talking about all the time.
Lots of terms have
been tossed into the conversation so far -- but maybe it makes
sense to go back to the basics of what we mean by a community
of practice. There are lots of different types of communities"
at work in an organization -- communities of interest, of learning,
of purpose. You see lots of different types of communities described
in case studies and conversations about knowledge initiatives.
Each has a set of characteristics that distinguishes it from
other types. Communities of Practice are a very special kind
of community where the focus is on practice -- the ways
and means of accomplishing a work function. At this type of community's
core is a collaborative effort to improve practice -- the way
people do their work. Wenger et al. in "Cultivating Communities
of Practice" (2002) define communities of practice as:
"Groups of
people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about
a topic, and who deepen their understanding and knowledge of
this area by interacting on an ongoing basis."
At Clarica, I think
we've taken the definition a step further and directly linked
it to practice -- how we do our jobs. The focus of a community
of practice, then is to collaborate on improving not only individual
practice (e.g., how do I do my job better?) but to also
raise the bar and set standards for how the practice is best
performed -- to generalize the improved practice to a broader
group (e.g. how do we as a group of ". . . . "
better our performance and contribute to reaching our firm's
strategic imperatives?).
You might compare
this two-level approach to the notion of individual and organizational
capabilities. In a community of practice, I as an individual
can improve my own capabilities, but in doing so, I also contribute
to advancing the capabilities of the practice to which I belong
-- collectively we improve on the fundamentals of how we achieve
our goals.
Is a clique a community
of practice? I don't think so . . . but it does perhaps take
on the characteristics of one of the types of communities --
people getting together to discuss something.
If a community of
practice accepts some support from the firm -- even as little
as the use of the corporate email system to communicate -- does
that mean that it is no longer a "pure" community of
practice? If you look at the type of communities that Tom Stewart
is talking about as "naturally forming around the water
cooler", perhaps you have to beg the question -- who provided
the water cooler? You can see some level of support of communities
from the firm in most types of communities!
Larry Prusak participated
in an executive development institute that we did some years
back at the Faculty of Information Studies at the U of T. He
suggested that the best thing an organization could do to promote
a knowledge strategy was to give people some time, attention,
and resources -- the beer and pizza solution. In supporting communities
of practice with a method of communicating, a place to store
their knowledge, tools for collaborating, or whatever, we're
doing just that -- giving them the time, attention, and resources
they need to further their individual and collective practices.
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CoPs: Definitions
Changing, will Synthesize
Deb
Wallace
continues: One of the steps in the process of supporting communities
of practice that we've defined is to start with establishing
a definition for the term. Although Wenger's work is seminal,
proposing the first definition for communities of practice --
it's interesting to see the many variations people have proposed.
The Knowledge Garden has gathered a few examples
you might want to take a look at.
John Barrett's comments
about the three key components of communities of practice also
has some variations. Wenger et al., as John pointed out, have
identified domain, community, and practice. Lesser et al. in
"Knowledge and Communities" (Butterworth-Heinemann,
2000) have identified people, places, and things. Hubert and
I have identified practice, people, and capabilities. We put
the following chart together in our book to show some of these
variations in description of community of practice elements:
Table 2.2 Elements
of Communities of Practice
| Author
and perspective |
Elements |
Wenger,
McDermott, Snyder
Consultants and researchers |
- Domain:
the community's knowledge base and understanding of the field
it which it resides.
- Community:
the collection of people and their corresponding roles that ofrm
the community
- Practice:
the "work" of the "community," its actions,
learning activities, knowledge repositories, etc.
|
Lesser,
Fontaine and Slusher
Consultants, IBM Institute for Knowledge Management |
- People:
those who interact on a regular basis around a common set of
issues, interests, or needs
- Places:
gathering points, face-to-face or virtual, that provide a meeting
ground for the community members
- Things:
knowledge objects generated by individuals or collectively by
the community
|
Saint-Onge
and Wallace
KM Practitioners |
- Practice:
the knowledge base, processes and procedures that inform a collection
of actions in the delivery or a product or service
- People:
the community of practitioners who join together to find ways
to realize corporate objectives
- Capabilities:
the knowledge base, skills, abilities, attitudes, brands, processes,
and relationships that result in the ability to undertake actionws
within the practice. The "link" between strategy and
performance
|
Because communities
of practice like any organizational structure (e.g.,departments,
groups, teams, etc.) take on many different forms, it stands
to reason that they will be described in different ways.
As the field of
study continues to develop, we'll most likely see a synthesis
as well as a spectrum described.
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But . . . Do they Do
Work?
Jerry
Ash returns to a fundamental
question: You (and now, we) keep talking about giving CoPs chores
to accomplish on behalf of the company; but, Tom Stewart emphatically
told us in March that CoPs "Don't Do Work!" He said
teams and CoPs are totally different things. Please respond to
this conflicting view. It is not only troubling, but fundamental
to our understanding of what we can expect from communities of
practice. I hear you saying CoPs indeed do work, but how
do you respond to people like Tom Stewart who see it otherwise.
Deb
Wallace
replies: Where Work "Can" Happen.
Perhaps again we're tied up in the language, "chores to
accomplish on behalf of the company" and "communities
of practice don't do work" -- well what do we mean by chores
and work? If you again go back to the core of a community of
practice -- they come together because they do want to improve
how they do their work. They want to know how to do their chores
better! They want to improve their individual capabilities and
advance their practice -- otherwise, they wouldn't participate.
So I'd have to disagree that they don't "do work" --
they in fact accomplish a great deal of work! But that work is
self-initiated and how they accomplish it is self-governed out
of a need created from "within". If the firm and the
people involved in a particular practice are aligned -- all focused
on achieving the firm's strategic imperatives -- the "work"
accomplished from "within" might indeed coincide with
a need perceived from "without."
So, instead of a
firm spending a pile of time and money to put a new sales training
program in place, why not create a community of practice for
the sales staff so that they can learn from each other? Has the
firm given the community a mandate to create a training program
-- given them a chore to do? Or, has the firm provided an opportunity,
an environment in which sales people can learn from each other?
Seems to me this is a bit of a "half full" and "half
empty" conversation
Bob
Parden,
Professor, Santa Clara University,
asserts two points.
When members of a project "team" (hierarchical) develop
a collaborative coalition attitude, they become a community of
practice. Even self-governed need one person to act as a "leader".
Every organization needs hierarchy. Otherwise you have uncoordinated,
random activities. The key is in the style of the leaders --
facilitators or autocrats.
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"Dispersed"
Leadership; Facilitation
Hubert
Saint-Onge:
I see the
resurgence of an old debate that keeps coming back on whether
any group needs a leader to get anywhere. My experience is that
the exercise of leadership is essential for anything to get done.
But this leadership can take different forms. The exercise of
leadership can be placed on a spectrum that goes from highly
focused on one individual who takes the reins, to highly dispersed
among a group of individuals who agree to come together to pursue
a defined goal/purpose.
The constant is
that leadership needs to be exercised. In my experience, the
"self-governed" requirement of a community of practice
tends to put the exercise of effective leadership in a community
of practice at the "dispersed" end of the spectrum.
In the case of the community of practice for the agent network
at Clarica, a steering committee of agents provided stewardship
and leadership for the community.
Deb Wallace was
the facilitator but brought a great deal of effectively exercised
leadership to ensure that the community maintained integrity
with its agreed upon conventions. She exercised highly skilled
leadership in a facilitative manner. Specific agents tackled
issues and took it upon themselves to invite new members and
spur the conversation into productive enquiries. I am convinced
that this community would have failed if it had depended on one
individual for leadership.
Carl
Frappaolo, Executive Vice President, The Delphi Group, on leadership:
I enjoyed your discussion
regarding the role of leadership in a CoP. I agree leadership
is always required, else the community may drift off or become
fragmented. I also agree that leadership can take many faces
or approaches. I have found through my practice that when a CoP
is involved, the leader should be more of a facilitator than
a leader.
The facilitator's
role is to ensure that the focus of the group stays on track,
to provide any infrastructure support to facilitate exchange,
to encourage sharing and bring attention to those that are active
participants. The effective leader encourages its community members,
sings the praises of those that contribute but takes no credit
for the success of the CoP in the end, because the leader views
the group's success as just that -- the success of the group.
I was recently providing
this description at a think tank on KM when someone in the group
blurted out -- "Hey you are describing my mother."
Perhaps that is a good way to characterize the effective CoP
leader.
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Distinguishing
Between Facilitator & Instructor
Bob
Parden on the facilitator role:
A skilled facilitator is to improve interaction. If the facilitator
answers questions we are back to training, not learning. Facilitators
with expertise may forget the process as they switch to content.
Hubert
Saint-Onge
replies it is very important to make a clear distinction between
a facilitator who asks questions conducive to learning and an
instructor who takes over the learning process. You might want
to look into the "action learning" literature to find
out more about this concept.
Bob
Parden again: Expertise
is from someone in the group. This is how tacit knowledge is
exchanged.
Hubert
Saint-Onge
agrees: I believe that this is in fact the only valid way to
surface tacit knowledge: through a relevant "productive
enquiry" that is raised within a community of practice and
then stands the scrutiny of other members for validation. Not
all tacit knowledge out there is either relevant or on the mark.
On the final point
Hubert
Saint-Onge
fully agreed: It is sometimes best to appoint a facilitator from
outside the community for this very reason. At other times, you
can use a high credibility leader in the domain who has good
facilitating instincts. This sometimes gives added credibility
when it is required. When this does happen, it is important that
the facilitator with domain expertise make a clear distinction
between their role in orchestrating the discussion and their
content validation role. Otherwise, the combination of these
two roles can shut down the discussions and be counterproductive.
David
Hawthorne, President, HCI,
presented his own synthesized view and put forward some global
reactions:
There are matters
of both principle and practice here that seem to be in conflict.
We start from the principle that the CoP can be/should be an
important mechanism in a learning organization, and then we immediately
get into a discussion about how to manage these communities .
. . through "leadership" or "facilitation."
Fundamentally, the
KM ethos should argue that "leadership" and "facilitation"
are aspects of KM participation which each CoP member should
be capable of exercising appropriately. In practice, however,
that's probably not going to work. Work groups (teams) organized
to accomplish a specific business goal need to draw on a wide
variety of skills, technical and otherwise. The skills, personalities,
and perspectives have to be orchestrated to produce desired outcomes
within limited timeframes.
Hubert seems to
suggest that the right people with the right skills and dispositions
will somehow percolate to the surface to populate these teams
(work groups and communities of practice) despite the fact that
prior experience in such collaborative groups is relatively rare.
Almost no one educated in the West has experienced collaborative
learning and almost no one working in any industrial or even
post-industrial (i.e. scientifically managed) business
has much experience with it either.
Hubert's assertion
that "training" and "learning" spring from
almost "entirely different paradigms" goes too far,
I think. True, if the only training you've been exposed to has
been within conventional education or business, you probably
feel that it's been a one-way street on which the "trainer"
or "teacher" passes on some bit of knowledge to a blank
recipient who is deemed to have "learned" once they
can mimic what they've been taught. But that's not really good
"training" or "teaching." Good training and
good teaching does prepare the participant to act on his own;
to initiate, to probe, recognize, respond, and ultimately, innovate.
And good KM teaching and training should go beyond that, and
teach collaborative behaviours.
Our Western culture
(especially in the U.S.) makes it all seem to be about the bold,
brilliant individuals. In fact, most of our achievements are
achieved collectively through collaboration and in community
with others. The reason this discussion seems to have such import
at this moment is that technology (information, computing and
communications technologies in specific) hold out a promise for
human collaboration at unprecedented levels in wholly new types
of social organizations.
There is not going
to be some kind of historic paradigm shift here where we all
get up tomorrow to discover our colleagues have become great
collaborators and sharers of knowledge. It's going to be a long
transformation of ourselves and our organizations. We should
start wherever we can start. We can probably get "teaming"
to work in limited ways now. In the meantime, we can set about
changing the tacit cultural lessons in our training programs
while we continue to explicitly teach the basic skills and competencies
we have to teach to in order to get on with today's business,
today. The important thing is to realize how little of our collaborative
potential we have actually tapped and to begin learning now,
how go about tapping it.
Hubert Saint-Onge
in closing:
I have very much
enjoyed the conversation on knowledge strategy in this space.
I hope it has been helpful to those who have monitored the space
and asked questions. Let me reiterate some of the key points
that relate to the discussion.
- A knowledge strategy
should always have the two components of knowledge access and
knowledge exchange.
- The purpose of
a knowledge strategy is to build capability: this might not be
easy to measure as an outcome but it is essential to the ongoing
success of the firm as it strives to move faster and faster to
seize opportunities in the market place.
- Knowledge and learning
are entirely convergent in the virtual space.
- The key principle
required for the success of a knowledge strategy is self-initiation.
Training is based on the entitlement paradigm and hence is not
congruent with the systematic development of a knowledge-driven
organization.
- Communities of
practice are most effectively built in the context of a comprehensive
knowledge strategy.
- Communities of
practice provide a high trust, socio-technical model for learning
and capability building through knowledge sharing.
- The leadership
of an organization must value collaboration and learning to support
the development of a systematic knowledge strategy. Communities
will tend to threaten "command and control" managers
who cannot tolerate any movement towards self-organizing work
and interaction.
Regards,
Hubert
 Part
I: Communities of Practice in Practice at Clarica
Part
II: Communities of Practice, Forums for Learning
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