16. Dynamics of Different Network Types Long – term, no pre-engineered end Fixed ends when project deliverables have been accomplished As long as it adds value to the business and its members Time scale Links made based on needs of the individual Constant for a fixed period Semi - permanent Membership Interpersonal acquaintances Commitment to goal Common application of a skill Connections Extent of relationships Assigned project charter Knowledge domain Boundary Communication flows Accomplish specific task Learning Sharing Creating Knowledge Purpose Informal networks Project Teams Community of Practice
26. Levels of engagement Level of engagement Type of engagement Browse, search, learn (Anonymously) Comment (with attribution) Ask a question (with attribution) Write a blog Become a mentor Become an expert Register Comment (Anonymously) Waxing and Waning Interest
27. Patterns of contribution Ref: Jacob Nielson http:// www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html Number of participants Number of contributions 1% active contributors 9% occasional contributors 90% readers (aka ‘lurkers’) The 1-9-90 rule
30. Community Archetypes In a perpetual personal duel. Generally don’t menace anyone except each other. Duelsists http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/duelists.htm
31. Community Archetypes For Ego , the discussion forum is all about him, and he regards discussions that stray from that topic as trivial dalliances. Ego is one the fiercest of all the Warriors and will fight to the death when attacked Ego http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/ego.htm
32. Community Archetypes Fillibuster Attempts to influence the forum simply by holding the floor. His monotonous hectoring and prodigious output of verbiage rapidly clears the field of other users http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/filibuster.htm
33. Community Archetypes Big Dog and MeToo Big Dog is a bully who doesn't hesitate to use his superior strength to intimidate other combatants. Me-Too will join the attack. Me-Too is far too weak and insecure to engage in single combat. http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/bigdogmetoo.htm
36. Attributes of a successful CoP Social Networking Culture Collaboration Tools Based on a slide by IBM Do we have a method to collaborate? Mechanism Does the CoP have the tools to collaborate effectively? Skills Do I want to be approached? How do I approach this person? Access Why will I cooperate with this person? Do I want to work with this person? Motivation How do I develop my reputation as a trusted member? Will this person help me? Benevolence How do I advertise my skills? Is this person competent? Competence How can I become more known? How do I know who is out there? Awareness Contributors I am someone Seekers I need someone Critical Success factors
37. Your community’s life-cycle From: Cultivating Communities of Practice by Wenger, McDermot and Snyder Plan Start-up Grow Sustain/Renew Close Level of energy and visibility Time Discover/ imagine Incubate/ deliver value Focus/ expand Ownership/ openness Let go/ remember
38. Building an environment to support collaborative working Find and connect with experts Find and connect with your peers Threaded discussion forums, wikis, blogs, document repository News feeds Event calendar News and Newsletters
40. Facilitating or Coordinating a community Facilitation – the magic ingredient
41.
42. What can you accomplish in one week? No time Lots of time 1 hr 5 hrs 10 hrs Start a discussion Upload a document Read a forum post Read a document Read a wiki Read a blog Respond to a forum posting Add an event Comment on a blog Contribute to a wiki Write a blog Be a community member Facilitate a community Upload a document Read a forum post Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Read a wiki Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Read a blog Read a wiki Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Read a document Read a blog Read a wiki Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Contribute to a wiki Read a document Read a blog Read a wiki Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Write a blog Contribute to a wiki Read a document Read a blog Read a wiki Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post Respond to a forum posting Write a blog Contribute to a wiki Read a document Read a blog Read a wiki Comment on a blog Add an event Upload a document Read a forum post
56. Project Timeline Over 26,000 people registered Over 600 Communities 140 have IDeA involvement Official launch December 2007 Ongoing support to selected communities at the IDeA through a coaching and mentoring scheme Completion of application form to set up a community First pilot built on Drupal failed Assisted in running focus groups with potential members of the Pilot communities Introduces a technology platform to support collaboration Management team approval Developed and run training for facilitators Developed technology spec for online platform Various iterations business case to get management backing for KM strategy, including CoPs Intensive work with stakeholders Produced spec for the KM team structure Sept 05 Business Case Nov 08 People Dec 07 Launch Sept 06 Pilot Apr 06 Planning
63. A Quote I'm now convinced that sharing knowledge, information and experience through CoPs is the future of success in local government, and that social media tools such as those employed within the IDeA CoP platform are the glue that can stick cross-sector collaboration projects together Local Authority CoP facilitator
64.
65. A CoP Story from the private sector Asia Pacific Bohai: Knowledge about defective gas turbine rotors prevented certain engine failure. Potential cost saving of over $83 million
Henry Kissinger – the greatest (political) facilitator of all time? Or for the younger audience – Davina MavCall.
Barn raising as a method of providing construction labour had become rare by the close of the 19th century. By that time, most frontier communities already had barns and those that did not were constructing them using hired labour. Mennonite and Amish communities carried on the tradition, however, and continue to do so to this day.
The differentiators for a CoP are: A domain of knowledge. The domain creates common ground and a sense of community purpose. A well-defined domain legitimizes the community by affirming its purpose and value to members and other stakeholders. A community of people who care about this domain. A strong community fosters interactions and relationships based on mutual respect and trust. The shared practice that they are developing to be effective in their domain. The practice is a set of frameworks, idea, tools, information, styles, languages, stories and documents that community members share.
How a knowledge and learning culture was successfully developed using Communities of Practice (CoP) Most users were familiar with distribution lists – e.g. newsletters and e-bulletins. In fact over 30,000 local government employees subscribe to the IDeA e-bulletin. There were also users familiar with using forums – the IDeA web site supports a large number of fairly active forums. But these are not ‘communities of practice’. Certainly there was an element of collaboration using the forums, but there was no concept of trust or transparency, and no access to a common (domain-specific) library of material. The website itself was designed as a broadcast medium (Web1.0) and not as a resource to enable connections to be made between users. The key to moving forward was to develop a compelling business case that would emphasise the enormous potential that could be gained by encouraging connections with and between users and allowing the conversations to flow. So, it was one final step to developing the concept of a ‘community’, which would encourage greater collaboration through a variety of social networking tools and social media applications. The early adopters – as you will probably guess – are those who were already familiar with forums and maybe even social networking sites (Myspace, Facebook, Flickr etc.)
WEB 2.0 “ Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of static websites to a full fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users .” (Tim O’Reilly) Static content transformed by dynamic participation Communities Networks Read/Write
A community of people who care about this domain. A strong community fosters interactions and relationships based on mutual respect and trust.
Helping needs Where members help each other to solve day-to-day issues and experts can be invited in to help . connecting people building trust creating a forum to support requests for help and assistance creating an environment to share, assess value and disseminate good ideas creating self-help functions accelerating collaboration across organisations or a specialism strengthening networks and improving employee relations facilitating professional peer learning and drawing from expert knowledge and experience Best practice needs Where developing and disseminating best practice, guidelines and procedures issued to provide instant access to validated and up to date knowledge and information increasing exchange of lessons learnt and good practice seeking new understanding of developments and implementations collaborating to develop, consult and validate practice publishing and disseminating specific practices verifying effectiveness and benefit of practice accelerating the speed of quality decision making and implementation of best practice Achieve higher standards in projects, strategies and improving outcomes enlisting leading experts Knowledge Stewarding needs Where there is a need to organise , manage and steward a body of knowledge from which members can draw. creating a shared understanding of issues providing instant access to knowledge and information in an organised and intuitive way accessing collective and vetted knowledge that is managed, summarised and up to date bring together timely and relevant knowledge and information providing quick and easy access to up to date news, publications, websites and practice in one place increasing opportunities for self-help and personal development collaborating to increase the productivity of ideas and knowledge helping with leadership issues Innovation needs Where the creation of breakthrough ideas, knowledge and practices is paramount creating a safe and trusted environment where innovation can take place supporting creative, experimental, multi-disciplinary and cross boundary working sharing and developing expert knowledge and thinkingdeveloping innovative practices accelerating the rate of innovation through sharing and testing out ideas providing opportunities to approach and work with new technologies, new business and new approaches providing channels to support the development of new ideas and ways of working sharing warnings and deciphering trends
The practice is a set of frameworks, idea, tools, information, styles, languages, stories and documents that community members share in order to be effective in their domain of knowledge.
Moving from a culture of knowledge repositories (people-to-information) to one of knowledge collaboration (people-to-people). Public sector organisations are deeply hierarchical. Over-reliance on stored and categorised information. With some notable exceptions (e.g. NHS), no systematic development of peer learning and sharing techniques or strategies. Closed and private culture. But…. The past five years have seen significant changes across the local government sector. The need to meet stringent targets for performance and efficiency as part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment, and the huge investment in technology driven by central government’s ‘e-government’ strategy (or latterly “Transformational Government”) have indeed led to improvement across the sector. However, as many councils have found, digitising assets, developing new web sites and investment in EDRM have not always delivered the improvements they were hoping for. On the contrary, the proliferation of web sites across the sector has only served to encourage a silo mentality in many authorities, making life far more difficult for staff to find, use and share information and knowledge. There is a growing realisation that, coupled with the reduction in central government funding, the tipping point has arrived, and that any further efficiency and service improvements can only be delivered by smarter working and making more effective use of shared and tacit knowledge to drive innovation.
Why bother about purpose? Because without it your community will stall and disintegrate.
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. www.thelongtail.com Also follows Jacob Nielson’s law of distribution.
It’s tough building online communities and you must encourage those people who contribute.
Member agreement on knowledge needs is key to stimulating participation. The community must have a shared understanding about what knowledge it needs in the community of practice. Although the proceeding analyses identified needed knowledge, skills, and information , it is wise to build consensus around which KSIs are most critical to community members. The community should prioritise its knowledge needs.
In a perpetual personal feud, Duelists generally don't menace anyone but each other, unless, of course, another Warrior foolishly gets between them. They may not even remember what started the fight, but not they cordially loathe one another and seize every to go at each other. When the other Warriors eventually weary of their endless kvetching the Duelists will be shouted down or Nanny will ban them. Even after getting the heave-ho from one forum, however, it is not unusual for them to seeking each other in other forums to renew their fight.
For Ego , the discussion forum is all about him, and he regards discussions that stray from that topic as trivial dalliances. Although tolerant of an occasional shift in focus, Ego grows increasingly restive when the forum's attention shifts away from his interests, and he will often provoke conflict to reestablish himself as the subject at hand. Ego is one the the fiercest of all the Warriors and will fight to the death when attacked.
Like his Congressional namesake, Filibuster attempts to influence the forum simply by holding the floor. His monotonous hectoring and prodigious output of verbiage rapidly clears the field of other Warriors.
Big Dog is a bully who doesn't hesitate to use his superior strength to intimidate other combatants. Big Dog may be smart, articulate or just plain mean, but in any case he is a remorseless fighter, brutally ripping into even the weakest of combatants. Once Big Dog securely fastens his powerful jaws on a hapless victim, Me-Too will join the attack. Me-Too is far too weak and insecure to engage in single combat, and must ally himself with Big Dog or a pack of other Warriors to bring down his quarry.
The practice is a set of frameworks, idea, tools, information, styles, languages, stories and documents that community members share in order to be effective in their domain of knowledge.
A kindly, old stranger was walking through the land when he came upon a village. As he entered, the villagers moved towards their homes locking doors and windows. The stranger smiled and asked, why are you all so frightened. I am a simple traveler, looking for a soft place to stay for the night and a warm place for a meal. "There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "We are weak and our children are starving. Better keep moving on." "Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled an iron cauldron from his cloak, filled it with water, and began to build a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a silken bag and dropped it into the water. By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come out of their homes or watched from their windows. As the stranger sniffed the "broth" and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their fear. "Ahh," the stranger said to himself rather loudly, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage -- that's hard to beat." Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a small cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. "Wonderful!!" cried the stranger. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king." The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for everyone in the village to share. The villager elder offered the stranger a great deal of money for the “magic” stone, but he refused to sell it and traveled on the next day. As he left, the stranger came upon a group of village children standing near the road. He gave the silken bag containing the stone to the youngest child, whispering to a group, “It was not the stone, but the villagers that had performed the magic."
How healthy are these communities? How do you track and measure their health? If some are healthier than others why do you think that is? What is teh difference between IDeA involvement and not? Is there a link there to healthiness? End of phase 3 Technology 0.5 Million. IBM Websphere Code J2EE
It is also noted that aggregating quantitative metrics does not provide evidence of either success or failure of a CoP. For example, we need to understand: The original purpose and intended outcomes of the community . Some will be light on discussion and strong on shared document building and vice versa. Others will be ‘one-shot’ supporting a single challenge. 2. The rhythm or cycle of the community . Not all communities will be a hive of activity, some will support its participants at a low level of interaction over a long period, others for short bursts around face-to-face-meetings or events. 3. The quality of the interactions and/or the viewings it attracts. An online community may be composed of lengthy, high quality, position statements or case-studies with relatively little discussion. Others, equally valid, may be filled with chit-chat and gossip, sharing experience in a way that provides moral support for isolated individuals. So any measure of success is likely to be a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. But managers want to know if these communities are successful, or are they just an excuse to waste time chatting (and this is where bad press on social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo or Facebook doesn’t help). We have tried to avoid interfering with the way that the CoPs are being run, particularly in the sense of setting targets and timescales. The more informed managers are aware that traditional command and control processes do not work for CoPs, and that instilling corporate processes on largely free-wheeling communities is likely to stifle and inhibit innovation and learning. However, there is a cost in keeping this technology and support infrastructure going, and it is reasonable to expect questions from senior managers on what the benefits are and what the ROI is. It remains something of a conundrum on how best to respond to these questions in a way that will give senior managers the confidence to maintain investment.
And the need for CoPs that join up LA's
What was the business case Why did first pilot fail? What did you learn? What support does a community get? How do I set up a community? Not sure you need this ... though it would be good to hear from you how you are reviewing and measuring
What are you doing to ensure issues that have not gone well are not replicated in cenmtral govt and third sector? How do you plan to breakdown silos and reduce tribal working?
NI14 - Avoidable contact: the average number of customer contacts per resolved request. Government see this as a method of managing ‘demand failure’ by expecting councils to measure both the number of customer contacts and the number of contact requests for a range of services contacted by face-to-face, email, ‘phone or web. MSA – won Top of the CoPs in March 2008 for the highest number of contributions made by its members during the month.
Asia Pacific Bohai received information from the Upstream Rotating Equipment Network that Alpine Alaska had ordered 3 new rotors that failed to meet the manufacturers specifications. Bohai spare rotor given critical examination. 225 defects found, including loose rotor blades. Certain engine failure averted. Estimated savings = $83,651,040