Change Management Blog

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a community, or group, of users that share common interests, have common requirements, and will create an exchange of common knowledge base. We classify them into three general types: Thematic; Geographic; and, Initiative or information-management community.

Working with existing informal or created CoP’s requires planning and support to develop the strategies that: drive the critical mass of common interests; map the knowledge architecture strategy; engage stakeholders; identify infrastructure requirements; implement collaboration; identify and implement best practices in the cultural context of the organization and/or function; and, identify success criteria and their measurement as they are implemented.

Leading organizations know the value of tacit knowledge; the knowledge that those who are experienced have developed, or that the insightful discover, without formal training. Indeed, organizational development theorists propose that as little as 20% of what a person learns on the job is learned in formal training; 80% is learned by informal methods. To be an industry leader, an organization must develop and harness this 80% learning.

Communities of Practice are a maturing component of Organizational Development with proven results in research and use. CoP’s develop and harness the 80% of tacit learning within an organization. Developing a formal Community of Practice helps to support and make intentional that which is already providing the most learning and growth within an organization. By harnessing the intelligence of informal networks within, the organization will see the following outcomes:

• Increased social inclusion
  
• Increased problem solving
  
• Development of new capabilities and practices
  
• Leveraging best practices
  
• Standardization of practices
  
• Reduction in time to mastery
  
• Creation of new knowledge
  

By implementing a Communities of Practice infrastructure, you can direct the learning culture of the organization towards determining and solving whichever strategic issues seem paramount. The impact of these outcomes could include:

• Reduction in errors
  
• Increase in productivity
  
• Reduced absences
  
• Increased speed of change
  
• Cultural celebration and change
  
• Increased outcomes for each strategic objective
  

Have you watched a CoP in action?  If so, what did it look like and what did it accomplish?

Next in the series: Let Your Passion Guide You

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Learning, Strategies, Culture, Collaborative Dialogue, Business Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.