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Facilitating employee online Community of Practice’s_______________________Engagement , not Extraction
John Tropea – Hatch Associates
25th Sep 2013 Melbourne Knowledge Management Leadership Group
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What they observed can be summarized in two main conclusions:
‣ The ‘tribe’ of technicians never used any manual or handbook to solve a problem with a photocopier. Instead, they called other technicians to share their observations in order to compare them to other problems they had run into before;
‣ The knowledge that was needed to solve a problem was produced on the spot as the result of a co-creation of insights and experiences of other technicians. And when the problem was solved, this tribe gathered around a table to drink coffee and replay the whole story. That is how the new knowledge got stored into the brain of the community”
- Luc Galoppin
Coffee machines, not knowledge bases“In [John Seely Brown’s] brilliant 2000 article Growing Up Digital, he describes the anthropological study he conducted at Xerox in order to find out how technicians solve problems. A team of anthropologists observed the technicians as they intervened to repair photocopiers.
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Engagement, not Extraction
“Xerox rolled out an employee community for its repair technicians. They had actually tried a few communities initiatives before, but those failed. Eureka succeeded. Why?
Previous communities were set up in a way that did not make the repair technicians feel like they belonged as equal citizens. Management was trying to get something out of them, and made that message too blatant... management asked technicians to submit a quota of repair tips, or they had joint quality circle teams between technicians and engineers. Technicians just didn’t feel at ease in these settings.
The Eureka community, in contrast, was set up for the technicians to foster their communal kinship. It encouraged technicians to brag to each other about their clever work-around solutions. This community was for them. Technicians bonded with and helped each other. And incidentally, product engineering and management were able to data-mine the conversation for helpful insight.”
- Gil Yehuda
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“Communities form around people who share a common specialty, interest, or concern.
Communities exist to help their members better do their jobs and to deepen their skills and expertise.
“Communities exchange to learn, groups exchange to execute” - Bertrand Duperrin
Project teams and operating units share some characteristics, but they are not self-forming.
Project teams and operating units exist to get work done for the organization.”
- Stan Garfield
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Feathers are an adaptation for insulation and an exaptation for flight
Intranet BU profiles
Office profiles
Support database
Challenge groups
Project procedures answer desk
Client profiles
Managers Desktop
Webpages
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Being social is not wasting time, it’s allowing for cross pollination
“Intel didn’t start the wiki by loading it with work content right off the bat. The greatest number of posts was around the soccer pickup schedule, and where to stay when you came to Santa Clara. It struck me how wise it was that they didn’t shut that conversation down. What happens when I come into town, and I join that pickup soccer game? What are we going to talk about, other than work? We don’t have anything else in common.
And all of a sudden this thing that’s social becomes, like the water cooler, a mechanism to drive cross-pollination. Which is why, when people start with community, you shouldn’t just have a pure work focus. It’s OK for there to be a community of practice...about knitting, or about a soccer game, or about fantasy football...because people who participate in that way are from silos, and that can be the way to get cross-pollination, and to get people to socially network across divisions or across subject areas.”
- Larry Irons
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I create online spaces, not communities
“A man can no more create a community filling in a form on a webpage than he can make a fruit tree by taping fruit to twigs and twigs to a stump”
- Matthew Sweet
The manager who thought he could create a community
Appoint leader
Select members
Select topic
Select name
Select outcomes
Congratulations!
Create an instant community
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“If a community has value it will form and the technology now allows that.”
- David Snowden
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“We sent out announcements to our employees explaining what the [Project Management] Communities were and which of the communities the recipient had been assigned to. “Congratulations,” we’d say. “You’re now part of the [Project] Management community.”
And right away, we got push back: “I’m not a project manager, I’m a marketing manager.” Or “Yeah, I know my job title is business analyst, but I’m more of a data manager in practice.”
Here’s the mistake I made: I didn’t design the communities around people. I didn’t design it so that employees could self-select into the groups they thought matched who they were. The designations I used were the ones management used to determine pay rates, career paths, etc. They were not the designations the employees used to describe themselves. I did not respect the employees’ desire for self-determination.And as a result they didn’t see themselves in the communities I had put them into. They felt no connection to the communities and so they resisted them.”
- Ethan Yarbrough
Respect for self-determination
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“When it was done, none of the women used the well, and he would see them everyday walking to the river with the large water jugs on their heads. Finally, out of frustration the bureaucrat asked one of the women,“Why do you walk 10 miles to the river to get water every day when there is a wonderful new well in the middle of your village?” The women replied, “We don’t mind the walk, it gives us time to talk with each other and catch up, and besides, it gives us some time away from our husbands!””
- David Coleman
“A bureaucrat from the U.N. noticed all the women in the village walking with large water barrels on their heads. As he watched, the women walked 10 miles round trip everyday to the river to get water for cooking and cleaning. The bureaucrat thought this was unfortunate and a stress on the women, so he persuaded the U.N. engineers to build a beautiful well in the middle of the village.”
Do “with”, not “to”
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Instead of creating the community you should be “listening" for the community
“It’s tempting to think that you need to create a community for the thing you want to kick-off. Here’s the secret: you don’t.
That community already exists. Here’s a hint: communities typically gather around business processes and solutions that are transversal.
A hierarchy with silos can’t cater for that. So instead of creating the community you should be ‘listening for’ the community. Chances are that it is right there below your feet and that you’ve been standing on it all the time. Search for the business process owners or other people that have been fighting for a good cause without a hierarchy to back them up.”
- Luc Galoppin
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“Hi Sarah,
Great that they have pain points for us to solve “misalignment in methods, disconnection and weak networks, and limited continuous improvement”You could say the results they want are the opposite of the above ie. alignment, connected people, great continuous improvement
Then we have to discuss “what are the actions and behaviors needed to achieve the above results” – you and I both know simply creating an online community won’t magically do it
We have to talk about these “actions”, and who the main 2 or 3 people are that will be the role-models ie. the eager people who are keen to post content.
Regards, John”
Behaviours are actions, not results
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What about me!
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The dynamics of membership
“There’s really only one rule for community as far as I’m concerned, and it’s this – in order to call some gathering of people a ‘community’, it is a requirement that if you’re a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went”
- Adam Fields
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“…incentives cannot alter the psychological affinity an individual feels towards to community. At best, the incentive may spur an initial (and temporary) jump from lurker to participant, which the individual then finds satisfying. This success may spur them to try again, and over time start to develop a sense of ownership in the group. (In other words, become part of the community.)This, I believe, is what advocates of incentives are aiming for.”
- Andrew Gent
We want to be wanted, we want to belong
“People share openly when they feel they are part of a community
Not a member of the community, a part of the community.”
“I think humans love the rush that we are missed, and that when we are absent things aren’t the same…this is an indicator that our longing to belong is being fulfilled, and expressed as us having impact and making a difference….now that’s a good feeling”
– John Tropea
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“Everybody is, you know, somebody…We’re all just trying to be seen, to matter” - Tara (True Blood Episode 102, “The First Taste”)
“The desire to “be somebody”, to contribute, to be acknowledged, to participate in a meaningful way drives people to learn things that are relevant to their environment. This is what motivates scholars to participate in the activities of a professional community or university students to spend years of their lives “studying”. What seems to make work meaningful beyond earning a pay check is participation in a joint enterprise“
- Brigitte Jordan
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“Instant baking mixes were introduced in the late 1940s…All you had to do was add water and bake. Why was this a problem?
…the problem of a “too easy” cake recipe left the bakers with no pride of ownership over the end result. They simply could not be proud of the cake…if they had done so little to create it. When the recipe was re-engineered so that the cake mix required the addition of fresh eggs, milk and oil, sales took off.”
- Tom Catalini
Members won’t feel the pride of ownership of something they don’t have enough say in creating
“When people construct products themselves, from bookshelves to Build-a-Bears, they come to overvalue their (often poorly made) creations. We call this phenomenon the IKEA effect, in honour of the wildly successful Swedish manufacturer whose products typically arrive with some assembly required.”
- Dan Ariely
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Peer recognition“There’s a great story about Eureka, the website where Xerox copy repair technicians share “fixes” they’ve developed while repairing the copy machines. The story is about one of the technicians who had sent in some fantastic “fixes” – he was everyone’s hero. When he walked into the auditorium at an annual meeting of technicians, his peers jumped up and started clapping and whistling – celebrating both his knowledge and his willingness to share – that’s peer recognition!
...the story of a company commander who was moved to become a very activity contributor to a US Army community because he heard from a peer that an AAR he had posted made a difference
Because our knowledge is so closely tied to our identity, it’s very important to each of us that our peers view us as knowledgeable and skilful”
- Nancy Dixon
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...rewards...remind us of obligations, of being made to do things we don’t want to do…rewards become associated with painful activities…when we get paid for something we automatically assume that the task is dull, tedious and painful—even when it isn’t.
Rewards remind us of obligations
Yes, sometimes rewards do work, especially if people really don’t want to do something. But when tasks are inherently interesting to us rewards can damage our motivation by undermining our natural talent for self-regulation.”
- Jeremy Dean
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Social tools are different
Form doesn’t follow function
Not built for a specific purpose
Interactional , not Transactional
Guidance is paramount
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Time is a barrier to learn new things
Technology is a barrier to some
Resistance to break habits and routines
Not used to communicating in public
Hand holding
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Average user doesn’t really exist
Don’t train everyone, otherwise it becomes an admin exercise
Train those that get it,they can be an influence on others
If the leads are not role-models in active participation, then this sends a signal that the community is not important
Follow the leader
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...reward them with ice cream if they did. You could explain all the reasons why eating their vegetables is good for them. And you could eat your own vegetables as a good role model. Those things might help.
But Birch found one thing that worked predictably. She put a child who didn’t like peas at a table with several other children who did. Within a meal or two, the pea-hater was eating peas like the pea-lovers.”
- Peter Bregman
Peer influence
“You could tell the children you expect them to eat their vegetables.
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Host
“It is not enough to schedule a party, hire a caterer, and send out invitations.
Once the event begins, you must play host: introduce people so no one feels left out, make sure they circulate, suggest activities…
even plan party games!
The exact same sort of activities that are needed to keep a community going once it has begun.
What’s more, being actively involved yourself gives you an intimate and immediate sense of the health and well-being of the community.”- Andrew Gent
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Curation
SIDE A
Great that people are sharing, asking and answering questions, having great conversations
But all this rolls off into the archives
SIDE B
Like we go through our music collection to make a playlist, we need to make FAQ’s, topic pages, toolbox, lessons learned, etc...
This helps with findability, this helps with new comers getting a little digest of what the CoP is about before they dive into the content , this becomes the curated output of what your CoP is about
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Monitor
“When sharing links, if you have time, it's a good idea to review the article and add your opinion.People will react to your review, especially if you have an opinion...this could lead to a comments discussion”
“I see you blogged about a quiz on our CoP, did you know we have a Polls feature”
“That was a great blog post. Did you know someone in another CoP has been posting about a similar thing”
“It’s been four days since Jeff asked a question in the CoP and no answers yet. Can anyone
refer Jeff to someone?”
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ContentDesign
Facil
itate
People
CommunityAdoption
Are you harvesting content into topic pages?
Is the facilitator/championsparticipating enough?
Are you helping membersform new habits byhand-holding and reposting emails?
Do members have enough confidence and trust? Do they feel co-ownership?
Are news/questions posted in the
community more than email?
Is a “lead” participating as a good example?
Do you have thriving
conversations?
Is the purpose ofthe community
on track? Is the contentposted
frequent enough?
Are subject matterexperts surfacing?
Are you having enough real-time
sessions (offline or online)?
Is the homepage intuitive to use? Do members
know where to click to participate?
Health check
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Value for effort
“Watch where the energy in the system is and try to copy the factors that generated it. Get others interested in why energy emerges and they will want some of it themselves.”
- Euan Semple
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1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.
2. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.”
- Peter Bregman
Spreading stories
“To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:
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What gets measured determines what gets done
“...a pass becomes an assist when and only when points are scored so it forces people to make the right choices, and not only pass the ball hoping others will do some positive things.
So basket ball knows how to evaluate the people who make other’s succeed. If this wasn’t measured I’m sure many players would focus on their own points without paying any attention the team’s points.”
- Bertrand Duperrin
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“What’s missing is a measurement of how well I use my network…how do we measure a person’s prowess at making their individual contributions better because they knew who knew what, and had a relationship with them such that they could tap their expertise…
To network, one must be social, must participate in online communities as well as offline, must spend time getting to know others and letting others know them.
If I’m measured on individual contributions, then what’s the carrot for social participation?
Aha. Being social requires a stiff price: spending our most precious commodity, Time.So really, we are asking people to spend precious time to do something for which they are not measured.“
- Gia Lyons
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Connect
About mehttp://about.me/johntropea
Where I’m active
Tumblrhttp://johntropea.tumblr.com
Google+https://plus.google.com/u/0/108696582604808530200/posts
Where I’m not so active
LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/johntropea
Twitterhttp://twitter.com/johnt
Library clips (old blog)http://libraryclips.blogsome.com
