Library clips

Last October the Ark group invited me to present on my experiences in facilitating CoPs in a global firm.

I found gathering the material quite easy as I have been blogging about the experience from day one. Blogging is superb for memory management (capturing raw fragments as they happen and getting feedback).

If you are a regular reader of this blog, this presentation is nothing new. Yet it was good for me to consolidate all my thinking into 60 slides as a nice package.

Here is a link to the Flyer from last years event:

KM for the Energy, Engineering and Resource Sectors
- Advancing knowledge management and colllaborative practices across resource and infrastructure intensive organisations
- Two day connected forums and workshops 19-21 October 2009, Mercure Perth

My presentation is:

Harnessing the benefits of online communities of practice (CoPs)

• Developing, adopting, and supporting online CoPs
• Identifying types and dynamics of online group spaces
• Facilitating participation in an environment of open conversations

No recipes

At the start of my talk I made it clear that I’m talking from the perspective of the design of the tools we use.

Most new looking CoPs are designed around a forum stream, whereas our CoPs are very portal (document centric) looking, where you can have as many blog, forums and wikis you like within your CoP.
Our tool is not very user-centric, and therefore has had impact on it’s adoption, before we even got out of the gate. It was important for the audience to know this; that “my” experience is not “the” experience.

And of course each organisation has their unique cultures and politics, and do things differently. I mentioned to the audience that my talk is not a recipe or best practice, but only my experiences of dealing with design, and group and individual human behaviour.

After the talk I added a few slides, a couple of them is what I came away with after Mark Bennett’s workshop.

Also see related slides KM in context.

Start off with an anecdote

Whilst listening to another presentation I recalled an experience I had earlier that week. This gave me the idea to start off the talk in regards to a few personal experiences at home. Shawn Callahan says it’s more effective to present stories before facts, as you get the audiences undivided attention first…instead of them analysing your facts rather than listening properly and going on your ride.

My anecdote was about getting help now - connection, context, sense-making

I won’t re-tell the story, but here is the gist of it.

My new line trimmer would not start, this was the second weekend in a row I add a chance to look at it and was disappointed I could not get it going. I went through the manual and troubleshooting pages, but no help.
I searched in Google, which led me to FixYa.com

There was my answer. Someone had experienced the same thing with the same line trimmer and asked for help in a forum. An answer was provided, I was able to use that answer to get my line trimmer going. *smiles*

The trouble shooting section of the manual is just not alive, it can only cover known issues at the time of print and update it when new versions come out. But it can’t help someone on demand, it can’t provide connection and context.

My sense-making went one further in that I re-used an existing answer. Well I don’t know if that is one further, because equally amazing is that asking a question followed by conversation leads to creation of new information, which is what happened in the case before I came on the scene.

Why can’t the workplace be like this?

As a showcase example our CoP on Design Tools provides this very example on a daily basis. It shows that connection and context (relationship/trust) helps you sense-make and move on with your day. You can’t beat the original “forum”.

My second story was on the Eurolab steamer that my wife bought online, as a replacement for our iron.

Our steamer had blockages because of the minerals in the water and was not creating steam.

Again I looked on Google and it returned a result to the online retailer we purchased it from. They are very transparent and have forums and reviews for each product.

It turns out many people were experiencing the same issue as me, and a reply on the forum simply said to remove the pin whole screw cap all together. The details are not important. What is important is that I had an issue, I searched if others have experienced the same issue, it turns out they did, and I was able to re-use an answer, and then get on with my day…yippee steam cleaning clothes

Just quickly we had to get new carpets in our new baby room. Someone at work overheard me talking about it and recommended me to a cheap place that sold quality off cuts for half the price. How cool was that?

The key here is that visibility, and participation is where it all starts…connection and conversation follow, and it’s all documented online to be re-used, re-contextualised, re-hashed into something new.

Here’s my presentation

Related posts

Community of Practice for Facilitators : pilot, adoption and participation
The unexpected emergence from our Communities of Practice
Online Communities of Practice are a sweet spot!
Online communities - technical facilitators are not enough

What’s next?

Rob Weare gave a great talk on CoPs in Rio Tinto Iron Ore

I took a few things home from this talk including a way to promote the effectiveness or report on the benefits of CoPs via anecdotes.
Operational Excellence videos on our CoP interactions that demonstrate sense-making and effectiveness. Collaboration in Action pages to disseminate to the organisation as a print version of CoP success interactions…this also recognises the individual at the same time.

A little while ago I posted on how Communities of Practice (CoPs) can act as a sense-making model for KM. Here’s a direct link to the model.

NOTE: I used CoPs as a model as that’s what we are doing at work, but obviously this is a similar concept when dealing with social networks.

Also note the premise is that we can mimic and amplify online, what we do offline, and that’s network with people to get things done. Which means the contents of this post is more focused on the online element of KM. But it is to be said that offline knowledge sharing techniques are not to be neglected eg. Openspace, AI, AAR, Peer Assist, AAR, World cafe, etc…

The big difference here to past KM efforts is that it’s focus is on interactions, conversations and context (Just-in-time), rather than codifying and warehousing objects and then people seeking those objects (Just-in-case).

It may come across that asking and answering questions is the only component of the Just-in-time model. But I would also include people sharing news, reviews, status, experiences in blogs in this model.

That is, unlike the codification model (Just-in-case), I am sharing raw experiences. I’m not trying to codify according to an agenda, rather I’m just sharing a fragment of experience as it happens. Quickly get it down before it’s forgotten or loses relevancy (who cares if it’s unpolished). 
I do it because I have an intrinsic motivation, and audience…it’s engaging. Others can leave comment feedback and we have a conversation, and all of a sudden this has led us to another place, perhaps not even related to the original blog post.. Participation and visibility is everything. Who knows where, what you say, will take you…this is the beauty of conversation and life…unexpected, emergence, novel, etc…

When this grows to a network of bloggers, the give and take scenario increases the engagement.

To re-iterate, this is not the same as codification…the act of blogging does more than document…it builds relationships, spurs conversations, creates opportunities, emergence, etc…all this feeds back into a natural model of knowledge sharing.

The more people are blogging, the more it becomes known who to go to for information, or who you can be refered to, or who can point you to where information lives. And then be able to re-frame into your context via conversation. This is true sense-making…we are no longer alone with "search".

And thanks to email and RSS you can subscribe to these digestable fragments as they happen.

Why do I use the term digestable?

I’m not going to spend time reading a manual or a long report that often if I don’t have to; due to attention scarcity, or I don’t have time to scan lots of stuff to find the good bits. But if someone blogs daily fragments from, or about, that report, then I will read it…and I will do the same with something else.
So by posting and networking we share the load and get to know or filter more information. Clay Shirky is often quoted that information overload is looking at the glass half empty, and that it’s more about filter failure, which is the glass half full, as we can do something about it.

Further to this, it’s a learning model. When questions are asked and answered, when experiences are shared, when we have conversations; we are all learning. We learn lots more than just the original document/post, we learn from the comments and conversations (the document/post has spurred this indirectly, all you have to do in life is say or act, and then will follow reactions…who knows where this leads).

This relates to a quote from Andrew Gent:

"If you see the goal of college being to get a job (your ROI), then there really is no need for English, history, languages, or even science — depending upon your target profession. However, if you see the goal of college as expanding your knowledge and broadening your character, not only will it have a strong indirect impact on your employability, but your opportunities will be far more flexible and adaptive to the business environment when you graduate.

So just as the goal of college is to teach capabilities, not specific skills; the goal of KM is to facilitate knowledge development and transfer, not solely to apply knowledge to the product pipeline."
 

Anyway…

This post is an extension of my former post. The former post had only 2 slides (the model). In this new slide set I have added some more slides which explain or describe the model and why it is the way it is. This is done not in a direct way, but more by sharing some understanding of some concepts, so the reader can then use that as a lens to look at the model. Even better, most of the concepts are explained by quotes from people I admire.

What comes across in the aggregation of quotes in this slide set is that "context" is a heavy part of KM. In fact it’s the crucial factor, as it makes what is shared usable.

In the future I’m going to extend this slide set once more to encompass my take of KM in general, and the present and future.

Here’s the slidedeck.

Thought I’d share a few slides from a presentation I’m giving at work on Communities of Practice (CoP) from a knowledge management perspective.

My aim was to contrast traditional KM of conscripting best practices, with a new approach based on sensemaking pkm and networks…more appropriate tools, design for emergence and ambient awareness, and amplifying how we get things done offline…basically a more cognitive science approach over management science.

A great deal of my visual concept is based on the work of Dave Snowden, who looks at KM from a more anthropological, human behaviour perspective…a lot of his work deals with the notion of “context”, and I guess this is coupled with “intrinsic” motivation or engagement.

I also borrowed from a model by Shell on the concept of a Global Network (CoP), shown to me by Mark Bennett from Learning Collaboration.

Basically, from another perspective, I’m trying to do in 2 slides what T Systems did in 26 out of the 51 slides of their brilliant slidedeck, The revolution of knowledge part1

KM as blood bank

I also really like Mark Bennett’s symbolic way of thinking about it like a blood bank (taking and giving blood)

• Sense-making and asking questions (taking blood)
• Blogging/Sharing/Peer Assist and reflective KM like AAR, Lessons (giving blood)

Sense-making KM and CoPs - Just-in-time vs Just-in-case

The following slides are a contrast to supply-side KM, or just-in-case KM.

Also note this is KM from a Community of Practice perspective, as that’s what’s relevant to my day job. I guess one day I can alter them to include other KM activities and a more network perspective.

Sensekmaking KM and CoPs - Just-in-time vs Just-in-case

Different ways of engaging knowledge

Related to this sense-making concept of people and context in the just-in-time KM model is Nancy Dixon’s model on the different types of knowledge needs or interactions, in relation to: the level of cognitive diversity required, the degree of relationship (tie/trust) with others to source that information, facilitation/support, and the social computing tools that can create conditions for sense-making.

Embedded KM

Another related post is on Embedded KM by Andrew Gent.

I think knowledge sharing can be done as it happens (blogs, wikis, etc..) but also as a reflection (anecdote circles, AAR, etc..), and it’s the latter that Andrew is thinking about…how best to share lessons and good practices from one project to the next. Since the project is over, people don’t put great emphasis or care on reviewing it, as they are busy moving on to the next project, so Andrew talks about embedding this so it doesn’t seem a chore.

But he also makes a very relevant point to the heart of KM and motivation. When capturing information it has to become usable, and this takes effort on the contributor to make it findable, otherwise it’s up to the user to find the content and make it relevant to them. To make it usable and relevant takes too much effort for return, it has low intrinsic motivation for the contributors.

The challenge is a sweetspot where it’s usable enough, and contributing is simple enough…and what do you know, this works best as conversation, as we get sharing and context. And Andrew has an embedded way to trigger this reflective conversation as a part of an organisational process.

Andrew says:

“Rather than trying to make all project knowledge available to anyone, what if we simply try to expand the current knowledge base incrementally over time? Rather than collecting the review documents, why not include at least one reviewer from an unrelated project to each review? This could be an architect, implementer, or project manager as long as that person can provide an objective, outside view of the project progress.”

“…the outside reviewer helps to keep the project team “honest”. It is easy for internal reviews to become formulaic rubber stamp events if those involved are all working on the project.They do not have enough distance to see hidden pitfalls and will resist calling foul on people they have to work with on a daily basis.”

“…including outsiders gives at least one person a much more indepth and personal knowledge than could ever be gained by reading a set of historical documents with no one to explain them. Another value from a KM perspective is the opportunity the reviewer and the project team have to exchange knowledge, hints, and tips on the fly and in context of the discussion.”

“…the program then becomes essentially self-managing from a KM perspective. The project management teams are responsible for ensuring outside reviewers are included and with each review, little by little, knowledge is shared across the organization.”

Competitive vs Collaborative culture

The micro intentions or local behaviour involved in the the Just-in-time vs Just-in-case concept actually emerge a macro picture…and that’s a change in the internal dynamics of an organisation from a competitive to collaborative organisation…perhaps from teams to crews.

Why?

We create the conditions for engagement, transparency, agility, trust and awareness…where knowledge sharing becomes a magical by-product….not creating a knowledge sharing culture, rather creating conditions for one to emerge.

I know it’s about the people, not the tools, but it’s important to understand the design thinking involved…these new tools are designed for the people, where we can now achieve the original aims of KM. The use of these tools can be a catalyst for change. For more on this see my posts, Has KM died, and resurrected as social computing?, Knowledge and its facilitators.

You could say social computing is a bottom-up strategy (and is has total effect when enterprise-wide), but I think we can also have a top-down strategy, because no matter how enabled workers can be to express and converse in the open, they will be hesitant, feel unsafe, uncomfortable and not confident if this new type of enterprise interaction is not promoted or pushed from the top.

NOTE: social computing is not just bottom-up, managers can seed crowdsourcing/opinion/reviews

A while back I posted, Is knowledge sharing all about your pay cheque? (which was amplified by Stewart Mader).

In this post I contrasted a picture where people are influenced to share or hoard depending on how their performance is viewed from senior management.
If you are appraised on your personal output, then you will hoard and not collaborate as much as you have an incentive to own all the output, forgoing a more quality or optimum deliverable, than if you were to leverage the talent of the organisation.
On the other hand if you are appraised on a group output (how much you collaborate, your effectiveness in networking with the optimum people for your tasks) then this will instill a less competitive culture due to more knowledge sharing and collaboration. This is a cleverly designed strategy as the the workers themselves will be pushing quality from others as they all hold each other accountable…a culture of interdependency.

I really like how Stewart put it:

“People are used to thinking of their workday activities as indirectly affecting the bottom-line because the competition model essentially keeps the average employee in the dark about how things really work, or how healthy the organization is. The sharing model makes it much clearer, so the average employee can see the impact of her or his work.”

Betrand Duperrin also parallels these thoughts:

“They would be more efficient if they helped each other? But in order to get a good evaluation and the related rewards and bonuses they have, in the best case, to ignore each other, in the worse case to play the one against another.”

Learned behaviour

Beyond performance appraisals, what about a top-down message about the importance of connection and collaboration, just like the way organisations drill the message of quality and safety.

When I attended Mark Bennett’s masterclass on CoPs, he mentioned that safety is a learned behaviour (people are irrational and do unsafe things like drink driving, etc), and quality is a learned behaviour (people take shortcuts and ignore procedures and processes like emailing a document to a client for review, rather than sending through a formal transmittal via document control), and so to, collaboration can be a learned behaviour.

But I don’t think the result of this would be as effective in a fundamental way.

• If you are unsafe, you risk getting sued, bad accidents cause a bad reputation with clients, contractors and workers.
• If you are of low quality, you cut corners for short term gain, long term loss, and perhaps risk litigation.
• If you have low collaboration, you risk a less optimum job, low awareness and transparency and communication leads to low cooperation and cohesiveness, and you are less agile to adapt to change.

All three have bad consequences if ignored

• The first two is a risk in reputation, but also a benchmark risk, and more importantly the consequences are very meaty-litigation, death.
• The last one also is a risk in reputation (losing or not winning deals because of bad information flow does effect reputation/attractiveness), the industry benchmark is still a young thing in relation to collaboration, BUT unlike the others the consequences are not as meaty, no-one dies, we don’t get sued.

So I think because the consequences of not being collaborative don’t show explicitly like someone being hurt, and losing face (as this is seen as a quality process issue rather than collaboration/information flow), then we tend to be more reactive, or it takes a back seat in our attention. You still get work done not being collaborative (you do suffer later in frustration as you can’t find stuff or you aren’t aware of something you should be aware of), it’s just all these micro interactions, lead to a big picture of not being agile, and attractive to a client…if they can’t get their s*!t together, how are they gonna service us.

Related
I don’t want to share, that’s counter to meeting my objectives…and reward!!

[ADDED 13/01/10: KM in context : sense-making and connectedness]

Not long ago I posted about how our Communities of Practice (CoP) are hitting a sweetspot…bottom-up and grass roots tools that provide more of a sense of place and better coordination over email, and are more enabling than the Intranet.

Great cross-functional CoPs are emerging like Bulk Materials Handling, Sustainable Development, Software Architecture and Approaches, 3D Visualisation and Animation, Bauxite and Alumina, etc..

But there is something else that’s emerging that we didn’t quite expect.

And we know why?

It’s because our CoPs are just online spaces with a bunch of tools (blogs, forums, wikis, docs, and a homepage).

This package doesn’t make them a CoP, it’s just what we called them, as that’s what the vendor calls them…nothing wrong with this…

Basically, these online tools don’t define the group or how it operates…their just tools. This also hooks into how the Socialtext staff differentiate them from past tools (transactional vs Interactive)

Anyway…

So the unexpected emergence is that CoPs are being used for lots of different things that are cutting into products we already use…why again…because people want to be empowered and engaged which distributed power (less control) enables.

What has emerged?

Let’s start with the answer and it’s effect: blogs, forums, wikis need to be features of existing products, and when they are how’s that gonna effect what has currently happened.

We don’t just have cross-functional CoPs ie. people distributed in the organisation in different teams, projects, business units, and levels of authority who come together in a space to support and learn about a common topic…which makes for a more agile organisation…it’s looking in your own backyard and connecting the talent dots.

Here are the main online groups that have surfaced.

Ad-hoc tasks

I’ve blogged about this before.

People want to do temporary tasks in an online space rather than hidden in email.

Our CoPs are more portal like with permissions and the rest, they are not one click set-up, they need a bit of upfront design.
- your CoP or mine for this task, but your not a member of my CoP…these task spaces end up buried in a CoP somewhere, they have no homepage of their own, the hosting CoP members may not like that their CoP has a unrelated parasite group

They are not the best spaces or timely and simple enough for an ad-hoc task.

For this we would need something like the new OpenText Social Media product, or Jive SBS (both of these also include a social network).

Or perhaps something more on-the-fly like Activities on Lotus Connections, or a future version of Google Wave…see more.

And Traction seems like the most flexible product around, I hear BlueKiwi is in this space as well…see more.

Initatives/Pilots/Crowdsourcing/Events

We are finding these a sweetspot, just like cross-functional CoPs.

We are starting a review of our project lifecycle process, which is to be coordinated in the CoP, basically where the organisation comes together in a communal space.

Support

I’ve blogged about this before.

It’s one thing to have a CoP to troubleshoot within a team, but it’s another thing when internal customers start asking questions for support through a CoP.

Personally I think it’s great, as people have an open place to search for past answers or even offer answers, and if you subscribe you can learn along the way.

BUT, this is cutting into the organisations official Support database. We still need this official and sophisticated tool for support management, but CoPs as a support tool are definitely cutting into their lunch.

Teams/Business Units/Office unit

These groups have a section in our corporate Document Management System (DMS)…it’s basically a set of folders.

Why are they using CoPs?

Because in the process of creating documents we have conversations about review.
Because we like to discuss issues.
Because we like to broadcast news.
Because we like to share experiences.
And email just doesn’t cut it.
And the DMS just doesn’t have these conversational tools, or a homepage that represents the group (well, they do, it’s the Intranet, but see the next point)

Intranet

I’ve blogged about this before.

Someone came up to me the other day and said, they love that CoPs are two-way, and that they can update their homepage (that acts like a portal) whenever they like.

As a result of this empowerment they mentioned that their intention is to no longer have any of their pages hosted on the Intranet, but instead, when people click on their business practice link on the Intranet, it will just take them straight to the CoP.

What’s the next natural step, that the global CoP hompage becomes the Intranet itself.

Client Projects

We have a DMS on another server with a different look and feel and processes that suit the context of projects.

But again, just like Teams/Business Units they lack a homepage and conversation tools.

Project teams want a homepage as a jump off point (a bunch of folders doesn’t cut it).

They also want this homepage to display conversations that are currently happening at the moment in email silos, this way the mechanical guys can eaves drop on piping conversations and vice versa, so we are more aware. A blog for project updates and broadcast news gets people on the same page.

Organisations are not (well maybe) Complex Adaptive Systems, so we need to make them open and transparent as much as we can, so people can be ambiently aware, and therefore better cooperate amongst the parts, and ultimately adapt to changes or even be preventative.

I have not created online CoP spaces for these projects as this is the turf of DMS, and having two spaces for the one thing seems odd, but people will self-organise their way around any design.

Let’s sum this up

CoPs are a sweetspot for great emerging unofficial groups, but they are also cutting into the following existing products:

• Email (this was the intention)
• Offical support database
• Corporate DMS
• Project DMS
• Intranet

And it seems we need a product to handle ad-hoc tasks.

Summary, future ponderings, and a suggestion

The original idea for CoPs was cross-functional practices eg Bulk Materials Handling

But as we can see because email, the DMS, and the Intranet are not as enabling, people are using CoPs as an alternative for everything.

In a way this CoP experiment has surfaced all sorts of needs, which is a good low cost experiment (naturally emerging needs analysis).

Who needs a survey, needs analysis, or just implement and hope it works as it was a good top-down idea…when the emergence that has surfaced from the existence from CoPs has given you the answer to all this pondering for free.

What it has surfaced is a need for our DMS and the Intranet to become socialised…and also a way to do ad-hoc tasks.

I’m seeing all this happening, and perhaps need to suggest a taskforce so us people running all these products can converge.

This convergence will be interesting. If these tools do get socialised, what will then happen?

Will teams decide to export their CoPs to their revamped DMS?

And if the Intranet offers the same tools as our CoPs, but with an Intranet backdrop, will some groups then export their CoPs to the revamped Intranet?

So maybe one day we will come full-circle, and CoPs will be just for cross-functional groups…as wiki, blogs, forums will be features of all products.

What’s the food for thought for people wanting to socialise their organisation online!

Perhaps firstly revamp your existing systems with social tools. ie. Work on your in-the-flow before, or perhaps in parallel with your above-the-flow.

• Intranet and business units/teams (Confluence or Thoughfarmer)
• Client Projects (Basecamp)
• Communities and Social network (Jive SBS)
• Ad-hoc tasks (OpenText Social Media)
• And what about micro-blogging (Socialtext signals)

See what’s happening here, a lot of the tools above do the same things eg. Socialtext has a social network and workspaces, OpenText has a social network, etc…

Also our projects need sophisticated document cycle functionality which Basecamp will not do, so in this case our existing DMS needs to be revamped.

I’m thinking perhaps an Intranet tool like Thoughtfarmer or Confluence could handle them all…except for client projects (requires document lifecycle processes)

Here’s a snapshot of different CoPs that are emerging:

More Than Cops

More than CoPs

By examining the CoPs, or better put, “online groups” at my work, they seem to be:

1. Teams/BU (execute work)
- which shouldn’t be called a CoP even though it is…who cares in the end, I’m happy people are using the tools

2. Teams/BU (learning/support spaces)
- this type of CoP is usually combined with the CoP above (point 1)

3. Cross-functional (traditional learning CoPs)
- a classic example is our Software Architecture and Approaches CoP where people from various units/teams come together to share, learn, help…and to bring that intelligence back to their tasks
- when we need help at work we often look to Google, Twitter, etc…why not create an environment where we can look to each other within the organisation

4. Internal user support spaces (customer service CoP)
- I run a Facilitators CoP where I communicate and troubleshoot with people that run their own CoPs
- These types of CoPs can be at the general user level, or for the support people themselves

5. Teams communicating to the business (customer CoP)
- using a CoP, rather/complementary to an email newsletter
- sometimes this type of CoP is combined with the CoP above (point 4)

6. Role-based
- people on different projects and teams, but share the same role…eg Project Managers, Project Systems Managers

7. We also have others like: interest groups, crowdsourcing, events, new initiatives, office happenings, specific tasks (although this last one suits a more simple application like ad-hoc groups…ie a bunch of people from different teams/units coming together temporarily to execute a task)

We don’t yet have any Client/Customer-based (support/crowdsource CoP, or a CoP with suppliers)

“…before you leap into reinventing your processes for transformative value, step back. You can’t collaborate with your customers before you learn to collaborate with your employees. In the spectrum of risk taking, its best to deploy from the inside-out.”

Just realised I posted something similar a while back, Internal community types that get you viral exposure.

Looks like I was prophetic when I posted What’s the difference between Intranet 2.0 and a social network with groups.

Why do I say this?

At work we have many active online Communities of Practice (CoPs), some are learning and sharing, and others are customer based information and support CoPs, or even both.

In my post Online Communities of Practice are a sweet spot! I highlighted how CoPs cut into email conversations and Intranet information.

That is, rather than using email for questions, communications, support, we use CoP tools.

Some CoPs also like the fact that the CoP can be responsive and agile compared to the Intranet. Some of our CoPs are going beyond conversations and using the CoP as a portal to profile all the information about the group and services the group offers, as you would do on an Intranet.

What they like about the CoP is that you can update it yourself daily, and you can get feedback and questions from internal customers, as well as communicate to them.

What happened the other day is a CoP facilitator mentioned that the CoP was quickly replacing their need for an Intranet page. They said soon, they wish to not host information on the Intranet, but instead just have a hyperlink for their practice that launches to the CoP.

Whoa…CoPs are cutting into the Intranet…it’s not gonna be pretty if people start ditching the Intranet.

See what’s happening, social tools are becoming a catalyst for change, but it’s not explicit, it’s just a by-product…you are not having a revolution, it’s just you start using the new thing, and the old thing becomes ignored.

What will happen if the Intranet loses control to CoPs…their worst case scenario to authoritativeness and all things official and vetted.

As global CoP facilitator I’m not being a traffic stealer, rather a few of my customers are choosing to do this themselves, and when they ditch the Intranet, people interested in their information will also be visiting the CoP, not the Intranet.

So not only are CoPs enablers for emerging groups that are not official or even mature enough to be on the Intranet, but they are starting to attract existing groups that live on the Intranet as perhaps a new place of residence.

What does this tell us? People want to be agile, they want to be more transparent and connect, they want to be close to real-time, they want to be empowered to sense-make and do it themselves…a distributed organisation…worker engagement.

The Intranet better notice this and do something about it?

If they do, where does that leave CoPs?

If the Intranet becomes a social network with group pages, will our CoPs then be absorbed into the Intranet?

This was my whole point of my past post.

You can have a “social network with groups” standalone internal website (which is promoted on the Intranet), or you can have the same thing designed as the Intranet itself.