Erik van Bekkum: CP Week '03

Philips Semiconductor community case

Sat, 31 May 2003 23:26:27 GMT

I have posted the cleared slides about the Philips Semiconductor community, that was presented during CP Week together with Suzanne Verdonschot, online.

Though the discussion continues on the members' platform of CP Square, one of the most remarkable discussion parts was about the courage that it took Philips to start off with communities using high profile selected 'hot-shots' within the organization. If the exercise would succeed, they would surely understand by practice the value of collaboration and communities - which would be of great value in the next couple of years when some of them become general managers (GM's) or managing directors (MD's) in the organization. On the other side however, failing to create value would mean the that the future leaders of the organization may be resistent to supporting / sponsoring these initiatives.

Another interesting fact about these people is that they now form the bottom line in their business unit, but will eventually (in some years) become leaders. So the approach taken here is bottom-up right now (using support from their executive managers) but will be reversed to top-down as well if the communities of practice for the course extend over the course of years. New people with similar aspirations and backgrounds will flow in the course and the (hopefully sustained) community, which will then have increased leadership and a pyramid model with respect to the formal organization. That in itself is worth a whole discussion!

Noteworthy here is the role of the coordinating team to keep on creating incentive within the group by not allowing participants (but also coordinators) to tell 'how' ("you have to do the following..") but rather ask why. In the light of the participants' background this was not an easy task, but it eliminated the risk of turning into a dead end with the discussions. And by doing so, they started to discover that they had much more in common (as far as problems, leadership issues etc.) were concerned than was apparent at the start of the community. This helped to establish trust (together with the phonecalls) and invited them to come back and participate (incentive).

The state of the Community of Practice, 2003

Fri, 23 May 2003 22:00:51 GMT

The state of the Community of Practice 2003

One of the most valuable and open discussions leaving us with most to discuss and think about. Etienne and Bill had prepared a single slide about the state of the practice as it is now, and sparked more opportunities for debate than available. (photo: Noel Dickover)

Communities of practice as a social movement

Fri, 23 May 2003 21:42:17 GMT

Why communities of practice have the potential to be a social movement that can make a lasting change:

Communities of Practice span business, social, knowledge and techology
Communities of Practice creates and re-creates an area of social responsibility, ownership and belonging
Communities of Practice as a social movement is about trust, not about friendship, equality or liberation

The first two points were quite obvious to me but I came to realize that the third point is actually what will be the differentiation between communities and long-gone other social movements (inspired by CP Week)

Trust relationship between the community and formal organization

Thu, 22 May 2003 17:18:17 GMT

Trust, says Etienne Wenger, does not only exist between members of the community but also between the community and the (formal) organization. If the trust relationship is profound and well-established, you can use that relationship to mutually beneft.

He mentioned the example of the Daimler-Chrysler tech clubs, where the organization had to shave off 15% of the budget throughout the business units. In seeing how this substantial reduction could be reached, the communities had an important role in consulting the formal organization (BU's) where and how to make this happen.

In this example it becomes apparent where communities have become part of the organization as a body, that lives in the ecosystem of formal institutions, and has it's own power and value contribution. Trust is essential in this relationship.

Leadership in communities

Thu, 22 May 2003 17:12:16 GMT

Good discussion inCP Week about leadership and communities of practice:

Greag Searle said "recognizing and establishing (some sort of-) roles in the community will help speed up the evolution of the community, because you establish some framework. The downside is that you can get locked into roles because roles have been established and not spontaneously emerged from the participants"

Margaret Rudolf on the roles of the community and leadership: "there is a creative tension between the assigned roles (funded roles, formalized) and the people that take upon leadership themselves - at any level (organic). This tension is almost inevitable and something that should be observed by the community support team - ask yourself how much you formalize roles and how much you recognize roles at any stage of the community lifecycle."

Academic communities blog

Thu, 22 May 2003 05:20:53 GMT

Debby Kilburn has been blogging about CP Week as well. We have decided to continue our discussions about communities in the educational world as a blogging venture to find commonalities, stories, thoughts and ideas. We're doing this together with Lisa Petrides from the ISKME institute (also from KM Cluster) - who does not have a blog at this time yet.

The objective is to create a blog which would support free forming ideas to emerge by sharing insights from different backgrounds and inclinations, creating value by weaving seemingly disparate differences together from cases and stories and finding new ways to leverage succcess for academic communities.

Leadership in communities (Etienne)

Thu, 22 May 2003 04:46:21 GMT

Etienne Wenger in the closing notes for todays event:

"Leadership in a community is not about a single person, but merely an ecosystem of leadership on different levels by different people"

Communities of practice in the e-government model

Wed, 21 May 2003 20:48:57 GMT

Thanks to Margaret Rudolf from the Treasury of Canada for starting this open discussion -

In an open group session at CP Week we have been talking about organization readiness within the e-government and the people side of the communities that form part of that. The discussion fell out in two conversations: the first one was about the federated government which has a lot in common with corporate organizations dealing with metanational issues. Though not leading to anything conclusive, the BP model for dual citizenship ignited further thinking in this area (which will be continued as an exploration in CP Square).

The other issue came along when talking about control and power in the organization. I reflected to her that whereas in corporate organizations moving to the network-enabled structure the leadership is quite constant, this may not be the case in the (political) government organization. The consideration: when moving to a network-enabled or dynamic organization, the role of the middle management is shifting from gatekeepers to a leadership role that needs to guide the communities and act as a beacon for information and network structure and flows. This role, as identified in many communities that already exist, is very important. In the case of the government however exactly these positions are the ones that are most sensitive to political change (elections!) - which could potentially mean that the leaders of the community are actually being put in a very vunerable or maybe even instable situation. The community members or the bottom line of the community, is not so much sensitive to this change. That could mean that they actually have more control over the leadership functions than in the corporate situation, because the networked leader will be emerged in a community with a legacy which would be difficult to influence or even change.

That possibility leads to the thought that the shift to the dynamic organization is actually going to shift power to the bottom line and community members, less affected by political change.An interesting thought that I'd love to further explore with the group.

Hyperdocument from Doug Engelbart

Wed, 21 May 2003 20:32:51 GMT

Yesterday I had a compelling follow up discussion with Doug Engelbart - from the Bootstrap alliance - about his hyperdocument theory and the fact that pieces information can become networks itself. The concept is very old (1950's)and has been discussed by others as well, but understanding the potential is a true eye-opener. Once the slides have been emailed around they can be posted here in the blog.

Interesting of couse is the opportunity to have information turn into contextual knowledge by seeing how information was created and in which ecosystem of considerations and other information snippets. For instance, you'd not be able to see what someone opinionates with information in a conflict situation, but also understand what construed this information that lead to the conflict. There are many more discussion items that we did not have time to, but he invited me to continue talking next week Friday in his office.

Some issues to address - what can the hyperdocument (i-file) model contribute to the changing way of driving disruptive or even radical innovation?

Blogs and power in network analysis

Mon, 19 May 2003 06:04:32 GMT

CP Week has informally started! Today I have spent some time off the beaten track with some of the participants in Marin county and later during a dim-sum lunch, but we could not resist talking about communities, networks and our visions and practices. One of the things that I brought up (through a drawing on the back of a napkin, copied below) talking to Chris Blackmore is my that social network relationships work in blogs also have an imporant meaning, like it does for communities and networks.

Blogs - perceived as tools for driving individual capabilities - also form networks of people with similar thoughts. Be it through subscription or RSS, bloggers read other people's blogs when they consider it relevant or interesting. This is how the network is created, comparable to voluntary membership in communities.

My diagram shows the blog as the center of the network. The circle represents the clique of people that I am subscribed to - which are people that I relate to because of my work or interest. I form with them a community, but only in my perception (they themselves may have a different vision of the network).

The people that I relate to, themselves relate to others in a similar way. I use these links to understand the way the people that I directly relate to, think. These second tier relationships however may have little or nothing to do with my personal interest, otherwise they would be first tier relationships. They help me to innovate my thoughts nevertheless, because they are out of the box I am thinking in with my personal first-tier network.

The more tiers I reach and understand in the network (this is plain SNA) the lower the energy gets related to my interests or practice. This is fine, because the number of actors in the network at this level has also increased tremendously.

We did not get anywhere with the discussion - but we concluded that social network analysis related to these thoughts, but the difference is that the power in the network is only perceived and based on an individual as the center of the network.. results cannot be applied to anyone else.

Showing weakness in communities - Philips case

Sun, 18 May 2003 17:21:01 GMT

Tuesday morning I am presenting the case of Philips Semiconductors business-community of practice. I have worked on this with Suzanne Verdonschot who has been involved in the project since November - and we will create a fishbowl case for the CP Week attendees. The case has some interesting points, of which the issue of 'getting participants to get over the issue of showing weakness in communities' is the most compelling. Creating some thoughts on that in the blog would be interesting especially to compare them with the fishbowl findings, afterwards.

Blogging value creation at CP Week

Tue, 13 May 2003 23:59:51 GMT

Next week we'll be blogging live from CP Week, in Santa Cruz. John Smith and Etienne Wenger have published the most recent program for the 4-day event online on the CP Square website. On Tuesday I am presenting a community of practice case about Philips Semiconductors - and the next day with Noel Dickover about the coordinator PG. Other highlights include:

Connecting technologies and people—Doug Engelbart
Novell case on launching a virtual community knowledge initiative (Lauren Klein)

And of course the value creation of all participants, present. Beverly Trayner might also blog parts of the event - more updates soon to follow.

If have time next week (because you wanted to attend this week the elearning forum at Microsoft's premises anyway!) and you wish to attent this event, contact Amy Keill or use the registration page