The “best intentions” community launch

At various times over these 25-30 years that I’ve been involved, both as a consultant and a functional lead, in KM I’ve helped set up communities of practice (CoPs) or CoPs programmes in organisations. One of the things I’ve observed now and then is the “best intentions community launch”.

What I mean by the “best intentions community launch” is when someone or a group of people express that there’s a genuine need for a new CoP, and that they’re the person or people to set it up. Of course, many times this may go well. But what I am talking about here is when it doesn’t, and , in particular, when there is no follow-through and the effort rapidly peters out. Very often the first meeting is the last.

I am in no way blaming the people who tried. They really appeared to believe this was their calling. I don’t blame them at all. What I am suggesting is that we have an opportunity to learn from this pattern and improve our performance.

You may think really very little goes wrong in this situation but I think two or three things do go wrong that we might be better to avoid:

• In my experience, the person themselves feels bad and regretful that they weren’t able to follow through. There’s no reason to blame them (again, not that I do in any case) since they heap blame on themselves already. They usually need reassurance and also the ‘way out’ that lets them quickly forget it all – – they really don’t want to dwell on the reasons. The reasons given usually include lack of time high on the list.
• There’s a small growth in organisational cynicism every time something is announced that doesn’t come off. It’s disempowering in the sense that it erodes people’s faith in their own abilities to decide and do things, or to depend on others or that the organisation will enable and support people who step forward to do things. For instance, that the organisation didn’t allow the person or people who stepped forward any time to implement their idea.
• KM wastes time responding optimistically to what appears to be demand pull and a real opportunity to get something going. I put this last of the three since I care more about other individuals and the company people as a whole, but organisations are usually short on KM bandwidth so any waste diminishes what can be achieved overall.

So, what do I propose doing in order to try to avoid or lessen these impacts? I try two ideas:

• Probably the main point is to have this ‘reality check’ quiet word with the person or people who want to set up the CoP:
  • First, If they reflect on any voluntary-run club or charity effort that they’ve been involved with in their lives outside work, then they will probably know that these efforts almost always depend critically on the long-term selfless dedication of usually one and almost always very, very few individuals. That’s how these things work. They have to ask themselves if they’re that person. Understand what it will take to sustain it.
  • Second, Understand that everyone wont automatically play the game as you may wish, even if they have said they will. We know that CoPs form as groups of concentric circles with few in the core of the most dedicated, some content to play so long as they don’t have to run it, most having a transactional relationship. Be prepared and don’t be disappointed that folks act like folks act.

• My other point really is a complete change in my practice about this whole matter of CoPs that has crept up on me other the years. In my earlier days I approached CoPs as a business system to define, design, develop and deploy. That thinking is still a valid, logical structure and one that helps a great deal in terms of being a reference model and knowledge base for addressing the different stages and situations in communities. However, my real-life task approach these days is no longer an isomorphic map to the logical structure. Instead, I favour a quick definition, setting some key understandings in place, followed by a simple and early start. An MVP approach, if you like, or maybe you’d call it a prototype. The more this is kept lower key the less it’s likely to fail to live up to expectations and lead to disappointment, disillusionment and wasted effort.