1. Strategies for Building & Sustaining Successful Communities of Practice K.S.Srinivasa Murty

2. PRESENTATION STRUCTURE.An over view of Knowledge Management. Role and relevance of Communities of Practice in KM - –What are Communities of Practice? –Why Communities of Practice? –What is the difference between Communities of Practice, Project Teams and Special Interest Groups? How to build and sustain successful communities? An illustrative case study - HLL’s Packaging Community

3. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ? A firm’s Sustainable Competitive Advantage comes from what it “collectively knows”, how efficiently it uses what it knows and how readily it “acquires and uses new knowledge”. Knowledge management provides an enabling framework to derive this advantage - to become a “knowledge driven organization”...

4. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT? An “enabling framework” for - Capturing and locating Sharing, and Creation of new knowledge To strengthen business performance.

5. WHY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT? To strengthen performance, through: Knowledge sharing - building on each other’s knowledge Focussing global experience on problems where ever they occur Not reinventing the wheel and not repeating mistakes Strengthening product / process Innovation Doing things faster - compressing the time for delivery; Reduce cycle time; getting 1st time right

6. KNOWLEDGE IS ESSENTIALLY PEOPLE BASED... Knowledge is the human interpretation of information, experience and intuition for potential action Tacit Explicit Embedded (Experience, past memories, intuition, hard to catalogue, document) (Formal, codified, data bases, policy manuals, white papers etc.)

7. “While Knowledge Management is common sense, it is not yet a common practice.” Effective management of knowledge assets needs more than an appreciation of its relevance - there is need for appropriate interventions - culture change initiatives, knowledge engineering tools and techniques and Information technology.

8. Linking people to people in teams / communities of practice to share knowledge KEY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

9. Linking people to information / knowledge repositories / best practices ( Knowledge centres ) KEY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

10. PRESENTATION STRUCTURE An over view of Knowledge Management. Role and relevance of Communities of Practice in KM - –What are Communities of Practice? –Why Communities of Practice? –What is the difference between Communities of Practice, Project Teams and Special Interest Groups? How to build and sustain successful communities? An illustrative case study - HLL’s Packaging Community

11. WHAT IS A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE (COP)? A Team of professionals centred around a knowledge domain (function / business process - e.g. software developers, packaging professionals, supply chain professionals, project management professionals etc.) who have got together to leverage their collective knowledge - to share experiences, solve problems and generate ideas to capture, create and share knowledge to formalise and initiate projects born out of common issues / knowledge gaps Sometimes also referred to as “learning communities’ or “Networks” or “excellence teams”.

12. WHAT IS A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE ? The members of a community are practitioners - peers in the execution of “real work”. It acknowledges and leverages the power of informal communities of peers –creativity + resourcefulness in problem solving –inventing better ways to meet commitments. It is held together by a common sense of purpose and a real need to know what each other knows.

13. WHY A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE? Sharing and leveraging knowledge –share tacit knowledge, complex ideas and insights –help each other and build a common approach Own and develop knowledge capabilities –develop and manage leading practices on short as well as long term Link the organization –link across businesses, regions and countries

14. RELATION WITH FORMAL ORGANIZATION Informal networks Formal organizational structure + It is the addition to the formal structure that makes a CoP such a powerful way of sharing and creating knowledge!

15. RELATION WITH OTHER STRUCTURES

16. A Community of Practice does not just start or continue automatically. It needs to be championed and nurtured.

17. WHAT ARE THE HURDLES? Resources Time Commitment

18. HOW TO OVERCOME THEM? Facilitation Systems Recognition Resources Support Strategic relevance

19. PRESENTATION STRUCTURE An over view of Knowledge Management. Role and relevance of Communities of Practice in KM - –What are Communities of Practice? –Why Communities of Practice? –What is the difference between Communities of Practice, Project Teams and Special Interest Groups? How to build and sustain successful communities? An illustrative case study - HLL’s Packaging Community

20. KEY STEPS IN SETTING UP AND MAINTAINING A COP Identify an area of interest (knowledge domain) that will contribute to the organization’s strategic initiatives. Identify sub-domains and establish priorities. Define purpose and establish success criteria. Address the following questions right at the start - –What is the purpose? –What are the criteria for the choice of team members? –What are the deliverables for the first 1 or 2 years? –What is in it for the business? How will the CoP satisfy the expectations of its champion and the Business? (capability building/ productivity improvement / cycle time and cost reductions / speed to market etc.) –What is in it for the me? How will the CoP fulfil the expectations of the members?

21. KEY STEPS IN SETTING UP AND MAINTAINING A COP Set up teams / task forces to suggest how the community should establish people to people connection (periodicity of face to face meetings, video conferences, virtual meeting etc.) and people to Information / knowledge connection.( E-groups, bulletin boards, Intranets / knowledge portals etc.) Formally launch the community -some of the key objectives of which could be - –Provide visibility to the team and their efforts - the champion of the community would reiterate the relevance of the team in the context of the corporate priorities and encourage the team –Conduct a knowledge work shop to map the knowledge relevant to the charter of the community and identify the gaps and develop a program to plug these gaps. –Fine tune the charter / deliverables. Establish responsibilities for content development, validation and maintenance.

22. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Champion Main point of contact for the area in the decision making chain Charter formulation Member selection Motivates and steers the CoP

23. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES CoP Facilitator Engine of CoP Supports the champion in launching the CoP ( organize Knowledge workshop, develop the charter, set up teams / task forces to focus on sub-domains / knowledge blocks within the overall knowledge domain etc.) Interacts with the Technology vendors and community members to ensure development of relevant and user friendly working tools - Intranet / Knowledge Portal and other IT tools. Coordinates and facilitates ongoing communication within the community. Motivates, reminds, counsels and binds people

24. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES CoP Participant Participant have a vested interest in the area Inputs new ideas and vision of larger network they are representing Disseminates the community’s knowledge to his / her network

25. CRITERIA FOR MEMBERSHIP Expertise in the area, practitioners, intent, capability and motivation to share expertise with others, will stay long enough to add value, CoP work will become part of the personal targets of the members Support mechanism for new members so that they do not slow down the progress - Current members must Mentor new members to quickly bring them up to speed Optimal Size of CoP is about 12 to 15 people. Ensure a good spread of skill, experience and personalities

26. WAYS OF WORKING What will be the main means of communication? What are the tools needed? How much time does everybody want to spend? How does this relate to the deliverables? Do people need training in specific skills for this way of working?

27. WAYS OF WORKING What will be the decision making process? How do you resolve difficult issues? What will be the time frame for dealing with submissions and feedback?

28. ADDED VALUE AND PROGRESS What will be the main KPI's? How will progress be monitored? How to measure the added value? Internally as well as externally? To whom do you communicate added value?

29. KNOWLEDGE CODIFICATION How to deal with the collective knowledge base? How to determine if a given suggestion / practice constitutes a Best Practice? ( Validation / Best Practice Advisory team) Which knowledge do you want / need to codify? What support do you need for it? How do you want to codify? Who gets access to the CoP knowledge?

30. HEALTH CHECK Assess the health and value of a community within 6 months of launch. –Internal value the community is delivering to its members, and –External value that the community is delivering to the company –How satisfied are the members of the community with the knowledge assets / content developed and shared? With the processes adopted by the community support of the champion and the leader

31. PRESENTATION STRUCTURE An over view of Knowledge Management. Role and relevance of Communities of Practice in KM - –What are Communities of Practice? –Why Communities of Practice? –What is the difference between Communities of Practice, Project Teams and Special Interest Groups? How to build and sustain successful communities? An illustrative case study - HLL’s Packaging Community

32. An illustration of Community of Practice - HLL’s Packaging Community

33. THE CONTEXT Opportunities / Challenges Total packaging cost is many hundred crores rupees, across 13 business categories. Packaging professionals divided by category structure. (organizational silos) Heightened need for deliberate & structured knowledge sharing in a dis-aggregated organisation More boundaries Hence, greater sharing required as well as external orientation to build new capabilities

34. THE CONTEXT How do we deliver functional and operational excellence in this divisional organizational structure? How do we ensure that the “collective knowledge” of all packaging professionals in the company is fully leveraged by the packaging professionals in each business to add maximum value to his business?

35. THE CHARTER OF OUR PACKAGING COMMUNITY Leverage the “collective knowledge” of all packaging professionals in the company to - Improve speed and quality of innovations reduce packaging costs through: Development and sharing best practices across businesses Learning from external best practices Upgrading skills of team personnel Faster replication of packaging innovations across businesses

36. PACKAGING COMMUNITY Definition What is it? “A group of people with common interests and passions... Why was it set up? A common goal of building critical capabilities, through... ….that are required to meet the organization's objectives of growth and operational excellence”... Packaging knowledge community –Packaging specialists from all Business Categories –Packaging purchase managers –(Key Suppliers part of extended team) –Developing & sharing best practices across categories –Learning from external best practices –Upgrading the skills of the team –Connecting with the consumer in a systematic manner –Provide best in class, consumer preferred packaging. –Shorten development cycle time –Savings through replication of major packaging innovations across categories

37. Knowledge mapping, gap analysis and knowledge structuring through workshops - Identified Packaging Cost and Performance Drivers Identified key “Knowledge Blocks” for upgrading skill base and its application to meet Business Expectations. Formed “sub teams” around these “knowledge blocks” to focus on strengthening the knowledge and packaging skills in the relevant blocks and share with the rest. Developed Packaging Project Guides - Harmonization / Best Practice Guide lines. PROCESSES EMPLOYED FOR LEVERAGING COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE

38. Regular bimonthly meetings to review progress vis a vis the charter, share knowledge - both success and failure stories. Latest packaging technology search / review Standard documentation and Intranet

39. Linking people to information / knowledge repositories / best practices ( Knowledge Centres ) KEY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

40. KNOWLEDGE CENTRE ( KNOWLEDGE PORTAL) - Repository of functional knowledge - Dissemination of best practices - Upgradation of functional skills - Place to search - Place to post a query Teams to develop content Key projects to be documented Online courses development y Storehouse of functional knowledge y Distilled learnings in specialty areas y Focussed functional training Knowledge Centre HLL function.com List of Experts HLL and external

41. TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT FOR KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE AND SHARING Intranet ( Knowledge portal) “To capture and store for easy retrieval knowledge repositories, lessons learnt, Best Practices. “Less is genuinely more”. Avoid information overload. Try to Integrate with normal workflow. Knowledge based tools ( Decision support tools)

43. TO SUM UP - Knowledge management is … 1. Increasing the capacity for effective action by connecting people to people and people to information. 2. Capability building - “Raising the floor / raising the ceiling”. 3. The transfer of internal knowledge and best practices. “If only we know what we know” ! 4. Communities of Practice are strong enablers for knowledge management.