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Category: collaboration

Communities of Practice: a strategy for more effective collaboration

Communities of Practice: a strategy for more effective collaboration

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Acting as a public administrator, it was my privilege to arrange and facilitate a meeting this morning between a delegation from the Government of Singapore and some of the ‘expert’ Community of Practice Facilitators from the local government Community of Practice platform. My thanks to Etienne Wenger for making the original connections with the Singapore Government, and to Adrian Barker (Policy & Performance CoP – 3913 members), Neil Rimmer (Productivity and Efficiency Exchange CoP – 2513 members) and Michael Norton…

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Building and Nurturing On-Line Communities – Batteries Not Included

Building and Nurturing On-Line Communities – Batteries Not Included

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Much has been written about best practice for developing and nurturing on-line communities , such as Communities of Practice (CoP), and the accepted wisdom is that technology by itself – no matter how good – will NOT deliver vibrant and successful communities. “Build it and they won’t come”  should be the mantra, as Google Wave so amply demonstrated (and I know this was not an on-line community in its purest sense before I get flamed!). I’ve previously tried to illustrate…

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EDO International Congress 2010

EDO International Congress 2010

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I had the privilege if being invited to present at the EDO 2010 International Congress in Barcelona at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialized Training on 12, 13, 14 May 2010. The conference theme was “New training strategies for oganisations” and I did a session on ‘Cultivating Knowledge Through Communities of Practice”.  The slides I used are available for download from Slideshare and embedded in this post. My sincere thanks to Jesús Martinez Marin and the organiser for the…

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Discovering the value of Social Networks and Communities of Practice

Discovering the value of Social Networks and Communities of Practice

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There has been much written about measuring the value of online communities such as Social Networks or Communities of Practice.   However, most pundits tend to think of measuring value from a purely financial perspective, i.e. the Return on Investment (ROI). Clearly this is an important factor, but it’s not the only factor that should be considered. Surprisingly few organisations consider the value that is being created by having better informed and more knowledgeable staff, or the potential value of getting…

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100 Ways To Wreck Organisational Learning

100 Ways To Wreck Organisational Learning

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I’ve always thought that one of the best ways of getting a message across is to use reverse psychology, i.e. by accentuating the negatives you can highlight patterns of irrational behaviour. This  make us realise that as rational human beings we would never do these things and we then start to think more deeply about the opposite of what we’re being told – which we’re more likely to remember. Nick Milton over at Knoco Stories has refined this process into…

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Knowledge Hub – part 1

Knowledge Hub – part 1

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This is the first opportunity I’ve had to write anything about the Knowledge Hub (Khub) Advisory Group meeting that took place last week (17th September) in London, though a number of my colleagues have been pretty active in the blogosphere and twitterverse on the topic. In particular I found Ingrid Khoeler’s post pretty much spot on and wondered if indeed if I had anything more to say on the topic. Well, clearly yes, because I’ve started this post! Maybe I…

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Communities of Practice: Conversations to Collaboration

Communities of Practice: Conversations to Collaboration

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I’ve was pleased to be invited to do a keynote presentation at the NHS eSpace Coordinators conference earlier this month.  I wanted to emphasise the importance of the Coordinator’s role in building trust within a Community of Practice (CoP), and as a catalyst for turning conversations into active collaboration.  I should note that I’m more familiar the term ‘Community Facilitator’, for this role, and have used the term ‘facilitator’ and ‘coordinator’ to mean the same thing, i.e. the person or…

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Web 2.0 in Local Government

Web 2.0 in Local Government

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How and why should local authorities and Government be planning to exploit the collaborative features of Web 2.0? This article was originally published in IT Adviser late last year. Web 2 in Local Government Publish at Scribd or explore others: Europe Government web2.0 collaboration

Using Web 2.0 for connecting and collaborating across local government

Using Web 2.0 for connecting and collaborating across local government

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Ingrid Koehler over at the Policy and Performance blog writes about how Web 2.0 is being used to support improvement initiatives in the local government sector, and in particular the positioning of (virtual) communities of practice for engaging with staff across the sector. This point is also emphasised by John Hayes, Director of Services at the IDeA. A tangible example of the power of Web 2.0 for networking, collaboration and consultation will be evident in the forthcoming Customer Insight Online…

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Building a collaborative workspace

Building a collaborative workspace

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I highly recommend the recently published white paper – “Building a collaborative workspace” – by Shawn Callahan, Mark Shenck and Nancy White. The paper goes some way to redressing the balance between Web 2.0 technology solutions and the skills, processes and techniques required to ensure the technology is used effectively. I’ve blogged on this topic previously (It’s not the technology…its the people that matter), but I think the issue is very elegantly summarised by the authors of this paper as…

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