This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Change, Economic Crisis, Free Stuff (PDF's etc.), Leadership, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Nobody knows about the future. Communities may help you learn from the unknown.
Thursday, May 07, 2009 posted by
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Today’s crisis has a major characteristic: no body knows what is going to happen in the future. From a philosophical view – we never knew what is going to happen, but we could at least pretend to know in the past.
7 years ago I did write an article on communities of practice as a powerful organizational form and intervention – after many frustrating experiences with an IT approach to knowledge management. In today’s environment they may become very useful. It is vital for every organization, in complex or even chaotic situations with many unknowns, to develop a leadership community that exchanges information, knowhow, views, and scenarios and stays alert to what is happening.
The rules to build a leadership community are the same than for any other type of community. Hints and helpful tools can be found in this article (Communities of Practice Deutsch and English version).
You will also find a practical model to help managers that includes four elements:
• how communities of practice contribute to business outcomes
• how to develop successful communities
• how to design a community-based knowledge strategy for an entire business unit
• how corporate leaders can integrate knowledge management initiatives throughout the firm