Replying to LO25168 --
Denham Grey wrote:
> The announcement by IBM this week that they have entered the community
> consulting business, is a wake-up call for organizational learning that
> the CoP movement is catching fire (at last!).
>
> Here is their announcement:
>
> http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/knowledge/practices/details.html
>
> and a late 1999 article on their approach. Somehow I found this CoP
> attention to be slightly mechanistic and a little too prescriptive (just
> my bias?).
>
> http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/knowledge/media/cop.pdf
>
> We seem still be missing a deep understanding of what happens inside those
> successful communities.
Denham, my own view is that the article cited above is largely on target.
The corresponding consulting offering, however, misses the point. You
don't "design" communities, they self-organize. You no more design
communities than you "grow" plants. Rather, at best, you cultivate the
conditions in which either of them emerge. If one wants to really screw
up a perfectly good thing in the realm of business innovation, the best
way to do so is by undertaking the task of "building" communities, or
"creating" them. As you say, this is an absolute abomination of the
principles that lie behind organizational knowledge -- utterly
reductionist, and ultimately unsustainable. I'm sure this is not what the
authors of the article cited above -- Prusak and Lesser (both of whom I
know and deeply respect) -- had in mind. Maybe chalk it up to the right
idea in the wrong place -- I don't know.
Regards,
Mark
--"Mark W. McElroy" <mmcelroy@vermontel.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.