Sustaining Effective Communities of Practice: An APQC Consortium Study

1. Sustaining Effective Communities of Practice: An APQC Consortium Study • Kelly Hunter • Senior Relationship Manager • APQC • khunter@apqc.org • Track B102 Darcy Lemons Senior Project Manager APQC dlemons@apqc.org Track B102

2. Agenda • About APQC • Study Background • APQC Reports Out: Study Findings

3. Who We Are • APQC (www.apqc.org) is a member-based, 501(c)3 nonprofit specializing in benchmarking, knowledge management, measurement, and process improvement. • Our mission is to work with organizations around the world to improve productivity and quality by: • discovering effective methods of improvement, • broadly disseminating findings, and • connecting individuals with one another and with the knowledge they need to improve. • Leveraging benchmarks and best practices obtained from more than 7,000 projects, APQC helps organizations to rapidly define and prioritize improvement efforts.

4. Agenda • About APQC • Study Background • APQC Reports Out: Study Findings

5. Study Participants • Sponsors: • American Electric Power • Aramco Services Company • Baker Hughes • BP • Deere • Ernst & Young • ExxonMobil • Federal Transit Administration, Dept. of Transportation • Marathon Oil Co. • Petrobras • Pfizer Inc. • Praxair • The Williams Co. • US Navy – Carrier Team 1 Best-practice Partners: • ConocoPhillips • Fluor • Schlumberger

6. Agenda • About APQC • Study Background • APQC Reports Out: Study Findings

7. APQC Reports Out Study Findings

8. Characteristics of the Best-practice Partners • Each best-practice partner is a global enterprise. • Each partner organization reported using CoPs for five years or more. • Each relies on a formal staffing and approach to support and sustain the community environment, not just technology. • Continuity of KM leadership is an advantage shared by all three partners. For the most part, KM leadership teams remained the same throughout CoP strategy development and deployment.

9. Practices and Approaches for Sustaining Communities

10. 1. Align Communities With Business Needs • Ensure ongoing relevance with the business • Establish alignment at the deployment of a new community • Re-establish alignment throughout a community’s lifecycle

11. 2. Connect People to People • Enable Open Access to Communities • Prevents the communities from becoming their own silos • Promotes growth and sustainability • Use Profiles • Support and enable people-to-people connections • Make the connection more personal • Support Expertise Location • Enable a variety of approaches • Connect like-minded individuals across the organization

12. 3. Use Community Performance Plans • Incorporate as part of a community’s charter and/or business case • Documents a community’s objectives, the actions necessary to achieve them, and what the intended outcome or result will be (goal)

13. 4. Leverage Technology Thoughtfully Reference Documents Open Discussion Items • The partners focus heavily on connecting people-to-people. • Each of the partners took a very deliberate approach to assessment. • They wanted to ensure there is a business purpose for any new technology. Closed Discussion Items Lesson Learned Success Stories

14. 5. Encouraging and Sustaining Participation is Fundamental to Success • Promote awareness and communicate value • Create meaningful recognition and reward opportunities • Support and sustain member engagement throughout the community’s lifecycle

15. 6. Measures and Indicators of Health and Effectiveness Are Important to All Community Programs. • Align their community measures to the needs of the business by developing measures that support the objectives of the specific function, knowledge domain, or business unit; • Measure periodically and across the lifecycle to detect health and results; • Use measures to guide improvement of knowledge sharing and collaboration and • Use measures to identify when to start or retire a community.

16. Best Practices to Support Community Leaders

17. “Wow!” Factors • Schlumberger’s CoP leader election process • Fluor’s Protégé Program • ConocoPhillips process to capture success stories and estimate financial impact of knowledge sharing • Fluor’s knowledge loss risk assessment process

18. Questions? Thank you for your time and attention!

19. APQC Contact Information and Resources Contact Information: • APQC 123 N. Post Oak Lane, 3rd Floor Houston, Texas 77024 http://www.apqc.org Resources: • APQC’s Knowledge Base www.apqc.org

20. APQC Highlights

21. Who We Are • APQC is a member-based, 501(c)3 nonprofit specializing in benchmarking, knowledge management, measurement, and process improvement. • Our mission is to work with organizations around the world to improve productivity and quality by: • discovering effective methods of improvement, • broadly disseminating findings, and • connecting individuals with one another and with the knowledge they need to improve. • Leveraging benchmarks and best practices obtained from more than 7,000 projects, APQC helps organizations to rapidly define and prioritize improvement efforts.

22. Unique Three Decade Vantage Point Solid leadership and vision: • First White House Conference on Productivity • Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award • Benchmarking Code of Conduct • Process Classification FrameworkSM • Knowledge Base • Open Standards Benchmarking • C. Jackson Grayson Distinguished Quality Pioneer Medal Heritage in sharing knowledge: • Membership roster of more than 500 organizations • Trained more than 16,000 people in 36 countries • More than 7,000 benchmarking and best-practice studies • Led more than 145 consortium benchmarking studies to identify best practices

23. APQC Core Competencies • Benchmarking and best practices • Frameworks and maturity models • Knowledge management • Process improvement and measurement

24. APQC Research • Open Standards Benchmarking- global metrics research and benchmarking based on open standards • Custom Benchmarking - for unique or confidential needs • Best Practice Studies - multi-company best-practices collaboration around common set of issues or processes

25. APQC Membership • Through its award-winning methodologies, APQC works with its members to share knowledge and transfer best practices designed to improve business results in the process areas of: • Membership provides organizations with access to: • Best-practice research • Targeted assessments • Well-known and respected experts • Communities of peers • APQC’s expert perspectives • One-on-one guidance

26. Building on Learning (1977–Today) APQC’s Levels of KM Maturity Open Standards Benchmarking (OSB) Knowledge Management Transfer of Best Practices Systemic Quality & Process Improvement (MBNQA) Competitiveness: Productivity & Quality Benchmarking & Best Practices

27. APQC’s Work in Knowledge Management • Research on barriers to transfer of best practices • Gabriel Szulanski, INSEAD -> Wharton • Conferences • The 1995 Knowledge Symposium • 15 KM conferences • 300+ Custom KM Projects • KM Maturity Assessments, Strategy Development, Implementation and Training • Publications • Best-Practice reports • In Practice Case Series • If Only We Knew What We Know • Executives Role in Knowledge Management • Knowledge Mapping: The Essentials for Success • Capturing Critical Knowledge from a Shifting Workforce • Networks: Compete on Knowledge with CoPs • Passport Series on KM

28. APQC KM Consortium Studies • Positioning Communities of Practice for Success (2010) • Knowledge Management Measures that Matter (2010) • Sustaining Effective Communities of Practice (2009) • Cutting the Cost of Not Knowing: Lessons Learned Systems People Really Use (2009) • Using Knowledge: Advances in Expertise Location and Social Networking (2008) • The Role of Evolving Technologies (2007) • Retaining Today’s Knowledge for Tomorrow’s Workforce (2007) • Leveraging Knowledge Across the Value Chain (2006) • Using Communities of Practice to Drive Organizational Performance and Innovation (2005) • Integrating KM and Organizational Learning (2004) • Transfer of Best Practices (2004) • Virtual Collaboration (2003-2004) • Expertise Locator Systems (2003) • Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Management (2003) • Using Knowledge Management to Drive Innovation (2002) • Retaining Valuable Knowledge (2001) • Managing Content and Knowledge (2001) • Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice (2000) • Successfully Implementing KM (1999-2000) • Creating a Knowledge Sharing Culture (1998-99) • Expanding Knowledge Externally (1998) • Europe - The Learning Organisation & KM (1997) • Using Information Technology for KM (1997) • Emerging Best Practices in KM (1996)