Can virtual work teams become virtual communities of practice?
by alison
Wow, last week’s post generated a lot of great discussion that helped reframe my thinking leading up to the informative presentation on community by Dr. Schwier to our class on Tuesday.
In particular, I’m grateful for having gone into the presentation with Dr. Schwier’s comment from my last post echoing through my thoughts. The idea that we can only set up the conditions under which communities can form, develop and potentially thrive was particularly resonant for me. And it got me thinking—besides the benefits for organisations, what would be in it for potential community members (such as work units) to want to be a virtual community, let alone one that shares knowledge?
I suppose I was coming at this particular issue from a bit of a business-centric standpoint as HRD is a yet-to-be defined field that is dominated by this standpoint. (I should add that I personally try to apply a critical approach to my work as much as possible.)
Struggles of praxis and an undefined field aside, for my course project I’m thinking I’d like to inquire into the potential for a professional development-geared community to develop amongst two virtual learning unit teams (of which I am also a member). Could two these two virtual teams whose core work is in supporting organisational learning—and whose members theoretically should have similar vested interests—become a learning community? As I saw during Dr. Schwier’s presentation, there needs to be some sort of incentive there to encourage ‘intensity’, which is one feature of functioning communities. Dr. Schwier presented metrics for nonformal, formal and informal group intensity, or depth of interaction. Both the formal and informal groups showed great intensity in discussions in different patterns, the development of which demonstrated that community had developed. In the formal groups, this development was likely due to the ‘forced’ time spent together and in the informal groups the same is seen when topics are of interest to different members. In nonformal groups, the metrics showed a dearth of ‘real’ discussion—real community—being able to form. The reason being? Probably because there are no incentives that draw the group together. And as my colleague Laura Bechard rightly pointed out, the metrics hold great implications for the development of Communities of Practice.
So, in a virtual workplace with a responsibility towards learning, what would be the draw towards the development of a Community of Practice? I’m not certain that the site of our work would be enough as many of my coworkers do not specialise in learning, nor is that the focus specifically of their work or potential interests and career aspirations (much of it can be administrative in nature and driven by financial policy). Maybe the question is: What is perceived as a central need or point of inquiry amongst these two teams? I could be wrong, but I think the groups’ interests are potentially too divergent. Instead, I suspect that our sister learning consultant groups (we have four other groups of learning units across Canada) would be more likely to develop such a community due to the similarity of their work experiences.
What do you think? I’m off to check out what Daniel Pink has to say about motivation in the meantime…
connectivité 
It is an interesting topic to think about what the incentives are for being in a VLC. Currently at our Cyber School we are trying to generate that type of VLC through a newly created blog. It is just in its infancy (I made the blog on Friday) but motivating people to become a part of a community has been one of our topics of discussion. Is it too naive to think that people are intrinsically motivated to be a part of a community just because they are invited? Perhaps. So our first step to encourage that ‘intensity’ in a community is for our Principal to mandate that each Cyber School staff member participate by adding an entry into the blog once a month in lieu of staff meetings. We were not sure how else to get this community off the ground and are hoping that our teachers are wanting to be a part of a community like this. I’ll keep you posted as to whether a mandated community is a good strategy or not.
I work as a member of a small virtual team, and I think for us the primary incentive for knowledge sharing is the understanding that our individual tasks and responsibilities will be made easier if we share what we know. If one person hordes knowledge, it will ultimately cause him (yes, him — we’re all men, sadly) more problems than benefits.
For example, if one technician came up with a more efficient method of doing customer software upgrades, it would not only make his life easier in completing that task, but sharing this knowledge would let him help others do it too, allowing them to share the load, and freeing up more of his time for other, more interesting tasks. This applies within a virtual team, but can be just as true with external groups. Sharing knowledge makes us smarter and more efficient.
For team managers, it is critically important to ensure the reward system works to encourage and facilitate this. Rewarding sharing will result in more sharing. Only rewarding individual achievement will undermine it. The next step is for managers to encourage sharing in a wider context, with others outside of the team, and reward participation in CoPs.
Maybe I’m confusing the issue a bit and need to refocus. I’m definitely interested in the sharing of tacit knowledge but I could potentially be veering off into professional development issues. Ack!
Maybe I’m getting at the consultant groups and how they share HRD info. We have one consultant in the Atlantic who periodically sends out information on HRD-related topics through mass mailings to the entire staff across the country and there is an opportunity to formalise something there. Or maybe start small with the two teams that I’m working on? Can you tell I’m trying to sort out my project?
Back to my team, though, I see a lot of attempts to capture knowledge through process mapping, etc., but they always end up out of date. And if I’m away sick, no one seems to be able to handle urgent things. And I can’t think of any attempts to share tacit knowledge. So maybe this speaks to team management more than anything—I don’t see managers realising how crucial it can be to create an environment conducive to sharing. What brought your team members around to this realisation that this would be a worthwhile thing to do?
[…] Can virtual work teams become virtual communities of practice? by purprin Wow, last week's post generated a lot of great discussion that helped reframe my thinking leading up to the informative presentation on community by Dr… (RT @courosa: "Can virtual work teams become virtual communities of practice? Source: alisonseamaneci831.wordpress.com […]
I’ve been flirting with various ways to encourage workplace based communities of practice or inter-institutional networks for 3 years now. It’s is definitely quite the dance! In my role as a faculty developer (the title of which implies that faculty can be developed!), I offer several workplace training workshops, consultations, etc. In addition, we have small communities of innovation happening in the classroom incorporating technologies and even a few instances of social media into instructional practices. Outside of my workplace, those of us who perform similar work are connected through provincial organizations and even national groups.
In the first context – within the College. We run Instructional Skills Workshops (4 day event) at the end of which instructors really want to stay connected with each other as indicated in their responses to “what would you like to see as follow up to this workshop” question. However, every attempt that our department has made to arrange events or to provide access to online support, communities has failed. So.. now I’m going to try using a blog in combination with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter giving them all opportunities to connect to the network any way that fits. This is my final project for this course so any tips or resources you come across, please send my way!
We also had a group of faculty interested in exploring how Web 2.0 tools could be incorporated into their practices, so we hosted a session on a PD Day and facilitated using an Open Forum style. From that experience, some participants continued the discussion … started their own network and others continued to send questions our way.
Yesterday, we hosted a webinar on the effective use of iPads in the classroom that was very well received. Today, I threw out yet another invitation (via e-mail) to facilitate conversations among those interested in furthering their understanding or participating in some of the applications / experiments underway. I offered to establish social networking groups for them to connect with… we’ll see what happens.
I think there are informal connections and networks occurring…. we just don’t know they are out there! Perhaps the sessions we hosted and facilitated were the meeting places and provided the stimulus for continued dialogue. I’d like to think that’s what’s happening! :))
Wow, yes we should try to share what we find. When you have a moment see if #KM or KMers is helpful to you. If I find articles that I think you might like I will try to cc you (and Kevin) on Twitter as well. The whole idea of these groups is to share and as HRD practitioners (I would argue that you play an HRD role) we are talking about creating environments that are conducive to knowledge sharing. When we share knowledge we increase our own capacities and—by extension—that of the organisation’s to be able to respond to change. And doing this makes life generally more interesting for group members too.
I’m still in the planning phase but am definitely thinking of going the informal route now. Working on my proposal to both Alec and my workplace…
[…] pictures available for free usage, nor had I figured out how to tag them. One of our classmates, Alison, gave us a brief tutorial about how to give the author of the photo proper attribution using […]
[…] the need for upfront assessment. And this maybe also because of this article, which reminds me of Kevin’s earlier comment that knowledge management (KM) should be ingrained in work practices. Everybody discusses knowledge […]