Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William M. Snyder
Harvard Business School Press, 2002

Organizational learning is key to both execution and planning, yet few executives are deliberate in fostering learning in their companies. Hiring capable people and assuming that they will somehow communicate, learn, and improve the way they work is not enough. Leaders must deliberately pursue learning in order to improve organizational performance. This reader-friendly book from three pioneering thinkers provides a practical guide for fostering learning in your organization, using communities of practice.

A community of practice is a group of professionals who share concerns and interests, and who interact on a regular basis to learn together. The interaction often crosses organizational, geographical, and team boundaries. It can be face-to-face or utilize information technology such as conferencing systems and web sites.

The world abounds with communities of practice. Some companies use them to help customers learn about their products, by learning from each other as well as from the company's technical support representatives. The Los Angeles Java User Group hosts a study group that meets twice a month to go through software engineering books. Many companies have a groups dedicated to improving the product development process. Some of these communities are successful, others less so. The book examines in depth several key issues and provides practical recommendations for each:

• What kind of preparation is needed to set up a community?
• How much formality is appropriate?
• How should a community be launched?
• How does one maintain momentum once the community is up and running?
• How can one support the formation of more communities within a company?
• What should be done to make sure the new learning is put to use?
• What tangible and intangible value can one expect to harvest?

Effective communities of practice can greatly accelerate existing efforts to improve organizational learning. The book includes compelling case stories from organizations such as the U.S. Navy, DaimlerChrysler, Siemens, IBM, The World Bank, McKinsey and Shell. But like with any "best practice", communities of practice also has its share of trade-offs and risks. The book does not shy away from these. An entire chapter is dedicated to practical challenges and pitfalls, including group insulation, acting like the knowledge police, too much inward focus, groups that fail to gain and assert legitimacy, and turf wars between groups.

No book about a best practice is complete without an explanation of how one can measure value creation. The authors do not disappoint here either. They discuss how communities can establish good measures, how to gather data and raise awareness of measures, and how to present the big picture with actual ROI estimates.

This book is a very impressive accomplishment. It is practical in its orientation but presents an integrated, conceptual view of communities of practice. It is a relatively quick read at a modest 284 pages, yet thorough enough in its treatment that it will likely serve as an indispensable handbook for years to come.

About the author

Frode L. Ødegård is the founder and CEO of the Lean Software Institute. He has more than twenty years of experience as a software entrepreneur and trusted advisor to high-tech executives. Organizations he has helped include Sony Electronics Inc., Lockheed Martin, Candle, Conexant Systems, Mindspeed, and Plantronics. Frode is currently writing a book on using Lean to transform the way software enterprises are designed and managed.