Background Assumptions

All organizations develop informal networks of relations among role participants.
- Communities happen!
Some organizations do a better job of "fertilizing" for informal network growth. Such informal networks can help overall organizational performance, or under certain conditions thwart the intentions of organizational leaders.
One common form of informal association grows up among work partners. These often are called "Communities of Practice" (CoP).
Cross-functional teams often develop informal relationships that ease working together, helping to shape a view of the reality for that team, a propensity toward action in that work environment.
People working in the same specialty, the same "practice," even though they are not usually on the same work team, also develop communications patterns that help spread common understandings about "how work is done," what information is relevant and important, and other factors in the work environment.

Factors increasing the likelihood of informal communities

Working together, taking training classes together, and otherwise being put together provide fertile grounds over time for the development of CoPs.
Being together is not a sufficient condition. Other factors mediate, including personality, judgment of competence, and style.
Face-to-face meetings increase the likelihood of a CoP growing up among practitioners.
Weaker social ties can be formed electronically (a "community of discourse"), but CoP-strength communication will be less common without occasional personal interaction.
Trust and mutual recognition of competence, developed over time, are critical in supporting professional work groups (especially virtual work groups) and CoPs.
Frequent reassignment or promotion of professionally-skilled people can inhibit or destroy CoP development.

The Role of Electronic Communication

Electronic communication can help professionals sustain and deepen relationships that they initiate through more conventional channels.
In particular phone conversations and electronic mail (as well as more conventional postal mail) can supplement face-to-face communication and help maintain a CoP.
- Voltaire, in The Philosophical Dictionary, notes:
  Correspondence is the consolation of life. By its means those who are absent become present.

Schelling Points – obvious places to meet like-minded people

Advertising a mailing list can act as a "Schelling Point," an identifiable "location" where like-minded people can congregate and share information and discourse.
However, a majority of mailing lists fail to reach a critical mass of "on-topic" responses to queries. One view suggests that any successful list must overcome this "free-rider" problem.
- The most natural behavior in a mailing list is to only read, but never contribute. Contribution takes time, commitment, and without some measure of altruism (or a desire for recognition and comradeship for contributing) a mailing group never gets off the ground.)
A Web page or other ways of identifying like-minded individuals can also act as foci for Schelling Points.

Role of CoP in Mailing List

One or more local CoPs can act to create critical mass for a mailing list "community of discourse" by acting as facilitators, helping to ensure that answers are given, phone calls made to participants requesting help, etc. These local CoPs will reinforce and encourage other local members to participate in and support a mailing list.
After reaching a critical mass, other conditions being equal (mailings stay on topic, off-topic subjects are effectively managed by verbal rebukes, contributors feel they are adding value or receiving appropriate recognition, etc.) the original facilitating group will become less critical.
A key methods question: how does one determine that a particular mailing list has reached "critical mass," so that most correspondence is on topic and a feeling of success is felt in the discourse community? What measurements (aside from favorable comments from participants) can one use to gauge a listserv’s or a Web site’s degree of success?
Some indirect metrics might include:

Size of the subscription list and message base (absolute and relative to the expected population)

Growth rate. Number of new members voluntarily adding subscriptions vs. defections.

Increasing number of contributors (as a percentage of subscribers, although this rate is always low. One study found that half the messages in successful groups came from two percent of the members.)

Relative activity: total postings, postings/contributor, growth in postings, increases in thread length.

The relative number of "sanctioning" messages, from comments to "flames" required to keep contributions on topic. No sanctioning messages might indicate a dead community (no one cares any longer), while too many sanctioning messages might indicate a discourse community having difficulty establishing the proper norms and expectations.

A successful mailing list can create a community of discourse that may become the basis for future CoP development.
- Several studies find that people communicating by BBS, mailing lists, and moving to e-mail will then seek to meet face-to-face.
  See Frank Weinreich, Global Hearth Fires, CMC Magazine, February 1997.
  Weinreich argues that computer mediated communication, while supporting communications, cannot build a community. Trust, cooperation, friendship and community are based on contacts in the sensual world. You communicate through networks but you don't live in them.
The more face-to-face opportunities and the more time to develop judgments of competency and trust in fellow practitioners, the more likely mailing lists are to be used for a full array of services.

A potential array of services that can be offered by practitioners on a mailing list (arranged in an order hypothesized to require an increasing sense of trust):

Knowledge filter: asking for help.

Faced with vast quantities of information and options, getting just the right piece can be a major task. A mailing list can act as a human knowledge filter, for its members often are expert on differing subjects and have worked on different projects, and can be drawn upon by others in the "community of discourse" to quickly supply answers.

Sharing success stories (how we shot the bear)

Sharing of site-developed marketing collateral, presentations, product reviews and benchmarks

Sharing of statements of work, proposals, deliverables

Discussions of the nature of reality for this practice (requires high trust, and perhaps off-line settings so others outside the group won't hear.)

Impact of a CoP on Professional Practitioners

The more a professional’s work goes beyond book learning, the more dynamic the practice, the greater the need for support and collaboration from other "front-line" practitioners.
The less community support for professionals under these conditions, the more likely the practitioner is to leave the company.
- This can be especially true at high job levels. In recruiting for the Company Human Interface Technology Center, potential associates were much more concerned about "who else will be there to work with" than with salary.
The more a practice deviates from standard product descriptions because it involves customization for each customer, the more difficulty sales reps will have in describing and selling the service.
Lesser selling of particular professional skills will lower satisfaction and increase the turnover for consultants with that skill.
- For example, the question on the NT list from a Canadian NT consultant, "Where is the work?" A Canadian interviewee reported a high turnover from NT specialists going to other consultancies.

Actions to Increase Likelihood of Successful CoPs

Face-to-face meetings with time to socialize among people of a particular practice.
Leverage events by outside vendors to which Company practice associates are going anyway. Communicate to other Company attendees who else will be there; have an informal gathering right before the meeting, to maximize opportunity for face-to-face conversation.
- While just conversation might be useful, more formal facilitation might help people to overcome initial shyness, reveal information about themselves, and locate like-minded people who might become part of their CoP.
Attempt to populate formal classes with specialists from the same region, who have higher probability of meeting face-to-face in the future.
- A counter-argument can be made. Those in the same region (especially in the same city or area) are most likely to see each other face-to-face again anyway, so perhaps in the interest of corporate global objectives and with the goal of supporting ties between the dispersed CoPs that are likely to grow up among practitioners in the same city, one should maximize the geographic dispersion of attendees.
Look for opportunities for short-term "mentoring" even among practitioners of the same rank; a chance to work together on a project (even if one works without pay) can increase the probability of a successful CoP and the sharing of "implicit" knowledge so critical to a dynamic practice.
- An interviewee suggested this option. The interviewee, as a senior consultant, is always put "in charge" of a project, even if the project is in an area new to the associate. The opportunity to have some mentoring in a new area would help pass on implicit knowledge and better prepare the associate for taking charge of projects in this area without having to do so much quick study on customer time.
Consider the possibility of smaller, "hidden" mailing lists or Web pages with only people one trusts might enhance communication in a local CoP.
New private mailing lists and hidden-address Web pages seem to be common especially in academic areas to meet this need.

Actions to Increase the Likelihood of a Successful "Community of Discourse"

Facilitate face-to-face meetings among practitioners

Work to find opportunities to bring practitioners together (for classes, in conjunction with other events, etc.) and then facilitate meetings to enhance interaction, then let natural propensities take their route.
- The notion is that Communities of Discourse will best succeed if supported by multiple Communities of Practice.

Facilitate and publicize "Schelling Points"

Continue to enhance and to widely publicize the ability to easily create mailing lists, Web pages, phone lists, home pages, beeper numbers, and other communication facilities that can support communities of discourse.
Consider support also for "private" listservs and hidden Web pages, while encouraging the use of more publicly visible lists and sites.
Create and publicize a Web site giving instructions to interested groups on how to generate these shared communication facilities.

Seek active support from one or more facilitating groups (Communities of Practice) when creating a new mailing list

Seek to have each electronic communication medium (e-mail, Web page, etc.) adopted by at least one existing CoP who are willing to take some responsibility for raising interesting issues, responding to questions, etc. Such a group or groups can create the critical mass required to keep a mailing list going.
The more "water-cooler" CoPs using a particular mailing list, the greater the likelihood of a successful sharing of information.

Explore methods to better publicize successful professional services deliveries to sales teams

A common theme in interviews dealt with the difficulty of sensitizing sales teams to the offerings available from Professional Services. Services needed by sales team customers that could be successfully sold and delivered may not be offered because the general sales team did not know Company has the capability and resume to deliver a particular service.

This communication gap has become worse because many professional services people work from remote offices (their homes) and have less contact with sales teams than when offices were shared.
One sales team was searching all of Company for an expert in Microsoft Exchange, only to discover late in the day that not only was one of the professional services experts in their district an expert, but was also co-author of a recent book by a major publisher on the use of Microsoft Exchange and in addition a Microsoft MVP (certified by Microsoft as a true support expert).
Some Professional Services teams are taking their own initiative to set up their district labs to demonstrate particular offerings to sales teams and to point to existing installations of these products within the Company customer base.

Possible actions might be to arrange special Web sites to publicize these efforts and create a Schelling Point for sales teams to examine when searching for Company expertise. These Web sites might be managed by CoPs and Communities of Discourse using simplified Web tools like Microsoft FrontPage 97.

Demonstration lab sites and their contents could also be publicized on such sales team-advertising sites.

Explore the use of "Agent" technology to enhance signal-to-noise ratio, giving participants in a list more relevant messages

Current Perceptions of the Difficulty with Company Public Sources

A frequent complaint in interviews with NT and Networking Mailing List users focused on the disorganization of information sources within Company and the lack of state-of-the-art means (at least compared to the Public Internet) to search for or filter for interesting information.

Several respondents pointed out the number of distinct sites, all with different organization, offering support for NT and networking topics, and the difficulty of finding out what is new at each site, and further having a means to evaluate the worth of the new information without actually reading it themselves.
Too often they felt that portions of release documents and some templates populating the Knowledge Center were merely outlines, pointing out the interesting questions and areas without providing sufficient information to be useful to a practitioner.

Background on Intelligent Agents

The theory is that users will find a mailing list or other sources of information more appealing if some intelligent prior selection can be made to cut the volume of messages while increasing the probability of relevance.

Software agents are semi-intelligent computer programs which assist a user with the overload of information and the complexity of the on-line world. A rich source of overview information: The Autonomous Agent 97 Conference (5-8 Feb. 97), information at http://www.isi.edu/isd/Agents97/info.html
- One type of software: “cognitive” systems
  - chooses documents based on the characteristics of their contents. Filtering technology like SMART (Salton, G., ed. Automatic Text Processing: The Transformation, Analysis, and Retrieval of Information by Computer, Addison Wesley Publishing, 1989), used by Individual, Inc., that uses software to attach a limited set of key words to articles, then allows users to "subscribe" to particular profiles of key words – cutting the number of items to review. (One discussion: http://agents.www.media.mit.edu/groups/agents/papers/newt-thesis/main.html, and the resulting prototype of Yenta, http://agents.www.media.mit.edu/groups/agents/papers/newt-thesis/main.html
- A second type: “social” systems
  - select documents based on the recommendations and annotations of other users. These use some form of "voting" or "vetting" support, where individual experts rate the applicability of particular items. Less central users can then get items that meet certain certification standards by the "experts." (For example, Suchak, M.A., GoodNews: A Collaborative Filter for Network News, SM Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Feb 1994., and Tapestry: Goldberg, G., Nichols, D., Oki, B.M., Terry, D., Using Collaborative Filtering to Weave an Information Tapestry, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 35 No. 12, pp. 61-70.)
See also grapeVINE (http://www.gvt.com/) and FireFly (http://www.ffly.com/). GrapeVINE recommends combining the two. Firefly uses automated collaborative filtering.

Recommendation for Intelligent Agents

Intelligent agents are not yet turn-key. Particularly useful would be a mechanism for community of discourse members to record their reactions to particular information sources, and for a system to then make these average ratings available. For example, GrapeVINE works by assigning "expert critics" to releases and news stories for ratings; when a particular document gets a high rating the results are publicized to interest parties. This frees interested parties from having to read all documents just to find the good ones.

Firefly works on a different notion by attempting to find people with interests, likes and dislikes similar to the respondent (right now only for movies and for recorded music). The theory is that a recommendation from someone who is already know to have similar tastes should carry more weight than from an unknown individual. Making the system work depends on many people continually entering their preferences into the system.

Mailing lists already serve this function to some extent, for correspondents will often send messages about interesting Web sites or other sources they have seen, and a request for information (the information filter) will often bring one or more quick recommendations of where to turn for further information.
An effort should be made to find an inexpensive turn-key agent system relevant to the problem of collecting judgments from communities of correspondence and trying such applications out to see if the system in fact meets the perceived need. Without some pilots justifying a major investment of time and programming will be difficult.

The goal of such an effort is:

Better organization of shared information with a CoP Web site

Many professional services practitioners need better ways to show competence. While certainly not sufficient, Web-based resumes, experiences, pointers on Web pages to the best sites for key information and instruction, etc., can be helpful.
For example, at times it would be helpful if the "From" line in Listserv listing was automatically hyperlinked to the respondent’s preferred Web page, either behind or beyond the Company fire wall.
The top ten links of the group (supported by FireFly-type voting, or grapeVINE-type significance ratings.
A mechanism to highlight most relevant posts.

Conclusions

Communities of practice will happen.
Improved learning and enhanced company results will often come from encouraging development both of Communities of Practice and also electronic-based Communities of Discourse.
Communities of Discourse are more likely to transact real business if supported by Communities of Practice
Not much encouragement is needed. The primary CoP enhancers are the opportunity for face-to-face meetings with people in one’s practice (perhaps with some facilitation) and support for easy-to-use mailing list and Web sites.
Some marketing and publicity can help make groups aware of these electronic facilities and the methods available to set up mailing lists, Web sites, "voting" sites, and so on.
The same electronic means can be used to attempt to facilitate face-to-face conversations at meetings where many associates will be attending anyway. Arranging a time, place and activities before the meeting can inexpensively help fertilize the natural growth of communities.
More effort may be required for various professional practices to present their stories and successes to relevant sales teams, but the return in getting paid work in areas of interest are very high both to the practitioners and to the company.

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Community of Practice Links

Last updated on 17 Mar 1997