Networks: Compete on Knowledge with CoPs
American Productivity & Quality Center, APQC, May 2007, Pages: 85
In 2005, when the second communities of practice (CoPs) consortium study was launched, I noticed that some of the most successful and advanced communities appeared in engineering and technical settings. By successful, I mean they had active and widespread participation; were well funded; had pretty much all the infrastructure they needed, including excellent facilitation and IT support; were doing a bang-up job with content management; and seemed to have enthusiastic management participation and executive support. The KM core teams had impressive data on participation and usage, and libraries of success stories they trotted out whenever asked for evidence that the communities were working. When we evaluated them against our checklist of critical success factors for communities, they seemed to have all or most of them.
Was it just good planning, design, and execution; or was something else going on? Was there something about the participants being engineers and technical folks? I decided to dig a bit deeper and look at successful engineering and technical communities in Air Products and Chemicals, BHP Billiton, Buckman Laboratories, Chevron, Fluor, and Halliburton, whose case studies are part of this special report.
I will use the term networks to denote this special class of communities of practice, which links colleagues in a technical or engineering domain to steward and share knowledge. Networks usually include everyone within the organization, from around the world, in a particular discipline—such as mechanical engineering in Fluor, maintenance managers and supervisors in BHP Billiton, or motor vehicle safety experts in Chevron.
This focus on networks is not to say that other types of communities aren’t successful—they are— but rather that there are lessons to be learned and phenomena to understand that are exquisitely visible in technical networks and that set them apart from other communities. Understanding the elements that make networks successful could provide clues to what could make other communities thrive—or predict future success before a network is launched.
Opening 5
Communities of Practice 5
What Makes Technical Networks Special? 6
What is Driving the Formation of Technical Networks? 8
Global Business Models 8
Retirement, New Hires, and Internal Churn 9
Case Examples 9
Air Products and Chemicals Inc 9
BHP Billiton 10
Buckman Laboratories International Inc 11
Chevron Corporation 12
Fluor Corporation 12
Halliburton 13
The Design and Deployment of Networks 14
Organizational Structure 14
Th e Engineering Culture 15
Role of SMEs in Networks 15
Communication Strategies 17
Roles and Resources 17
Network and Community Roles 17
Th e KM Core Group 18
Information Technology: Global Portals to Knowledge and Collaboration 19
Creating Networks 19
Measuring the Results 20
Next-Generation Networks: What’s Next for Networks 20
Risks and Implications of Expanding Accountability 21
Conclusion 22
Case Studies 23
Air Products and Chemicals Inc 24
Buckman Laboratories International Inc 39
Chevron Corporation 42
Fluor Corporation 54
Halliburton 77
APQC’s Communities of Practice Framework 84
APQC Communities of Practice Resources 85
- Air Products and Chemicals Inc
- BHP Billiton
- Buckman Laboratories International Inc
- Chevron Corporation
- Fluor Corporation
- Halliburton
- Buckman Laboratories International Inc
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