Kahan and Blair identifying communities of practice knowledge management World Bank
On Thursday I had drinks with three people who work in the international development sector. We sat down to talk about communities of practice. Since that conversation I have been thinking about useful "trigger" resources I might point out to them. Today while browsing Joitske blog, she pointed to Seth Kahan and Madelyn Blair's work on storytelling in the World Bank. You can read the full article here, Identifying Communities of Practice Through Storytelling, but I want to focus on the material at the end of the article. That is because one of the questions I hear most is "we want to start a community of practice, how do we do that?" And to me, the logical first answer is, do you know if any exist already? Then they want to know how. Kahan and Blair's suggestion of doing it through storytelling rings true to my experience. Here are their steps (which I've trimmed a bit - go read the whole article!):1. Bring together 'inspired veterans;' i.e., those who have a history in the community and are interested and passionate about their work.
It is usually natural that we seek out those who share an interest or passion, leading to many informal and vibrant CoPs. Don't go and try and "create" one - support the ones that exist!
2. Ask them to reflect and choose a story that typifies what they love about their work.
3. As they begin to share their stories, one at a time, ask provocative questions designed to get to the 'heart' of the story; i.e., what is it that really turned the teller on about the situation. Open ended questions work best in this regard: 'Can you tell me more about that? ...
4. During the storytelling note what is important about both the process the teller describes and the content...
5. Following the storytelling event compare and contrast, identifying common themes that fit these two requirements:
a. A common issue or problem that a significant number of storytellers are dealing with as part of their work
b. Areas that rouse interest, passion and curiosity from a significant number of the tellers
6. Contact participants to discuss your findings and validate your ideas for potential Communities of Practice.
7. Rather than announcing the results of your work and mandating the new communities, have a participatory session in which you share what you have learned and work together with the participants to choose the new communities."
Technorati Tags: communitiesofpractice, WorldBank, CoPs, Kahan, Blair
posted by Nancy White at 12:45 PM
2 Comments:
hi, thanks! My original post disappeared though and I reblogged it in a hurry. MMMM anything to do with your reference??? :)
Thank you, Nancy. Nice job pulling out some of the nuggets from the paper.
In my travels I encourage people to study existing CoPs. We did that at the World Bank. One reason for this is that each organizational culture is unique, and by taking a good look at the existing CoPs you can learn what it takes for them to thrive, or survive, in the particulars of a given organizational culture
There's a great story that just came out in the New Yorker by Gladwell that takes a good look at stories and how they are used to facilitate a specific quality of social interaction. This is very much in line with how we used stories at the World Bank to initiate CoPs. The article can be found at http://www.newyorker.com/
printables/critics/060410crbo_books
best,
Seth
Visit my blog for more on collaboration: http://www.collaboratioNation.com
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