Fusion Productions - Integrating Meetings, Learning & Technology

Community Strategy and Governance Workshop (Two Days)

Developing a strategy, governance, and engagement model for your Communities of Practice leads to more consistent performance, higher user satisfaction, and greater gain for your organization. This facilitated strategy session will help organization leaders identify key business goals that can be improved with Communities of Practice, outline critical success factors, determine appropriate pilot opportunities, and create an engagement model for supporting communities.

You will get:

• Online survey to gather business needs for communities
• Strategy for communities
• Governance structure for communities
• Engagement model for communities
• Aggregated survey results

Communities Design Workshop (Two and a Half Days)

A facilitated session for an association’s “Communities Design Team” to charter the communities, create objectives, purpose, vision, and design process framework for the Communities of Practice. This includes an overview of the types of communities, best practice examples and design steps so the group has a plan to launch an effective community.

The work continues with a face-to-face two-day meeting with the design team led by the APQC team. At this workshop, the association’s Design Team reinforces its charter and business case, and then works through the planning and design steps. These include:

• Knowledge mapping, and assessing culture and IT
• Knowledge sharing processes
• Roles and resources
• IT tool usage
• Training and communication
• Change management
• Metrics and measurement plans
• Reward and recognition
• Rollout planning

You will get:

• Business Case and Charter for Community of Practice/KM Approach
• Knowledge map with appropriate business process context
• Design framework and action plan with actions, responsibilities, timeframe, and milestones
• Communities Metrics and Measurement Plan
• Design team trained on communities basics

Communities Health Assessment

This program is designed for existing communities to assess the health of an organization’s Communities of Practice based on APQC best practice research and the “Ten Traits of Successful Communities of Practice.” This assessment helps organizations understand the strengths, opportunities for improvement, and overall health of their important Communities of Practice.

You will get:

• Interview guide
• Online survey
• Summary of interview comments (common themes)
• CoP scorecard
• Recommendations for change and improvement

Communities Metrics Workshop (One Day)

This program is designed for existing communities to facilitate the development of a set of balanced measures that will guide Communities of Practice in monitoring the progress toward the achievement of the communities’ specific objectives and goals.

The communities leadership team will meet on a two hour planning call to set objectives and identify critical areas of need. Pre-work — in the form of two short articles and preparation for the one day workshop — ensue. The workshop can effectively develop measures for as many as three separate objectives at the department, division, or business unit level. This should be done for communities that have a clear charter and objectives in mind.

You will get:

• One day Measurement Alignment Workshop
• Completed Measurement Alignment Exercise and Worksheet
• Completed Measurement Level Grid (if required)
• Completed Measurement Information Worksheets – short form (6-20 measures)
• Measurement plan coaching and follow up meetings (2)

Communities Leader Training (Two Days)

How do complex, global, and fast-changing organizations identify experts, share knowledge, and innovate? Increasingly, Communities of Practice are becoming the core knowledge strategy for many organizations. Communities of Practice give organizations the structures and processes to identify and exchange valuable knowledge capital to drive business results. APQCs research on Communities of Practice indicates that strong leadership is the number one critical success factor for high impact communities. Are your communities leaders ready for the challenge of managing these “white-space” groups?

Based on best practice findings from 14 of APQC’s best practice studies on knowledge management (specifically on 2000’s Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice), this interactive session for up to 15 people explores how to plan, design, launch, and sustain communities, how to develop roles and responsibilities within communities, and how to facilitate successful interaction and business results.

You will get:

• Understanding of how Communities of Practice are defined
• Explaination of the four types of communities
• Integrate communities with organizational strategy
• Define leadership roles and responsibilities for communities
• Creating leadership teams for communities
• Design support structures and resources
• Identify appropriate measures

Connected Learning Communities CD-ROM

This e-learning module, delivered via CD-ROM, details how to find, validate, and disseminate knowledge through Communities of Practice. Learn how to support naturally forming communities, as well as design effective communities from the ground up. Presented by experienced KM practitioners, it features numerous best-practice examples from leading organizations and includes a workbook that guides participants through the exploration of introductory tools, basic templates, and practical implementation approaches.

An APQC Connected Learning(tm) Knowledge Certificate is available to individuals who complete a course in the e-learning curriculum.

You will get:

• Self-paced, CD-ROM based training course with workbook, templates, and online components. Requirements for use: PC with Windows 95 or higher; Internet Browser; 16x CD-ROM drive or higher.

Building and Sustaining Communities Benchmarking Report

APQC has conducted the largest single study of Communities of Practice to date in order to understand their nature, their role, and how to create and successfully sustain them. The findings offer compelling evidence that these communities, which create, gather, and share knowledge as part of formal knowledge management efforts, are assuming a new role in knowledge work and KM systems. Communities are gaining prominence as boundary-spanning units in organizations responsible for finding and sharing best practices, stewarding knowledge, and helping members work better.