Communities of Practice: The Heart of KM

The KM program manager takes each new community leader through an onboarding program that provides an overview of the organization’s community handbook, reviews the roles and responsibilities involved with running a community, and gives the leader an opportunity to choose a collaboration platform for their community. Leaders get further resources and support through a dedicated network for community leaders. The network includes at least one leader from each community and meets quarterly to discuss challenges, opportunities, and best practices.

The organization’s network for community leaders has been extremely valuable from a community management perspective. It not only provides a space for leaders to talk through common challenges but also provides important feedback for KM leaders about the health of its community program more broadly. 

Effective Communities Break Down Silos

Communities often play a valuable role for KM by helping to break down silos and enabling collaboration across an enterprise. For example, one U.S.- based shipping port operator found that many of its departments were struggling with common questions and issues related to technology but were not discussing these challenges with each other. To break down silos among departments, the organization’s collaboration manager created an in-person community where members could drop in and get help from experts.

The community continued to meet in person as it grew over a period of about 6 weeks—until COVID-19 hit the business. While the pandemic was a major disruption, the community was able to pivot to regular online meetings and help address common technology challenges as the organization made a broad shift to remote work. Meetings were also an important form of social connection for employees, many of whom were living alone during the pandemic.

The easygoing and friendly atmosphere of the organization’s community has become part of its broader culture at this point, and the community continues to be a significant source of boundary-spanning collaboration. For example, the organization’s collaboration manager told us that in 2024, more than 90% of its departments had someone attend a meeting at least once, and about a third of all attendees went to five or more meetings.

Make Communities the Heartbeat of Your KM Strategy

If you’re just starting a KM program, communities are a great place to start. For their members, communities are a one-stop shop for disciplinary or topic-based knowledge. They also provide a place where knowledgeable people can discuss and debate best practices and solutions relevant to a specific knowledge domain. Put simply, communities provide a strong foundation for a wide variety of other KM activities. It’s no surprise they are known as KM’s “killer app.”

Key Takeaways: Proven Community Practices

Organizations with thriving communities typically have thriving KM programs as well. But thriving communities don’t magically appear. While they don’t all look the same, we’ve found that the most successful communities carry out similar practices that help build a foundation for success:

♦ Secure a funding model that supports necessary resources such as KM staff, time from experts and leaders, and technology for the community.

♦ Link communities to the larger KM strategy. For example, if part of KM’s goal is to capture and reuse knowledge in the business, make sure that communities are capturing and reusing knowledge as well.

♦ Promote the value of participation through messaging, branding, rewards, and recognition—especially for community leaders and experts.

♦ Allow communities to be organic, even while providing standardized guardrails and infrastructure such as common technology, onboarding for leaders, and branding.

♦ Measure community health and impact to the business through health checks with community leaders, member surveys, success stories, and community engagement KPIs.