Community of Practice

When people work together, they invariably form many informal networks of relationships that go beyond formal organizational patterns, often crossing functions and divisions to enable the accomplishment of tasks more efficiently or effectively than if communication and action took place along formal lines alone. ODR consultants assist in establishing, facilitating and evaluating a Community of Practice (COP) approach to strengthening and capturing the knowledge and performance of these informal networks. Often incorporating action learning and / or learning organization methods, we ensure these networks operate in parallel with the formal organization becoming an integral component to the organization's systems with goals, deliverables, resources, accountability and assigned membership.

The benefits of organizational communities of practice can be summarized as:

Knowledge sharing/management: Cross functional groups or project teams use and reuse explicit knowledge assets, for example through shared access to a repository of best practices, reference documents, presentations etc. We can also run a workshop in Knowledge Management on customer's work sites.
Responsive solution generation: Faster responses to issues such as customer requirements by providing rapid access to the expertise needed to solve problems.
New hire readiness: Reducing the time taken for new employees to become productive the accessability of assistance and mentoring.
Idea generation and innovation: A forum for generating new ideas for products and services by sharing perspectives and ideas.
Centre of expertise/excellence: A hub of subject matter expertise and highly specialized knowledge areas for employees wishing to learn about an aspect of organizational life (policies, processes, practices).
Virtual classroom/learning laboratories: A collaborative platform enabling the exchange of ideas to facilitate or as follow up after classroom based learning.