WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY OF

PRACTICE PROGRAM LOOK LIKE?

An Overview of Communities at Leading Organizations
Communities of practice (CoPs) are the linchpins of successful knowledge management strategies. The
most successful KM programs are almost always supported by robust, effective communities. The
importance of communities is due to their versatility: At some organizations, CoPs focus on stewarding
content and explicit knowledge, whereas at others, they are designed to solve technical problems, foster
innovation, and/or promote collaboration across different locations.
Each organization has its own reasons for implementing communities, but most achieve success by
closely aligning CoPs with core business strategies and needs. They make sure that communities provide
value to both individual members and the enterprise, and they bolster communities with executive
support, defined processes and roles, access to required resources, and clear measures of success.
Below are descriptions of the community strategies and programs at select organizations:

ConocoPhillips,
Lockheed Martin,
Nalco, and
Schlumberger.

CONOCOPHILLIPS
Although communities existed informally for more than 20 years at energy company ConocoPhillips, the
first formal knowledge-sharing communities, called networks of excellence (NoE), emerged in 2004. As
of 2015, there are more than 140 networks enterprise-wide. These function- and topic-based NoEs are
responsible for capturing critical knowledge, making it broadly accessible, and facilitating collaboration.
Each NoE has a portal that includes a knowledge library, a discussion board, and expertise location
tools. NoEs are also instrumental in creating and curating content for OneWiki, the organization's
online encyclopedia housing information and expertise from across the company. Network portals are
open and global, and both contract and full-time employees have access to most network activity.
The knowledge-sharing team that supports ConocoPhillips NoEs cites nine critical success factors for
healthy communities:
1. they are sponsored by senior or executive leadership,
2. they have a clear business case,
3. they perform annual health checks,
4. they are global in scope,
5. the leader owns the NoE,
6. the NoE core team is highly engaged,
7. sharing occurs with sister networks (i.e., networks that cover similar topics or business areas),
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8. business challenges are addressed in sanctioned workgroups, and

9. subject matter experts are formally identified.
The knowledge-sharing team ensures that all NoEs have the first three success factors in place. The
extent to which a NoE embodies the final six success factors is an indication of its maturity. The ideal is
for members to actively participate in a NoE by both reading content available in the knowledge library,
discussion forum, and wiki and contributing ideas, expertise, and proven practices.

LOCKHEED MARTIN
A main focus of communities of practice at aerospace and defense contractor Lockheed Martin is to
share knowledge and expertise across programs and projects. Community members help one another
learn through virtual knowledge-sharing events, wikis, blogs, and discussion boards. Although not
dictated at the corporate level, many of Lockheed Martins business areas have robust communities of
practice to facilitate access to information and expertise along with collaboration and networking.
One of these business areas is Space Systems Company (SSC), which launched its first official
communities of practice in 2006. SSC collaborated with vice presidents, directors, and experts in the
business to determine how communities would support the broader engineering and business strategy.
SSC continues to support and sustain its mature communities while launching others. As of 2013, SSC
supported 23 communities of practice.
Advanced tools and functionality of Lockheed Martins communities include:
blogs and wikis that members can use to share knowledge;
webinars and learning events that are recorded and made available in perpetuity;
eForums that allow any community member to send a message to the entire community;
a SharePoint portal collection that allows community leads and members to review other
communities charters and resources; and
a tool called FacilitatePro that communities can use to host one-hour facilitated brainstorming
sessions and share ideas/build consensus in real time.
An increasing number of managers and leaders are asking to present at community meetings to get the
word out about new ideas and initiatives. In addition, vice presidents and directors are reaching out to
community leads to explore how communities can support specific tactical strategies. Lockheed Martin
is also seeing more cross-pollination of communities, with employees from one business area joining
relevant communities in other business areas to collaborate on shared topics of interest.

NALCO
Chemicals company Nalco launched its KM program in 1998 to help facilitate knowledge transfer
through a KM system that provides, among other things, communities of practice. Most of Nalcos
knowledge environment is built on Microsoft SharePoint. The communities themselves are built in
Sitrion, which integrates with SharePoint to provide advanced social and collaboration capabilities. In
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2013, the KM team added the Lookout360 toolbar to provide direct links between communities of
practice from other parts of Nalcos knowledge environment.
Nalcos communities of practice provide a virtual environment for employees to ask questions,
exchange ideas, and collaborate. Each community member has an activity stream (similar to Facebooks
newsfeed) where he/she can view relevant updates and interactions with colleagues. The communities
are relatively structured, in that each must secure an executive sponsor and complete a business plan
that articulates who its target audience is and what members will get out of participating. The KM team
monitors usage data to ensure that communities remain active and purposeful.

SCHLUMBERGER
Oilfield services provider Schlumberger Ltd. leverages a range of knowledge management (KM) and HR
approaches to develop its technical work force, including 150 Eureka communities of practice that
support collaboration and learning through online bulletin boards, webinars, and face-to-face workshops.
Some communities focus on operational functions such as geophysics, chemistry, and geology, whereas
others focus on functional areas such as sales, project management, and supply chain. Communities vary
in size from more than 4,000 members to fewer than 500. Members post more than 90,000 messages to
the Eureka community bulletin boards annually.
Schlumbergers communities help members learn, share technical knowledge, and engage in problem
solving around specific issues. They also play a role in mentoring new hires and assisting with corporate
acclimation. For example, several years ago the organization added 25,000 employees through a large
acquisition. Communities helped integrate these new employees into the organization and minimize the
cultural issues that sometimes accompany corporate mergers.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For additional information on the case studies referenced above, and more on communities of practice
in general, we recommend the following. In addition, APQC members can search our Knowledge Base
to find hundreds of articles and case studies on community-related topics.

How ConocoPhillips Embraces and Cultivates Diverse, Empowered Communities (2015)

Transferring and Applying Critical Knowledge - Lockheed Martin (2013)
Nalco: Connecting People to Content - Nalco, an Ecolab Company Case Study (2015)
Using Knowledge Management to Develop Technical Talent at Schlumberger Ltd. (2014)
Communities of Practice: An APQC Overview (2016)

ABOUT APQC
APQC helps organizations work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence. It is the worlds foremost
authority in benchmarking, best practices, process and performance improvement, and knowledge
management. APQCs unique structure as a member-based nonprofit makes it a differentiator in the
marketplace. APQC partners with more than 500 member organizations worldwide in all industries.
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With more than 40 years of experience, APQC remains the worlds leader in transforming
organizations. Visit us at www.apqc.org, and learn how you can make best practices your practices.

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