5.2. A Four-Step Process Toward Small Practice Groups

The following is a process we followed in helping the RBD develop small practice groups.

5.2.1. Step 1: Design and Conduct the Baseline ONA

A good baseline Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) should reveal experts, brokers, central connectors, peripheral players, and any fragmentation across groups. In the case of the RBD, the lab director was intent on getting a visual inventory of the network of his organization. We'd had good discussions with him about the overall business drivers and value proposition, but not down to a practical level for such a large, complex organization.

The maps that were generated by the ONA allowed us to examine the network by country, function, topic, and level of expertise, giving us a sound basis for meaningful analysis and planning of next steps. Figure 5.1 reveals unexpected fragmentation between Taiwan and its neighbors. It also indicated unexpected closeness between China and Korea, which later proved to be false. Maps such as this are generally too large for pinpointing opportunities for effective interventions, but they are valuable for demonstrating initial ONA capability to business leaders. More important, when shown live in the software, the networks can be dynamically navigated in ways that allow leaders to zoom in and out of the network while identifying key improvement opportunities.

The lab director and vice president of research and development (R&D) were very pleased with the results. For the first time, they had a picture of the connectedness of their organization. The vice president was motivated to proclaim that the goal should be "one big hairball." We let him keep his vision for the time being, realizing that it was not realistic or even desirable to have already busy employees excessively consumed by the network.

5.2.2. Step 2: Identify Candidate Business Areas for ONA-Engineered Small Practice Groups

Ideally, target business areas for the small-practice-group approach are those that the organization is counting on to make its numbers, to meet and exceed the expectations of customers, shareholders, executives, and employees. Because of their strategic importance, these business areas can be quite large, involving multiple functions, markets, products, and countries. Trying to cover the entire landscape of a business area with one small practice group is generally unrealistic, owing to the highly varied nature of the knowledge needed across all these dimensions, so it's best to focus on a smaller yet significant challenge within a larger area.

RBD has thousands of products and literally thousands of customers in dozens of markets. Fortunately, the division had just completed its annual strategic planning, so consensus was reached rather quickly on two product lines for which ONA-engineered small practice groups would be appropriate. These product lines were predicted to be major contributors to the division's business growth, especially in Asia. Again, while these product lines really exist, I'll call them Thick Sticky Stuff and Thin Sticky Stuff, or Thick and Thin for short.

RBD also wanted to focus on the technical service function. Technical service engineers work in close partnership with 3M sales reps to show customers how to solve their problems using 3M products. The function is a key differentiator for 3M's value to customers and is well recognized within the company as a critical success factor for our business. RBD's leaders knew that a highly capable technical service organization was critical to growing the core business, especially in Asia.

The RBD had hired many new technical service engineers in China, Korea, and Taiwan and were using the conventional approaches of extended business trips, mentoring, classroom training, and e-learning to develop their skills and expertise. But RBD's leaders also recognized that these traditional approaches were too slow and costly and would fall short of developing the workforce needed to capitalize on the business opportunities in this market. The ONA maps illustrated what RBD leaders had suspected: the technical service engineers were networking with their colleagues in their own countries and the United States but not so much across countries within Asia. Improving networking and collaboration across Asia, everyone agreed, would accelerate organizational capability and business growth.

The stage was set. We had two product lines, and we knew the division needed to ramp up technical service capability in Asia. We had a good baseline ONA that would allow us to zoom in on this situation. We were ready to start engineering the small practice groups.

Our goal was to consult with the RBD's technical service managers to start at least one small practice group for each of the two product lines. We accomplished half of our goal. It soon became apparent to us that the technical service manager for Thin was much more receptive to trying this intervention than the one for Thick, who was more inclined to "wait and see." The receptive manager, Roger, engaged his senior technical service engineer, Ted, to consider the small practice group concept. Ted quickly perceived much value in the approach.

The Thin Sticky Stuff product line has many applications in many markets. Roger and Ted selected mobile handheld devices as a focus market for the practice group. Several Thin products are sold to makers of handheld devices, such as mobile phones, to enable them to design thinner products packed with more features.

RBD's technical service engineers call on the various mobile phone makers and their subassembly suppliers to design Thin products into their phones. Customers and RBD's technical service engineers are dispersed across Asia. Many of the Asian engineers are relatively new to 3M, so they have much to learn from the experts in the United States and Japan, and from one another. In this context, the small practice group's purpose was to distribute knowledge of mobile handheld customers' needs and Thin product applications from the developed countries to the developing countries in Asia, so its members could increase sales and improve their expertise and skills.

5.2.3. Step 3: Use ONA to Select a Practice Group of Six to Ten Members

In forming a small practice group, the objective is to select 6 to 10 members. Keeping the number of members in this range is optimal but not critically important. If there are too many members, it's possible that not everyone will participate fully or be heard. If there are too few, the group might not be sustainable. Members should include a few experts and several learners (future experts) who are in strategic growth locations, including one or two brokers, as indicated by the ONA maps. In many cases, the brokers will also be the experts, as one might expect.

Learners are usually peripherals. Occasionally, however, a learner will be a broker. This situation is a real treasure. Learners provide the "pull," the energy for effective knowledge transfer, because they need to learn in order to be successful. They are quick to adopt new collaborative behaviors and spread those behaviors throughout their vast networks.

At this point, technical service engineer Ted and manager Roger began applying their personal knowledge of people in the network, their work, and the business. The maps, such as shown in Figure 5.2, were very enlightening for them, and they began to see opportunities for improvement. But in some cases, they also began to discount what the maps were showing. For example, they doubted that Kiho, the Korean super-broker near the center of the map, could be such a major connector, based on what they knew about him and his area of responsibility. We encouraged them to get more information by interviewing Kiho and a few of those in his network. They found that indeed Kiho was much more of a broker than they had originally thought.

Fourteen members were selected, slightly more than our recommendation (see Figure 5.3). Roger and Ted made the selection decisions with the help of some coaching from the KM Program Office. Ted and Roger believed that these members would greatly benefit from their participation in the group and that they represented the best coverage of big customers in their countries. A good mix of brokers, central connectors, and peripheral players was included. The Singapore and Taiwan members were good examples of learner/brokers. Notice that Kiho, the super-broker, was not selected because he was not as involved with the mobile handheld device applications. Ted and Roger are well-recognized experts, and they very much wanted to participate, so they were also included.

The 14 members of Thin's small practice group report to managers in their countries, not to Roger, the technical service manager for Thin at headquarters. Their performance is assessed by their managers in their respective countries, in large part based on the new sales they help generate there. If they can learn from one another about how to sell more Thin products to the mobile handheld market, they can improve their performance reviews, earn bigger merit increases, get promoted faster, and experience, in general, more satisfying work lives.

5.2.4. Step 4: Employ CoP Methodology to Establish and Sustain the Small Practice Group

A CoP is a group of people who come together to share and learn from one another face to face and virtually. They have a common interest in a body of knowledge and are driven by a desire and need to share problems, experiences, insights, templates, tools, and best practices. CoPs typically span hierarchy and organizational boundaries. Community members deepen their knowledge by interacting on an ongoing basis, and they use their newly acquired knowledge to improve performance and results for their respective organizations.

At the risk of over-simplifying the process for starting this type of CoP, I'll describe eight steps that have served us well. As with many situations, these steps are not purely sequential, as the list might imply. Some can and should be started in parallel with others, and you will almost certainly need to go back and coach the small practice group to pay more attention to a few steps that have slipped.

5.2.4.1. Recruit a Good Leader

Ideally, the leader should be one of the learners, preferably a broker. Typically, learners are more motivated to learn than experts are to teach. So they provide more energy to "pull" learning through the group. They are more inclined to elicit the expertise embedded in the experts because they have a more urgent need for it. Experts are typically more reluctant to document their expertise and "push" it out to the organization, not so much because they are hoarding their knowledge but because they are very busy. Pull is usually stronger than push.

In the case of RBD, Ted was the obvious leader for this small practice group. He was a strong broker and liked by his extensive global network, especially the Chinese. Ted was a well-recognized expert for the Thin product line and its hundreds of applications. He was also an avid teacher and coach, keen on applying new collaborative tools and techniques. So in this case, push was stronger than pull.

The leader of a small practice group sets the rhythm for the group, polls the members for valuable discussion topics, creates an environment in which everyone feels comfortable participating, manages membership as individuals move to new jobs, and helps the group capture and reuse its learning.

5.2.4.2. Allow and Encourage the Group to Own Its Purpose and Name

This is very important! The group members need a compelling reason to carve out time and energy from their hectic work lives to participate in the small practice group. We can propose a purpose for group members, but they must mold it into something that is truly meaningful and valuable for them. At this point, it is also important to help the group understand that this is not just another project team that needs an objective statement; instead, this is a CoP designed to be a model for the productive flow of information and accelerated learning. The group should not be allowed to inadvertently become a full-blown project team, driven by Gantt charts, tasks, deadlines, and deliverables.

Ted scheduled the kick-off web-conference meeting and engaged the new group to define its own purpose and name. The group quickly came to be called the "Mobile Handheld Technical Service Collaboration Team," or MHH Team for short. Its purpose is to share understandings of key account activities to drive business growth.

5.2.4.3. Encourage the Appropriate Rhythm and Structure of Meetings

Establishing the cadence and the basic structure for meetings gives members a framework for productive preparation and participation. They can think about their work experiences between meetings and determine how their news and needs can be shared within the typical meeting flow. We recommend monthly meetings.

The leader of the small practice group is responsible for developing the structure and agenda for its meetings. Each meeting should be structured around a few business-oriented topics, each of which has a "News" and "Needs" section. Members can then share items that they believe would be valuable to the group (news) and ask for help on problems or seek information and insights from the group (needs). During the News portion of the meeting, encourage the sharing of gains and successes that were a direct result of knowledge transferred among the group's members. Establishing this routine will help measure the business benefits of the group and will give members successes to celebrate, thereby increasing their engagement.

Ted and the MHH Team decided to hold monthly one-hour meetings and to focus initially on "keep-account" activities. These are activities intended to strengthen customer satisfaction and loyalty, and sometimes to win back lost customers. Each member presents at least one activity for one of his or her accounts, keeping the presentation to three to five minutes. These presentations are even more effective when the activity for an account involves multiple members working together. Ted also encouraged the news and needs structure, but in more general descriptive terms that members from all countries could easily understand.

5.2.4.4. Encourage the Group to Capture Key Learnings

Initially, this happens primarily during meetings in the form of minutes. The leader and group members should be coached to organize such information as news, best practices, tips and tricks, and information about customers and competitors so that it can be found easily and quickly for reuse and updating. As members find more value in participating and become more familiar with the rhythm and process, group momentum builds, participation becomes more spontaneous, and the group's documentation becomes more robust and continuous, well beyond the minutes of its first meetings.

5.2.4.5. Encourage the Use of Appropriate Technology Enablers

Most of us in this global economy collaborate every day with colleagues across many time zones, languages, and cultures, at all hours of the day and night. This is certainly the situation at 3M. Most collaboration happens asynchronously through e-mail and shared collaboration spaces such as SharePoint. Synchronous collaboration occurs through instant messaging and text messaging, especially among our Asian and European colleagues. One-on-one telephone conversations occur much less frequently, and they've become more planned and productive. Group meetings are usually geographically dispersed, require careful scheduling, employ the use of in-call and web-conference platforms, and dictate that some participants sacrifice their personal time, including sleep, to participate.

For the small practice groups, all asynchronous collaboration should occur in one "place," such as a SharePoint site or wiki. No e-mail! The leader should model this behavior and demand it of all members. Putting all discussion threads, meeting minutes, and other group-generated content in one place allows people to more easily and quickly search and reuse it to drive business results. In an e-mail culture like 3M's, this can take a little time and effort to achieve, but it's worth the investment.

In some cultures, it's very uncomfortable to post a question in a "public" place. The group leader should be sensitive to this and allow some one-on-one dialogue among trusted colleagues through the medium of their choice, including e-mail. But the members must then be encouraged to share the outcome with the group by posting a summary of the exchange on the group's site.

As we've all experienced, these sites can quickly become a mess. As a result, people abandon them and blame the technology. In most cases, it's not about the tools; it's about the people and processes. Design the site to support the small practice group's process structure. Most modern platforms have tagging (labeling) capability. Establish the practice of tagging all posted items according to a meaningful set of dimensions, such as news, needs, customer, country, competitor, and product. Tagging is rapidly replacing the more hierarchical practice of folders. Make the tag cloud prominent on the site's landing page. Finally, make sure to devote some group time to discuss the health of the site, and identify members interested in performing some occasional "gardening" on it.

5.2.4.6. Coach the Group to Go for WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) Business Opportunities

This may sound antithetical to true collaboration, but it's the essence of a CoP. Members are drawn to participate in a CoP if they know they will learn things that help them in their jobs, thereby adding value to their respective organizations and ultimately showing up in their performance reviews, increasing their compensation and accelerating their career advancement. By sharing what they know with the group, members receive recognition and gratitude from their peers and become recognized as experts, all of which further enhances their performance reviews and career advancement.

5.2.4.7. Celebrate and Publish Success Stories

This is crucial for developing and sustaining a vibrant group. The leader plays a key role here because he may recognize a success that even those participating do not. Consider the example of John and Susan, who learned a valuable nugget from Simon that they applied to dazzle a global customer. Success! Celebrate! Repeat! Because members may not initially recognize their own successes, the leader must be on the lookout for successes and then illuminate them for the group and catalog them for publication. Coach the group to set up a widget on the front page of their collaboration site to list and highlight their successes.

Ted's group is spread across six countries, so the celebrations, which occur during the monthly meetings, are virtual and creative. It's too early for them to be publishing success stories in any widely circulated way, such as 3M's global intranet site. But the RBD and the countries all have their own intranet sites, which are good platforms for initial publication outside the small practice group.

5.2.4.8. Coach Positional Leaders to Recognize and Reward Practice Group Participation and Contributions

In the case of the MHH Team, all managers of the group's members were briefed on the small practice group and asked for their input, so they now have a stake in its success. Recognition comes in the form of acknowledgement and praise of the group's successes and their direct reports' role in them. Rewards are indirect, as participation is factored into the performance review process and resulting merit increases. The leader of the small practice group should occasionally send an e-mail to the members' formal leaders, highlighting the group's accomplishments, with a link to the group's site.