Welcome
to the Virtual Possibilities Page, sharing knowledge of various
types of virtual communities, as well as their business applications.
What You Will Learn
If you would enjoy learning more about different types of virtual
communities, as well as exploring how to leverage the intellectual
capital of various types of social networks, this is one page
that can get you thinking about possibilities.
This is an image of a neuron: a metaphor and and icon for social
networks and virtual communities.
Business communities can include various neighborhoods that serve a niche purpose.
Examples of Business Communities
Organizational evolution - This community is focused on implementation of an operational design and bringing it to full integration.
Product or Service Generation - A community focused on global collaboration to produce products or services.
Change Management - This community is focused on managing transitions and facilitating large complex change within a business organization.
Current Reality:
Business organizations today depend upon face-to-face staff meetings
for planning, reviewing and executing their global strategies. Because they
typically meet quarterly, there is a lot of activity and knowledge that is not
shared on a regular basis. Not only does the business team rely upon face-to-face
contact to get work done, their entire organizations are dependent upon such
meetings to collaborate on and produce their product or service. Typically,
schedules are pushed out. Many times input is not sought nor received in a
timely manner to produce a quality product or service in a short cycle time.
Many of these organizations duplicate activities within their regions because there are few mechanisms to ensure that a global, leveraged function can understand and service a distributed organization.
When an organization is faced with major change, diverse input and knowledge, a global view, and speed are critical factors. Many organizations design a strategic or operational shift with minimal input and move to implementation. These organizations encounter resistance and do not fully implement and integrate their organization into the new direction. Then a new demand for change emerges. These organizations are living in a "marathon effect" and the energy of the organization is diffused and confused. The change management agents within the organization are facilitating organizational redirection to their best ability by expending a lot of energy and effort in directing the change.
These organizations are typically relying on email, teleconferencing, face-to-face meetings, voice mail and occasionally rely on meeting software to conduct business.
What’s Possible:
The possibility exists for the business organizations to function
efficiently, effectively, speedily and virtually. Beginning
with the Business team as role-models, these leaders can meet
virtually weekly, monthly and/or quarterly. By using real-time
meeting software, such as Placeware, business teams can meet
more often, stay on track with their goals and identify and
resolve issues sooner. Between meetings, asynchronous conferencing
software will provide a forum for discussion, dialogue and knowledge
sharing that will enhance the effectiveness of the face-to-face
meetings.
As the business team addresses an emergent demand with a strategic or operational shift, the organization will have multiple ways of “getting” the message. Conferencing software provides a mechanism for two-way communications, clarification and Q&A. The organization will have a greater level of awareness of any change and will have greater ability to internalize and execute in the new direction.
Their product/service functions will gather input and share knowledge through real-time virtual meetings. Additionally, asynchronous conferencing software will provide a forum for ongoing collaboration, clarification and communications that will speed the progress of the product generation process. These communities will use a suite of virtual collaboration web based tools for project management and review. Repositories of information and knowledge will be readily accessible by anyone in the organization who has a need to know.
Project Communities are project
teams that are responsible for global collaboration and implementation
of an initiative or accomplishing a result. These communities
have a specific start and end date.
Examples
Current Reality
What's Possible
Examples of Project Communities:
Current Reality:
To address new business generation,
new business direction or improve ineffective processes, project
communities must come together quickly and for a specific and
often brief span of time. Typically, these communities are
constrained by the limited resources within an organization.
The inability to gather comprehensive input or to have broader,
organizational participation places any project at risk. There
is always the potential for misunderstanding, which often leads
to a less than optimal outcome.
Often, projects have timelines which are pushed back due to
lack of resources or scheduling issues. Sometimes projects
are cancelled because the energy and effort must be directed
to higher priorities. An organization is "paying"
three times in these cases; first with the initial investment
of time, money and other resources; again with the hidden costs
of not accomplishing the result. Finally, there is the lost
opportunity cost of not implementing the solution in a timely
manner, or at all.
These organizations currently rely heavily on face-to-face meetings, voicemail, email and teleconferencing. Occasionally the project team will use real-time meeting software.
What’s Possible:
The possibility exists for project
communities to work in collaboration virtually (not face to
face) from startup through implementation. Project Teams could
easily utilize a variety of web-based project management tools
for project structure and activity. Real-time meeting software
could be used to conduct project meetings for design, planning,
issue resolution and reviews. Conferencing software could be
used to continue the dialogue for collaboration, clarification
or communications. Knowledge sharing repositories could contain
all of the project information from analysis through implementation,
evolving into sophisticated resources for organizational learning.
Communities of practice are those in which members share the same profession, situation, or vocation. These communities facilitate professional exchange, allow members to establish a bond of common experiences and challenges, and build networks of relationships which may be leveraged offline. Communities of Practice are extremely lucrative in the business to business space, as they offer considerable opportunities for the translation of community into commerce revenues.
Examples
Current Reality
What’s Possible
Examples include
the Medical Professionals on Healtheon/WebMD, Java Programmers
on EarthWeb and the populations of many of the more mature knowledge
sharing discussion lists, such as those found at yahoogroups,
topica and elsewhere.
Current Reality
Some of the online communities are using various tools, but
typically, most businesses, including larger global enterprises,
do not take advantage of much of the web-based technology available.
Some thought leaders, due to various constraints and/or a desire
to leverage their resources/attention, have integrated a set
of web-based tools to enable virtual knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Some of the tools currently being used are listed here
and here.
What's Possible
What is possible is for these "leading edge" people
to collaborate in pulling together a set of processes, methodologies,
practices and tools to develop virtual collaboration capability
while initiating, nurturing and developing virtual projects,
teams and organizations. These tools would be designed for the
facilitation of project management, knowledge management, knowledge
and work flow development, asynchronous collaboration and knowledge/resource
sharing, synchronous virtual collaboration and meetings. What
is possible is the pioneering of a transformational paradigm
in value delivery and process management, leveraging web-based
technology that has been available to us for years.
Communities of purpose are those in which membership is based on common purpose. Members network with one another to share knowledge and for personal and professional development. These communities can also exist to achieve a higher purpose in terms of influence or contribution to an entire organization and/or company by acting as a "sounding board", providing perspective, feedback and potentially recommendations to the leadership of the organization or company.
Examples
Current Reality
What’s Possible
Examples of Communities
of Purpose:
Current Reality: Most of these networked relationships rely
on a one-to-one medium such as voice mail and email, versus
a one to many medium such as a discussion list, conferencing
software, shared website, bulletin board or other shared communication/networking
vehicle. Some of these communities and mentoring
circles have developed beyond networking into communities using
other web-based communication tools and regularly scheduled
teleconferences or online chat sessions. What’s Possible: Technically these communities need the ability
to work productively in venues ranging from face to face to
virtually (synchronously and asynchronously) These tools need
to be available to the community and they need to understand
what tool to use when. For example a community of 50 people
may do work on line and a small group of 6-7 have a conference
call to synthesize the dialogue into a meaningful document.
They need environments to support this. That same community
would need to store that document in a “vault” that the other
community members have access to. Products from the community are the lifeblood
for ongoing involvement. These members are generally only involved
because they think it is important. Without the community “making
a difference” the communities are often short lived. The Past Virtual events are organized around
common themes. They have a start and stop date much like a
face-to-face event. Participation in the event is on a “pull”
basis; generally people sign up and register for the event.
These events can have corporate sponsorship. They can serve
as a catalyst to form a community or a “marker” in the historical
timeline of a community to increase membership or participation. Virtual Events of the Past: Current Reality: What’s Possible? The use of virtual events is critical
to the effectiveness of larger companies, allowing them to address
company wide issues and sharing the continually changing corporate
culture. Developing a full capability in this area it has the
potential of being used with Customers and Suppliers in addition
to internal development, community building, knowledge sharing
and leverage in project implementation and team building. Enlisting
the aid of thought leaders and innovators in this area will
dramatically speed up the development of this important competency
which is quickly becoming a strategic imperative. Addressing the following areas
will enable us to realize the benefits of online communities
and enable people to work more effectively, efficiently and
powerfully across organizational boundaries. Awareness and Education Awareness and
Education The areas of awareness and education
must be addressed comprehensively to catalyze the potential
value of online communities. Here is an article explaining how
online social networks benefit organizations. While we could
contract with Howard
Rheingold, Lisa
Kimball, Nancy
White, Trina
Hoefling and others, it may be also be prudent for us to
begin learning the language and practices of virtual teaming
internally, leveraging the knowledge of known
thought leaders by creating a panel of experts to mentor
our organizations and/or companies. Who are the personalities
inside your company with experience in building online communities?
Where do you find these people? How do you engage them?
If you would like to explore this further, we
are available to you to partner with you in exploring solutions
for your organization and/or company. Areas we will be exploring on this
page in the future include: Tools (for
enabling virtual work and sustaining community energy) Roles (to
facilitate community activities) Metrics
(how do we measure the effectiveness/ROI of online communities?) Rewards
(what will incent cross organizational connections?)
Currently many of these Communities
of Purpose exist in all organizations and companies, though
not in a formal sense, since they are personal relationships.
The full power of most diversity communities is not realized
because these are dispersed throughout an organization and seldom
get together face-to-face. Everyone has a personal social network.
These communities need both social
and technical support to start up, maintain energy and evolve
over time. Social support includes community organizing based
on principles of success from other communities along with face-to-face
and virtual facilitation. These skills can be acquired by the
community but often don’t exist at the out set.Virtual Events
Current Reality
What's Possible
In the past, most events have been face-to-face, possibly for
the purpose of restructuring work systems throughout a larger
global company, or a similar initiative. They are generally
US based. There is often a strong desire for global participation,
but no budget to support this at a face-to-face level.
Most face-to-face events have been
cancelled as a result of cost-saving initiatives. Most conferences
to date have relied heavily on face-to-face interaction. Conferences
have been primarily attended by US employees, thus reducing
the global impact of these events. Contact between conferences
has been limited to one-to-one interaction, and generally does
not include a virtual component. Larger global companies have
a lot of the technological savvy, but most often do not have
a very good asynchronous platform for virtual conferences, if
they have one at all.
Innovators in this space have the ability to pick an issue that
has great appeal, such as pulling together an organizational
change community to close the gap between the present state
of an organization and where the organization aspires to be.
What innovators often lack is the integration of the tools at
their disposal, as well as a sponsor or "angel" to
fund/support their activities, which limits the use of the tools,
in turn limiting the effectiveness of the organization and/or
company.
Virtual events and conferences
could implement elegant solutions which integrate social and
technical design. Social design includes conference design and
facilitation of the virtual interaction sessions. Technical
design includes participation on a virtual platform, with multimedia
incorporated into the overall flow.
The following is an outline for
future areas we will explore as we evolve this document:
Forming
Tools
Roles
Metrics
Rewards
Vocabulary
What is a virtual community? Why should we develop virtual communities?
What will my participation in virtual communities get me?
Here
is a link to a repository of links relating to all aspects
of online communities. The links in this growing repository
cover such areas as courses and training, community design,
meta sources, tools, marketing, consultants and more.
While it is easy to provide links to eLearning resources, communicating
the essence of hard won knowledge regarding the value and efficacy
of online communities requires mentoring and coaching by those
with experience in this area. Where are these people? How does
one locate them? How does one contract with them? What is the
preferable method of delivery/dissemination of knowledge and
resources? If you have questions about anything in this article,
please email
us.
Just let us
know of your interest.
Forming (formulating and initiating communities)
As we justify the viability and efficacy of virtual communities,
we ask "how do we develop them?"
Vocabulary to be defined at a later
date includes:
Asynchronous
Conferencing Software
eLearning
ROI
Social Design
Social Network
Social
Network Mapping
Virtual
Organization
if you have a term you would like us to define here, please email us.
Is something not clear? Please email us with your comments, feedback, suggestion or request.
This article has been crafted and edited by Sylvia
Dolena and Dwayne
Cox, founders of the Coach
Universe and Synergy
Central knowledge sharing virtual communities.
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