Call the CoP's!

How communities of practice are key to successful Service management.

Many of us have faced the same problems when coming up with new ideas: no time to carry out the work, no help, no backing from higher-ups, budget constraints, or needing help knowing where to start.?

We, at BJSS are a leading technology and engineering consultancy for businesses. We collaborate with some of the world's leading organisations to deliver complex, innovative technology, engineering, and industry solutions that millions use daily, and we have had the same problems.

However, we're not here to moan; we are here with a solution.

We've found utilising communities of practice a great way to tackle every single one of these issues. By doing so, we have produced some fantastic, tangible results that benefit our staff, company, and clients, driving the success of Managed Service within our company.

Some of this blog might have a bit of a consultancy slant to it, just due to the nature of what we do. But you can apply these ideas to any organisation!

What are Communities of Practice?

To ensure that we all understand the concept, let's go over the definition of a CoP!

Communities of practice are, by definition:

"groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly" - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger

The concept of a CoP is not new; it is more a case of giving a name to something that has been happening for a long time. We, as humans, have always had CoPs, having to work together to survive and evolve.

This concept is known as situated learning, and it was first proposed in the 1991 book, that was very aptly named "Situated Learning."?

In a nutshell, situated learning emphasises the importance of context and environment in which learning occurs and how legitimate peripheral participation gradually increases engagement and complexity.

The theory behind situated learning is that learning is inherently tied to the social and physical context in which it occurs. Rather than approaching learning as acquiring knowledge in isolation, situated learning suggests that learning is a?very?social process that occurs strongly through active participation in real-world contexts and communities. We work better together, and this will resonate with many of us.

The key features of situated learning are:

1. Individuals gradually become more involved in a CoP by observing and engaging in peripheral tasks, eventually taking on more central roles as they develop skills, knowledge, and confidence. It's a win-win!
2. By facilitating social interactions and collaboration with more experienced community members, less experienced members can acquire knowledge and skills they wouldn't usually have had exposure to.
3. Being involved in actual, authentic tasks and activities is way more engaging!

There are many examples of how CoPs positively influence organisations, from ideas born while chatting over coffee to actual structured CoPs.

A real life example

An unbiased, great example of a CoP within an organisation is Xerox.

They sell print and digital documentation products, and many people have heard of them!

Their CoP developed around the Xerox field customer service representatives who repaired the machines. These reps began exchanging repair tips and tricks during informal meetings over breakfast and lunch.

Eventually, Xerox saw the value of these interactions and created a CoP. They shared these interactions across their global network of representatives and gave it a name.

The Eureka knowledge management platform! Xerox estimates this CoP has saved over $100 million since its creation in the 1990s.

All they did as a company was facilitate the CoP, invest in it, give it the resources it would need and some time. Amazing result.

So, how did we implement CoPs?

Within Managed Service at BJSS, we think about CoP's as:

"a group of like-minded practitioners who meet regularly to promote consistent and efficient ways of working, sharing knowledge, and supporting one another. "

We started with many ideas but needed more time to implement them. We also needed more direction, visibility, involvement, and priority. So, how did we tackle this?

Many of these issues are intertwined. We have an overall CoP lead within BJSS who is a crucial point of contact, provides direction, and can escalate if necessary.

Our overall CoP lead broke down what we wanted to achieve into smaller groups that all had a key focus. These are:

• Attracting and Retaining Talent?- Ensuring our people are challenged, suitably skilled, and have the appropriate progression opportunities.
• Accelerators?- Designing and creating a straightforward, consistent, blueprinted approach to service delivery that supports our engagements.
• Learning and Development?- Empowering our community to gain, share and implement new knowledge that drives our people and our organisation forward.
• Innovation?- Focusing on being at the forefront of Service Management techniques and concepts.
• Awareness?- Communicating widely, both internally and externally, about who we are, what we do and the value we add.

The group leaders

From here, we gave these groups the key people they needed to lead them. For example, we have an enthusiastic, confident person driving the Awareness CoP and a lovely people person driving the Attracting and Retaining talent CoP.

These people are responsible for hosting these calls and meet-ups, ensuring clear actions and documentation are created, moderating, and keeping discussions on track. The CoP group leaders collaborate, providing control with group overlap, dealing with any blockers, and celebrating successes.

The key contributors

We then went on to raise awareness of these groups, approached some key subject matter experts who were passionate about each one, and provided a place for them to collaborate. Due to the awareness raised, as a bonus, we also gained many members who weren't experts but were interested in what we had to do!

These SMEs are the key drivers of these groups' achievements; they benefit from the results personally and have the expertise we need. For example, we had our process SMEs collaborate to produce a blueprinted approach to all of our ITIL functions, and our service delivery leads devised service strategies and general ways of working.

However, peripheral involvement is still vital. Members with a general interest gain a lot of experience and can contribute to tasks over time, this is great for their personal development.

We introduce any new members publicly and make a fuss about them, the work they're doing is genuinely appreciated and great!

Their approach

The groups all started by defining the overall roadmap of what they wanted the CoP to achieve and creating a plan of action. Actions are picked up by people with the time to take them on and delegated as part of the COP's regular catch-up meetings.

These often change due to the nature of our workload, but we've seen amazing progress over the last year by tackling them little by little and sharing the load among those involved.

We've been very fortunate to have a very supportive leadership team that sees the benefits of CoPs. They have been on board with incentivising involvement in these groups. They are considered part of our staff's annual review cycles and progression, and we also ensure staff involved in these groups can occasionally get some protected time to drive these actions forward.

Platforms are essential, too!

We use various platforms to support these groups, too. These platforms are essential because they provide places for the CoPs to store and share new documentation, meet with one another, drive work forward, and record actions and results.

• Slack (individual and group)
• Teams
• In-person meet-ups
• Kepler pages for documentation/actions
• Jira for action tracking

Us vs Challenges

Just because we have a great framework now and some great wins does not mean we haven't faced issues.

• More time spent/risk of impacting our work?- Juggling people's availability is hard! We tackled this by breaking down tasks into more manageable chunks of work. We ensure that actions are shared as evenly as possible and that we are flexible to needs. We communicate needs and updates on Slack, too, to ensure people who can't make some of the calls can still be involved! Clear communication of CoPs and their benefits to our clients has also been vital.
• Not understanding the benefit: We ensure group leads regularly communicate updates and wins to the wider BU. The awareness group plays a leading role here!
• Setting up calls vs. People attending?- As mentioned above, incentivised participation is a fundamental driver here. However, thanks to good communication, staff could see the benefits of these results even before incentivisation.
• Not speaking up?- Not everyone has buckets of confidence! Some people did struggle to get involved in tasks or speak up, even though they're great at what they do! However, we've seen a real change here with consistency, encouragement, support, and other members leading by example. It's also a good idea to focus a session on something you know they could add value to. It's worth it for both the individual's development and the group's needs.
• Blockers - If the group lead can't solve a blocker, our overall CoP lead can provide an approach and support to drive this forward. We all have each other's backs and want to see great things achieved that benefit all of us.

TLDR - CoP structure

In summary, to start your CoPs, we've found it helpful to have the following:

An overarching go-to person, an effective group lead, some confident key SMEs, plus any other contributors are a welcome bonus.

By breaking down tasks into manageable chunks, you get much more done quickly!?

It is key that these groups are not siloed.?

So why are CoPs key to successful service management?

We've found they benefit some very important people, starting with...

Your Staff?

• They give your staff opportunities to be involved that they might not usually get. Not many workplaces offer the chance to help shape how their business unit functions. Staff are listened to, their opinions and ideas matter, and they get room to grow and develop.
• Alongside excellent communication, they provide real visibility of the fantastic work they are capable of.
• From here, they get well-deserved recognition for their results!
• They benefit from a standardised way of working and new, exciting tasks,

Your Company?

• You get to have some talented people contribute to the development of the business
• They allow you to draw from experienced people rather than dealing with problems or ideas yourself.
• They build a fantastic community feeling with invested people who care.
• They help break down silos, the key to getting things done.

Your Clients

• Get a bunch of value-add! They're able to utilise staff who are growing in skill (but not necessarily in billing) and reap the benefits of this with all of the new, shiny, great things your staff can do for them.
• They get better value for money. Accelerated timelines for maturity, innovation, and results save them weeks of billing. And who doesn't want to save costs?!

Main takeaway

Working with great people and reducing silos means that we drive quick, vital changes to benefit the above three groups. We constantly review our approach to this too.

A solid foundation on which to build is imperative to the success of a business unit that is growing rapidly, both with its staff and clients.

It's so important to us that the work we do on CoPs produces scalable results and tools that can keep up with the ever-evolving world of IT service management.