Flying CoPs

Andrea Janssen posts a text by Diane Le Moult of Siemens with lessons and guide lines concerning Communities of Practice. I could have, or maybe should have, seen it myself, as I am a frequent visitor of KnowledgeBoard.

In our company we have transformed the way we work in the last year. Earlier we had senior researchers, all responsible for acquiring accounts, with a pool of junior researchers that were asked to participate on project to project basis. The problem was that most of the time the seniors did not know for sure if they could claim enough time with juniors to get the work done, as they were all competing for the same people. Now we have built teams, based on their field of research, with at least two seniors and a group of juniors.

One senior is primarily responsible for client contacts (next to doing research of course), the other primarily for making the projects run smoothly (also next to doing research). The juniors now have time for building up more specialist expertise, while the seniors exactly know how much work they can give them.

Reading Diane's text on CoPs I think it is time to review our first experiences with having teams in the light of her guide lines and lessons. It'll probably turn up a nugget of two, to improve the work in our teams.