1. TH607 : Building a Community of
Practice at Bechtel
Paul Drexler, Bechtel Corporation, Learning and Development
Ani Mukerji, Bechtel Corporation, Learning and Development
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2. Does this look familiar?
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3. What is a community of practice?
Communities of practice are 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.
www.elceshow.com Source: Etienne Wenger from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
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4. a show of hands
How many of you have participated in a CoP?
How many of you have played a role in starting
a CoP?
How many of you have played a role in starting
a successful CoP?
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5. the back story
Bechtel Knowledge Sharing at Bechtel
A global leader in engineering, Expert Communities (Chief Engineers, &
construction, and project management. Bechtel Fellows)
5 Global Business Units executing Lessons Learned Database
projects around the world
Informal Networks of project
20,000 Career employees with a total professionals
footprint of 50,000+ employees
Standard Work Process & Procedures
drafted by experts or committees
Significant amount of required technical
training delivered through an LMS &
other document driven systems
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6. the learning 2.0 Challenge
KEY THEMES
Access to relevant content at Using technology to enable Mobile Access to
the time of need knowledge sharing & consume/develop content
collaboration between
employees
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7. a community of practice
basic ingredients
An engaged partner
Don Sproul and Brad Dowell, ESH Supervisors at
BGCAPP (Blue Grass Chemical Agent -Destruction
Pilot Project)
A significant business need
A sponsor
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8. what don & brad wanted…
When you have a question:
Calling a colleague you know only gets you so much
Need a more trusted source of information than the internet
Google Fall Protection = About 9,520,000 results (0.09 seconds)
This community will:
Bring practitioners from project sites (and experts) together and
provide them a platform to share knowledge
Store the knowledge shared so it can be queried for future use
Help practitioners validate practices – “What are other projects
doing?”
Help bring attention and interaction on hot topics in the company –
Falling Objects, Slips and Trips
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9. strategy…
BOTTOM UP RISK MITIGATION PLATFORM
or
TOP DOWN?
Stay under the radar, Build Relationships: Test a number of platforms
focus on unmet need & Inform executives by posting sample content
engage the passionate Confer with IS&T and and simulating how
few Legal members of the
Or Put together actual use community might interact
Get Management Support cases and presented with the content
and start with a large examples to Sr. Legal
membership Counsel
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15. recognition
OSHA Region IV assessment team specifically called out the Boots on the
Ground Learning Community as an Area of Excellence in their final report.
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17. Excellence in Learning Award
2012 Excellence in Learning
Best Use of Social Learning
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18. secret sauce
Immediate Moderate Engaged Core Critical Mass Of the people,
Value after posting Participants by the people,
for the people
Members who In the life of Safety is a core Once the The tone of the
join the community value at community posts on the
immediately only 2 posts Bechtel and reached 200+ community is
find value have been our ES&H members, informal but
because from taken down, Practitioners there was a informative.
day one there more due to are particularly constant flow
was compelling tone not engaged & like of new
content content sharing member
generated
content
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19. is our work done?
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20. how do you sustain interest?
Answer open questions ASAP
Periodic newsletters to community
Promote through existing sites & newsletters
Look for successful community ideas from other models
Events
Management or Expert participation
Membership drives
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21. Share your ideas
contact
Paul Drexler
pdrexler@bechtel.com
Twitter: @pdrexler1
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22. Enterprise Learning! Institute
Session = 5 Credits
Use Code: INSERT CODE
Learn more at:
www.lpc.2elearning.com
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Getting to do the work is the harder and more creative accomplishment I’ve been involved in using technology for learning for over 25 years, back to Apple Computer’s Multimedia Lab, in the 1980s. I always considered the big challenge as designing, developing and delivering innovative and effective programs, such as simulations, games, etc. Over the last 10 years my thinking has changed. I now see that the larger challenge is in getting to do the work. Your skills in Needs Analysis will help with this, and you’ll need to develop good skills in influencing without authority I’ll try to focus on this.
IN a way it is like a network.. When you’ve been doing something well for many years ….you have a network of people you can call. The big differences are time to develop and ability to scale. CoI don’t work as well
We specialize in huge, difficult, complex projects Our Global Business units are Civil, OG&C, Power, M&M, and BSII (government facing). The GBUs are managed like separate companies, so you can have people doing the same job in different GBUs who are not in contact with each other SWPPs are considered key intellectual capital.
Most “knowing how” learning takes place on the job – while “doing”. The learning 2.0 challenge was our first step into informal learning Thinking about ways to advance learning at Bechtel to support this type of learning inspired the recent Learning 2.0 Challenge. It was our first step in speaking informally to our people, asking for their ideas, and taking them seriously Open to all employees in the company, the challenge tapped into employee ideas for using new Web 2.0 technologies to create richer learning experiences that solved Commonly held learning need with a strong business connection Access to relevant content at the time of need Assisting employees to get access to relevant content at their time of need by: Allowing peers and experts to rate and rank content Allowing experts/content owners to identify and push content to their target audience Gives context and useful emphasis to the dry work processes Knowledge sharing Providing employees tools and platforms to create and share rich-media content across the enterprise Marketplace of Questions & Answers Providing a platform such as Yahoo Answers to enable employee-to-employee interactions such as the ability to post questions and suggest answers or sharing ideas and suggestions Mobile Access to consume/develop content Using mobile technologies that enable employees to both create content as well as consume content when they are away from their desk
At about the same time an engaged partner with A significant business need came to us Don Sproul and Brad Our out of pocket costs were low
Benign Neglect In selling to management, mention that CoP gives you a window into what’s going on the ground It’s going to be in the firewall
Preloaded site with value build slowly
This is the site. Categories, features
You can slice and dice
Key attribute. Easy to post Great way to find out what’s going on in the company Mobile example
Percentage of Contributors and audience is typical. More analytics available from Google analytics Types of CoP members There are typically four distinct types of members in a CoP: Learner/User learners/Users are those who may visit the site on a casual or a regular basis. They are consumers of the knowledge on the site but are rarely contributors. They will continue to participate as long as they see value in doing so. This group comprises between seventy five and ninety percent of the total audience. Within the first two to three minutes a learner/user should be able to: Understand the purpose of the community Have a sense of the organization of the site See something that engages or interests them Contributor Contributors are the heart and soul of the site. They contribute the overwhelming majority of useful content. This group comprises between 10 and 25 percent of the total audience. For the contributor the site should provide: Easy mechanisms for posting feedback Recognition for their contributions Low frustration factor in posting. (Straight forward mechanism for posting, including media such as video, animations, etc. No glitches) Moderator/Administrator In the early stages of CoP development a small core group may share the moderator and administrator responsibilities. In the longer term, an engaged moderator/administrator, with overall responsibilities that are an official part of his or her job, is necessary. Ideally the moderator/administrator’s annual review and rewards should be tied to the success of the CoP. For the moderator/administrator the site should: Be easy for a non-technical person to run Have the ability to focus on and feature a topic Allow moderator/administrator easily to train and assist new users with usability issues Sponsor Having an influential sponsor early in the life of such a community is a big boost to participation. The site should enable the sponsor to: Use the site as a communication vehicle when needed Use the site as an integral part of a learning strategy Easily review the site content & contribute content Review analytics, including finding out who the top contributors are in the community & identify experts in specific areas
Star Status is a big deal. It reduces the government inspections
No. You can not rest on your laurels. You have to keep actively involved, creating new content and features