Formal Knowledge Groups – A Model for Communities of Practice in Government?
Friday, May 7th, 2010“This is an age of Knowledge Economy, where an intelligent organization, whether in the public or private sector, should be a learning organization.” So writes Khan who argues for the creation of formal communities of practice in the public sector. The formal communities of practice would be called knowledge groups and would consist of cross-agency teams that work on a shared problem with the goal of producing a body of knowledge to manage the problem.
Khan starts his argument for knowledge groups by describing the benefits of knowledge and how knowledge is created. Nothing surprising here and these sections serve as a good review of basic knowledge management concepts. He then describes how learning organizations learn by using Peter Senge’s framework of the five core competencies. What I found especially valuable was the description of barriers by public organizations to each of the five competencies:
1) Shared purpose and vision – public organizations often have conflicting goals that makes creating a shared vision impossible.
2) Systems approach – public organizations are divided into virtual fiefdoms that compete with each other for resources thus blocking the systems approach to problems.
3) Personal mastery – Government functions follow routine standardized procedures and individual employees are not recognized for improving their skills.
4) Mental models – The fiefdom mindset of “us versus them” precludes sharing of mental models for team learning.
5) Capacity for team leaning – Again, public agency fiefdoms prevent team learning.
Khan further describes the process of organizational unlearning where time and change have rendered existing processes obsolete. Organizations must unlearn the old process and create a new process in response to the new environment. Public agencies learn from six major sources – internal resources and experience; citizens and customers; partners, rival, and comparators; top-down direction and review; and critiques, advice, and media. Even so, agencies tend to ignore outside sources in favor of internal learning sources thus hindering the unlearning process.
Despite these barriers, public organizations do share knowledge in informal groups and through social networking. Khan argues that these informal structures are constantly at risk of disintegration and he advocates creating formal Knowledge Groups (KG) that can withstand the pressures of being torn apart as members seek their own self-interests. A KG is created by selecting a professional in a particular field and granting him or her authority from an executive sponsor. The KG Lead selects relevant subject matter experts and manages stakeholders while setting the vision and direction of the KG. Khan describes several advantages of the KG:
1) Governments are more receptive to internally-generated information.
2) The process of creating and disseminating the information is formalized.
3) Synergy is created from the diversity of agencies and viewpoints.
4) The relevant stakeholders are identified and recruited to support the KG.
5) Avoiding an overdependence on consultants.
I agree with Khan on the importance of knowledge and organizational learning. His analysis of the barriers that prevent organizational learning in public agencies is also on target but I just don’t agree with the need for a formal Knowledge Group. There are numerous examples of informal communities of practice and social networks that are robust and provide the same benefits as a formal KG. Having worked on a top-down KG, I found it to be less valuable for innovation and learning than an informal network. One just has to look at the example of GovLoop to see the power of a set of informal communities of practice. So, while the barriers to organizational learning in public agencies are very real they can be overcome without having to create yet another formal organizational layer in government.
Reference:
Khan, I.A. (2010). Knowledge groups: A model for creating synergy across the public sector. Public Organization Review 10. 139-152.