cultivating communities of practice at international labour organization

Cultivating Communities of Practiceat International Labour OrganizationITCILO – Torino 14.11.2013

Flavio Fabiani – flavio@redomino.com

ILO ACIs – complex and interwoven subjects

No matter how you define or describe your areas of critical importance, there can be little doubt that it are a complex and interwoven subjects

Everybody says, we need to collaborate more to be able to handle highly complex, dynamic systems

But what we keep saying does not necessarily happen and indeed it didn’t happen in the past in many cases

How to develop a collaboration network?

System thinking can be a strong collaboration framework to foster co-creation in the organizations

To achieve system thinking we need to shift the systems where we are: i.e. transform the relations among players in those systems

When we meet we need to use time as precious resource, not just looking PowerPoint presentation.

We should engage in conversations: it is not easy to come all together and meet in person nowadays so we need to use this time to know each other and mutually understand us

Having reflective conversations is an essential condition to transform the relations in the system and a great opportunity to build trust

We all know that when there is no trust in teams they don’t work, the same happen in larger networked virtual teams

What all these images have in common?

VULNERABILITY

MUTUALITY

Misconception of vulnerabilityThe journey of building trust is never ending and requires openness and disclosure.

Vulnerability is the soil nutrient, here human beings grow trusting relationships and here is where we have problems

We cannot manufacture mutuality we need to grow it through a different quality of the conversations, where people can talk honestly to each other and ask for help.

you don’t build a collaboration network from a bunch of people who don’t need each other, do you?

When people from different organizations get together they put on this good faces and start talking about the great things they do:

everybody goes in sales mode

So first thing we could do is engage ourselves in reflective conversations to mutually understand each other, avoiding to go in sales mode

During this conversations we should talk also about our difficulties in order to start supporting each other (mutuality)

If we do this honestly we build trust which is a conditio sine qua non for effective collaboration

while going through this process we should continually be looking for opportunities where people can collectively start to see the larger system

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What motivates people at the very beginning is to see

that there really is a larger system and they are all part of this larger drama

(sensing the system)

People from different institutional perspectives travel together and physically go and see a part of the system

After sensing the system a good practice is to develop a map to understand how the different pieces fit together

So first thing we need to do is engage ourselves in reflective conversations to mutually understand each other, avoiding to go in sales mode

During this conversations we should talk also about our difficulties in order to mutually support each other

If we do this honestly we build trust which is a conditio sine qua non for effective collaboration

while going throgh this process we should continually looking for opportunities where people can collectively start to see the larger system

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collectively start to see the larger system.

learning journeys: people from different institutional perspectives travel together and physically go and see a part of the system

collective system mapping helps to identify the main overall objective of the networked team and what is critical to achieve it

co-create by genuinely share visions, which is usually happening well down the road

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Case: Re-amp

Case: Sustainable Food Lab

role playing

Vision clarification exercise

Phase 1: 5 minsA is standing and voices, undisturbed, his vision to B/C/D

B listen to the content (is it clear?)

C listen to the feelings expressed (is it touching?)

D listen to the direction of the will (has it concrete steps?)

Phase 2: max 10 minsAfter 5 mins B,C,D talk about A’s vision presentation

A listen and takes notes during the group discussion of B, C and D

B/C/D give A tips on how it can be done better (3 tips thinking, feeling willing)

Phase 3: max 5 minA gives a second presentation based on the tips

B,C,D tell A what impact it had on them now

thinking

feeling

willing

The core principle underlying the transformation towards a co-creation strategy aiming at generating a co-creative mutual value is:

engaging people to create valuable experiences together while enhancing network economics

NETWORK RELATIONSHIPS

ENTERPRISEORGANIZATION

expanding

stakeholders

relationships

in our

ecosystem

INTERACTIONSINDIVIDUALS

expanding

the scope and

the scale of

interactions among

people who are

part of our

ecosystem

EXPERIENCE MIND-SET

expanding the space of

valuable

experience

ENGAGEMENTPLATFORMS

expanding

the linkages among

our co-creation platform

and the other engagement platforms

used in our ecosystem

increases efficiency by cutting costs• reduce marketing budget necessary to

launch products / services • avoiding launch of products / services not

valued by the customers

reduces business risks • by increasing insights generation• by pre-testing investments

It lower employees turnover

It expands market opportunities

enhance enterprises strategic capital

allows individuals to gain new experience of value

decreases risks and cost for individuals

Designing processesTraditional representations of a business process is a left-to-right arrow where successive process owners optimize their process steps in order to deliver the best value to the next operator in the value chain

The traditional approach to business process design start with the definition of the process and attempt to deliver efficiently and predictably.

Continuous improvements methodologies (e.g. six sigma) are important in this scenario and parameters like cycle time reduction, cost reduction, minimization of output variations are important.

Designing for stakeholders‘ interaction/engagement

If we start looking at operations with a co-creation approach in mind, soon we realize that the difference of process owner and process customer is irrelevant

Business processes shouldn’t only be driven by the process owner (left-to-right) but also by the process customers (right-to-left)

Process customers (individuals) don’t want their needs to be frozen at the beginning of the process design investigation, they want a real time adaptation of their process needs.Process customers empowered by technology want to engage in the process on their terms and require that the organization adapt the contexts every time they interact

Process design focus is therefore not only on the desired outcome, but more and more on the platform of interaction and engagement that will allow process owners and process customers to come together in each new interaction context

INDIVIDUALS

Why should we be limited by the intra-team competencies?co-creation platforms could provide access to greater competencies through a well-developed global resource base

Within organization, one big challenge is to push managers out of their comfort zones and into the zone of new opportunities

Push managers out of their comfort zoneOver the decade, the Internet and other engagement platforms where stakeholders from around the world can interact to contribute their insights and experience to the design of products and services are changing the economics of innovation.

Committed process customers / consumers want to influence how they will be served and therefore want to be involved in the activities typically thought of as internal to the organization, such as access to resources and the value creation process.

Thus the process of value creation shifts away from a firm-and-product-centric approach to a stakeholding-individual and experience-based-competence perspective.

The game changer is that the sources of competence available to managers now have expanded to include the collective intelligence

Engage and discover

Advances in information access and connectivity through the application of network technology, exponentially increase a corporation’s ability to utilize the skills, interests and knowledge of customers as resources.

Managers should be considered any employee, at any level, who has the ability to directly influence the consumer experience and facilitate co-creation.

To do this, companies need to build IT flexible infrastructures so that line managers throughout the organization can access and activate the right resources and knowledge at the right time.

IT systems must also be more “event-based” so that all line managers are constantly tuned into context-rich customer information.

user journey through the co-creation design

user journey through the co-creation design