by Maddy Mirkovic, on Jun 5, 2019 8:38:00 AM

Questions about KPIs are frequently heard here at Cascade, whether that be from one of our 6000+ users or 60,000+ subscribers. We noticed a lot of people struggling to find examples on the web that were the right fit for their needs. So we thought we’d put together our own 4 step approach to writing great KPIs, and share it with you. This article will walk you through our 4 simple steps to writing great KPIs as well as answer a few commonly asked questions about KPIs, such as KPI meaning, how many KPIs should you have, and what are they used for in a business.

KPI Meaning

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator…but what does key performance indicator mean? Well, the KPI definition that we use is, a measurable value that shows the organization’s progress towards achieving key business objectives. Organizations can use Key Performance Indicators as a way to track whether their key business objectives are on track, behind, ahead, or have been achieved. 

Writing KPIs – The 4 Step Approach

Possessing knowledge on how to write KPIs is extremely valuable for any business professional. So, if you need a hand to get going, follow our 4 step approach to writing KPIs:

1. Determine strategic objectives
2. Define success
3. Decide on measurement
4. Write your SMART KPIs

NOTE: At this point, I should mention that when I use the term ‘strategic objectives’ in this article, I’m referring to the purpose of your actions. While some may argue that this should be called a goal or an initiative rather than an objective, I would argue that the terminology is not as important as the concepts they represent. As long as the concept behind each term is well understood in your organization, there is no reason to change your terminology (even if your terminology doesn’t match that of our post – as long as the concepts do).http://www.youtube.com/embed/RJDA7wLey6M

Tip: Don’t copy your KPIs straight from someone else’s list!

While there’s a wealth of KPI examples available online – scrolling through industry lists, picking out a KPI and attempting to force it into your strategy won’t do you any favors.

Why?

Well, KPIs should be developed to contribute to achieving a specific strategic objective. If they’re not developed with a specific strategic objective in mind, they run the risk of stealing attention, time, and money from KPIs that actually help to achieve strategic objectives. The best KPIs for YOUR business are designed by starting with YOUR specific business objectives. Now, this is not to say all the content available on KPI examples is useless, because it’s definitely not – it’s actually an important resource. But, looking through KPI examples shouldn’t begin till AFTER you have determined your own key strategic objectives.

Alternative vs Value-Based Decision-Making

To get a better understanding of why you should always start the KPI process by having first defined strategic objectives, consider the two potential ways of deriving your KPIs:

• Alternative-based decision-making
• Value-based decision-making

Alternative-based decision-making relies on choosing your preferred option from the alternatives offered.

Example:

Decision maker: I would like a coffee

Waiter: Sure, what milk would you like?

Decision maker: What do you have?

Waiter: We have full cream, skim, or soy milk?

Decision maker: I’ll take the full cream milk.

Value-based decision-making relies on assessing what matters most to you and then making a decision that meets your needs.

Example:

Decision maker: I would like a coffee

Waiter: Sure, what milk would you like?

Decision maker: (Considers objectives: I like a good tasting coffee, but also want to keep the fat content down because I’m watching my weight) I’ll take soy milk with one serve of artificial sweetener.

Waiter: No problem.

As you can see, the decision maker in the first example listened to the alternatives presented and then selected their preference based on the options given. However, the decision maker in the second example examined their objectives and what they really wanted from a cup of coffee first, and then made a decision which met their needs.

When writing KPIs, using the alternative based approach and scrolling through industry KPI lists will leave you with your preferred KPI from that list, but achieving that KPI won’t necessarily mean you’ve achieved your strategic objectives. On the other hand, using the value-based approach and considering your key strategic objectives first will ensure you end up with KPIs that once achieved, will mean you’ve also achieved your strategic objectives.

Your organization’s business model, industry, and even the department in which you operate will have an impact on the type of KPI you need. Luckily, we’ve devised a best practice process for how to write KPIs that will allow you to create the perfect KPIs every time.

Step 1 – Determine the Key Strategic Objectives

Before writing KPIs, you’ll first need to determine which of your organization’s strategic objectives you’re trying to gauge. If you’ve been following along our mini series “How To Write A Strategic Plan: The Cascade Model’ then you will have already defined some strategic objectives for your organization, and you’re ready to create some KPIs.

If you haven’t defined any strategic objectives (or goal) for your organization yet, check out this article first and then jump back over here to create your KPIs.

E.g. Strategic Objective: Increase the flow of the marketing pipeline.

Step 2 – Define Success

Now that you’ve identified your strategic objectives, you’ll need to begin thinking about what the success of each objective looks like. Sticking with the same example used in Step 1, if my objective is to increase the flow of the marketing pipeline, the success of this objective means increasing the number of contacts that enter the pipeline, and increasing the number of contacts that pass through the end of the pipeline and get handed over to Sales. By first defining what success looks like, deciding how you will measure the success of your objective becomes a lot easier.

When defining the success of your KPI, you will usually find there are multiple parts to the definition of your objectives success. In the example used above, we found there were two parts to achieving success of our objective –

1. Increasing the number of contacts that enter the pipeline.
2. Increasing the number of contacts that pass through the end of the pipeline and get handed over to Sales.

As mentioned earlier, this is the time when it might be useful to look through a few KPI examples to help get some inspiration for how you can define the success of your key business objectives. Again, you should avoid copying KPIs straight from a list, as, chances are, they won’t perfectly fit your strategic objectives. Instead, use the KPI examples as a way to ideate how you can measure the success of your own strategic objectives.

We’ve collated a whole bunch of KPI examples already and grouped them by the department to help give you a little inspiration:

Step 3 – Decide on measurement

Next, you’ll need to decide how you will actually measure success. Going back to our example once again, we’ve identified that the success of our objective means increasing the number of contacts that enter our pipeline AND increasing the number of contacts that pass through the end of our pipeline

Let’s start with the first part of this – Increasing the number of contacts that enter our pipeline. Contacts enter our marketing pipeline when they subscribe to our mailing list or exchange their details for content for the first time. When contacts engage in either activity, they automatically get added to our marketing automation platform as a subscriber. Using the number of new subscribers added to our marketing automation platform over a time period is an easy way for us to measure the number of contacts entering our marketing pipeline.

Now let’s look at the second part – Increasing the number of contacts that pass through the end of our marketing pipeline. Contacts pass through the end of the marketing pipeline when they’re ready to be handed over to our Sales Team. We use the term “SQL” (Sales Qualified Lead) to define a lead that has moved through the end of our marketing pipeline and is ready for our Sales Team to pick up. Our marketing automation platform adds a tag on each contact profile to identify which life-cycle stage they are in based on certain activity. Again, through our marketing automation software, we can use the number of contacts who become a SQL in a given time period to measure our success.

This is where it might be wise to start considering dashboard software to track and display your KPIs. You’ll likely use various platforms and tools across your business to measure your KPIs, but having a central location to track and view all your departmental and organizational KPIs will ensure you have a clear view of your success. Cascade’s Dashboard tool is extremely powerful and allows you to pull data from all around your business, so you can display your most important information, real time, to whoever in your organization needs it.

Step 4 – Write your KPIs

Finally, it’s time to begin actually writing your KPIs. KPIs should follow the SMART format (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound), to ensure your KPIs meet this criterion, we’ve devised a formula that you can follow to ensure you end up with SMART KPIs every time. The main advice here is to keep things simple. KPIs should be understood by everyone within the organization. That means no jargon (if possible), and keeping them to one sentence long.

We suggest a structure as follows:

Action Detail Value Unit Deadline

Putting it all together, our KPIs may look something like this:

Example 1

Increase new HubSpot lead profiles to 40,000 people by 31st December 2019

Example 2

Increase new SQL profiles to 20,000 people by 31st December 2019

Starting off with a verb forces you to be specific about what you’re trying to do. A metric and unit ensure your KPI is measurable and a deadline will do wonders for staying timely on your progress.

Cascade does a great job helping write KPIs this way with it’s goal designer (See screenshot below)

How Are KPIs Used in an Organization?

Key performance indicators are a communication tool for organizations. They inform business leaders of their organization’s progress towards reaching key business objectives. KPIs are able to provide this information because they actually track the most important performance measures, which can be taken together to represent how successful you are in achieving an objective. This information channel is extremely valuable as, in a well-designed strategy, an organization’s key business objectives should have a direct impact on the organization’s overall performance. Therefore, KPIs will communicate whether your activities are achieving, for example, business growth at the rate expected or not, and how much growth you’ve actually achieved.

KPIs also assist in identifying issues with organizational processes. If the progress on an objective falls behind, the key performance indicator associated with it will communicate this to business leaders as soon as the trend begins to show itself (assuming you have leading & lagging KPIs). The organization will know that something has gone wrong and an investigation is required. A strategy to mitigate the issue can then be created and implemented before it has far-reaching effects on the organization’s performance.

How Many Key Performance Indicators Do You Need?

The question of how many key performance indicators you need will vary with every company. However, we do have a framework which you can apply to help you assess how many KPIs you’ll need to implement for your organization. The number you need will depend on how many key business objectives you have in your organization. As a rule, we generally say you should have 2-3 KPIs per objective, to ensure a variety of measures without overwhelming the picture. The reason we use a minimum of 2 KPIs as a rule, is because we believe each business objective should have at least 1 leading indicator and 1 lagging indicator. This allows you to predict future performance as well as record the actual performance and compare these to the direction of your business objective.

What Are Leading and Lagging KPIs

Leading and lagging KPIs are often mentioned when it comes to strategy, but what is the difference between the two? A leading KPI indicator is a measurable factor that changes before the company starts to follow a particular pattern or trend.Leading KPIs are used to predict changes in the company and future performance, but as predictors, they cannot always accurately forecast the future. On the other hand, a lagging KPI is a measurable fact that records the actual performance of an organization.

Leading key performance indicators are often easier to influence than lagging KPIs, however, generally measuring them can prove more difficult. Lagging KPIs, on the other hand, are usually easier to measure, though much harder to influence. If you’d like to learn more about Leading and Lagging KPIs, check out this post.

KPI Reporting

Creating relevant, measurable and time-bound key performance indicators is great, but it’s only half the job done. The other half (which can often go overlooked) comes down to figuring out how to actually track and report on them appropriately and accurately. While it can be tough setting up this kind of tracking and reporting, if you don’t create an easy way to view and stay on top of progress, the KPIs aren’t going to be much use. A KPI report is a presentation which displays and communicates the current performance of an organization compared to its business objectives. It’s a tool used by management in order to analyze performance and identify issues. These reports can take many formats, including formal written reports, spreadsheets, powerpoint slides, or dashboards.

Dashboards

Creating a KPI dashboard is a great way to provide at-a-glance views of key performance indicators relevant to a specific business objective, department, or the whole organization. Now, before your eyes glaze over with boredom as another business term is introduced, dashboards are just another name for a progress report. However, what makes dashboards more powerful than your typical business report is that they’re usually hooked up to business systems so the data is automatically updated. The benefit of this is it ensures the data is always relevant, as it doesn’t rely on someone in the organization continuously updating numbers. This is just one of the many benefits of using dashboard software for your strategy report.

Dashboards also give you total visibility of your business performance instantly, display KPI progress in a visual presentation to keep reporting engaging, and save time when compared to the hours poured into creating regular reports. If you’re looking for help creating a great KPI dashboard, check out this article we wrote a little while back. We walk through how to set up a great strategy dashboard which includes all your business KPIs for an instant snapshot of your performance. We’ll also be adding more examples of key performance indicator dashboards for specific department in the coming months.

Amazon and Apple are both among the most admired companies in the world. However, feedback from employees on Glassdoor.com suggests that both have historically somewhat struggled with employee engagement – which can cause a whole range of issues. The courses of action they have taken to address this through reward and recognition have been different.

So which approach to employee rewards is right?

Apple
Apple believes especially in offering employee rewards for independent thinking. The company compensates its executives by giving them a bonus of 3 to 5 percent of salary. Last year according to media reports, Apple gave out restricted stock units to a majority of its more than 100,000 employees.

Apple also gives discounts on its range of products to further boost motivation, not to mention retail staff’s ability to sell the products. Furthermore, Apple doesn’t just reward work within the company. It also rewards volunteering. The company’s new donation-matching programme, for example, is being rolled out to all employees.

Employees say they find it rewarding that they aren’t micromanaged – a tone Steve Jobs himself set when he gave his team their mission “to create a phone that people would love so much that they would never leave the house without it.”

Perhaps Apple’s greatest achievement is that they have created a feeling that the work itself is rewarding.

‘It’s a company that when you sign on you’re getting to be a part of something larger, you’re getting to be a part of pioneers that are actually making a difference in people’s lives,’ says Business Manager John.

‘I think what Apple gives the employee is the opportunity to be part of something really, really meaningful,’ says Joel, Vice President of Human Resources.

Amazon
Amazon believes in taking a long-term approach to employee rewards. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos set out his vision in the company’s first ever letter to shareholders, when the company went public back in 1997. The letter’s main point is that we can’t realise our potential as people or as companies unless we plan for the long-term. This is still the company’s philosophy today, illustrated by the fact that this letter has been included in every subsequent annual report.

While Amazon gives its employees – or Amazonians as they are known – the usual benefits, as well as discounts on Amazon purchases, the company prefers to reward employees with long-term stock options rather than cash.

Bezos explains his logic in the 1997 letter: “We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner.”

Here’s the catch – stock options only turn into a reward if the employee stays more than two to five years.

Amazon is also pioneering new programmes for employees who have undertaken one year of continuous service, such as Career Choice. The company pre-pays 95% of tuition for courses that teach in-demand skills, regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. Does this ‘reward’ actually encourage people to leave, rather than stay at the company?

As an article in Buzzfeed recently pointed out, “A revolving door. Churn and burn. An overwhelming need for new bodies… These are all phrases that have been used to describe Amazon’s high turnover rate and fast-and-loose corporate culture.”

Several comments on Glassdoor.com suggest a harsh corporate culture with high employee turnover. A current Senior Product Manager based in Seattle advises management to “treat employees as well as you treat your customers and you’d be better off”.

However, the same employee also states that “Amazon is an excellent place to work if you…enjoy a fast paced and rewarding career with excellent upside potential. I like it how performance is rewarded with increased responsibilities and stock based awards.”

Defining your reward & recognition strategy
Whether you believe that Apple is right, or Amazon with its longer-term approach, it is important to define your reward and recognition strategy. Nowadays it’s easier as more and more companies buy in a reward and recognition programme. If you do this, the programme should be company-branded, tailored so that it reflects internal processes and markets, flexible and easy to use.

Companies need to develop programmes to keep employees engaged and motivated so that they can help deliver the strategic goals. In this regard, we can all learn something from both Apple and Amazon – even if we decide to start with more simple steps to drive engagement.

Which approach do you think is correct? Should employers reward as successes are achieved?

What is an After Action Review? It is a technique to evaluate and capture lessons learned upon the completion of a project. It allows project team members to discover for themselves what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses. It is structured as an informal discussion with the main team members of the project.An After Action Review can also be conducted at the completion of the project or any key milestones of a project that has a long duration.It is not a critique or a complaint session. AAR maximizes learning by offering a platform for leaders and members to honestly talk about the project. It is not a full-scale evaluation report. Why conduct After Action Review? The purpose of an After Action Review is to review the project outcomes vis-à-vis the intended outcomes of a project. The AAR is the basis for learning from project success and failures. It is the starting point for improvements in future projects. Team members can identify strengths and weaknesses and determine how to improve performance in the future by focusing on the desired outcome and describing specific observations.The project team can document the lessons learned and make it available to the rest of the organization to improve decision-making. How to conduct an After Action Review?  An After Action Review can be conducted as soon as possible upon completion of project or major project milestones.Generally the following discussion questions are used to build consensus on the lessons learned:What was expected to happen?What actually happened? What went well and why?What can be improved and how?What are the lessons that can be used in the future?At the start of the AAR, the facilitator should review the purpose and sequence of the AAR to ensure that everyone understands what an AAR is and how it works. The introduction should also include some ground rules for conducting and managing the discussion.  The role of the facilitator will be explained during the introduction.Some pointers for facilitators:It is permissible to disagree. Encourage members to provide honest opinionsUse open-ended questions to guide the discussionParaphrase and summarize key discussion pointsThe focus of the AAR is on learning i.e. identifying lessons learned rather than blaming individuals for wrong decisions or performance evaluation. Mistakes or poor decisions can be translated into learning opportunities.In order for this to happen, there must be an atmosphere of trust and openness.The discussion should ensure that specific issues are revealed, both positive and negative in nature. Skillful facilitation will ensure the AAR does not gloss over mistakes or weaknesses.In some projects, other stakeholders can provide useful insights and ideas to the review process. Before the review session, the facilitator or designated team member should consult with these outside stakeholders and then summarize the input for the AAR.The lessons learned are captured on a flip chart or electronically. This is dependent on who uses the information and how it is used. Flip charts are a convenient tool to make notes visible for all participating in the review and ensures a common understanding of and agreement to what has been discussed.Electronic capturing in the intranet enables reference later on and dissemination to relevant parties who are involved in similar projects. Who should conduct an After Action Review An independent facilitator can be used to conduct the AAR. A trained independent facilitator may be able to ensure participation from everyone. The facilitator will also be able to draw out insights and issues through probing questions.While an independent AAR facilitator could maintain objectivity throughout the review, it may be useful to enlist someone who is somewhat knowledgeable about the subject or topic of the review. That would minimize the learning curve and enable technical discussions to be carried out and recorded clearly.Alternatively, a project team member could facilitate the AAR. The team leader must ensure that all background materials are considered—reports, surveys, planning documents or other input. This will ensure that the AAR is complete, thorough, and appropriate

Building Knowledge Clusters

What is a Knowledge Cluster Throughout history, organizations have grouped together in various types of cluster, to be able to be more effective. Guilds, Societies, Associations, Networks etc continue to help support and develop their members. However, since the birth of the ‘Knowledge Economy’ there has been far more emphasis on the knowledge contained, developed and applied, within the organizations. There is much more interest in different types of Knowledge Network. The Knowledge Economy, and the primary knowledge management processes, in turn, have been newly enabled, in radical and fundamentally new ways, by communication, information, and collaborative working technologies, based on the Internet and World Wide Web.   The term ‘Knowledge Cluster’ is a term given to a group that, as a result of coming together in this new way, create, innovate and disseminate new knowledge. In other words, different individuals, teams and organizations can now come together, virtually, on the Internet, to better communicate, collaborate, learn and share knowledge through the cluster. The term is used, for example, to represent a group of companies in the same industry sector e.g high technology knowledge cluster, biotechnology knowledge cluster. There are Regional Knowledge Clusters where groups of organizations come together, regardless of their size, around specific topics. Often, there is a high incidence of innovation centres linked to local Universities. At the center of the cluster, there is usually an R&D topic, and core public research institutions with high research potential. The system can also involves the participation of organizations and other groups from both inside and outside the locality or region. A Knowledge Cluster may be viewed as a type of  Community of Practice (COP). A Knowledge Cluster is a more focused COP, normally with the aim of combining knowledge resources to create new innovative products and services and/or organize and compete in new ways, to win larger business contracts. Why use this tool? There are many good reasons to form and/or join a Knowledge Cluster. But, of special importance, is the use of Knowledge Clusters for small and medium sized organizations (SME’s). This enables them to gain access to, and participate in, new knowledge networks with new knowledge resources. SME’s can now communicate, collaborate, learn, share, and apply their knowledge much faster, and at a much higher quality, than ever before. Most importantly, SME’s are able to create a Knowledge Cluster that, in many ways, can effectively compete with large Organizations. For example, small regional legal firms have formed successful national legal Knowledge Clusters. As a result of the Internet, they can maintain lower operating overheads, compared to the higher overheads of large organizations.  As a result, they are quite often more price competitive, more resource flexible, and often are able to respond and act much faster than larger organizations. But also, even very large organizations have formed collaborative knowledge clusters to produce products and services that would be impossible to produce individually. A good example of this is Airbus Industries who formed a collaborative knowledge cluster in the Aerospace Industry to build the fundamentally new Airbus 380. Furthermore, Knowledge Clusters can stimulate Regional development. More specifically for example, the Advancement Center for Science & Technology (NOASTEC) Knowledge Cluster Headquarters in Japan, highlight the strategic importance of Knowledge Clusters and refer to them as human networks that will promote beneficial feedback between the “seeds” of innovative technology possessed by public research organizations and other groups forming the core, and corporate needs for practicality. This creates a chain reaction of technical innovation, which eventually results in the creation of new industries. By expanding the regions which have this sort of system, it is possible to achieve world-class technical innovation. Migakiya Syndicate, a local consortium consisting of over forty small metal-polishing companies at countryside in Japan, is another example of Knowledge Cluster. The small companies used to produce most of the metallic western tableware in Japan, but the industry has faced serious decline over the last two decades. Managers of the companies started discussions along with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry to find the way to revive the structurally-depressed industry. They then realized that their core skills and knowledge was not manufacturing tableware but polishing anything – they had strong technical skills. Based upon the finding, they formed the knowledge cluster to market their capability of polishing, receive orders from any industries, and work together on the orders. The knowledge cluster received over 150 million yen orders in three years, and the once-declining industry achieved its revitalization through sharing and improving their core knowledge and skills. So SME’s can now both compete with larger organizations, through forming competitive knowledge clusters, and have more opportunity to join the value chain of large collaborative knowledge clusters, regionally and internationally. Thus, knowledge Clusters are considered to be the new 21st Century model for competitive knowledge driven organizations. How to use Knowledge Clusters     Step 1    Become aware of the knowledge clusters that exist in your industry sector and join them.                   Contact your local University for Knowledge Cluster initiatives.                   If none exist, then consider forming a new knowledge cluster. eg a ‘Ceramics knowledge cluster.’                  In any case, understanding key knowledge areas for the organization is one of the most critical                         successful factors.     Step 2    Become competent in participating in Web based collaborative knowledge working. Consider                             developing the competencies for effective personal and team virtual knowledge working.     Step 3    Understand, and become active in the knowledge cluster, by applying the principles of working in a                      Community of Practice. Especially, building trust relationship with other players is essential for the                      successful knowledge clusters.     Step 4    Consider knowledge clusters as a key strategic resource and competitive tool within your business                     strategy.

Ÿ What is Communities of Practice? Origin: Dr. Etienne Wenger and his team of social scientists were one of the early pioneers to establish the concept of Communities of Practice (COPs) through their study on apprenticeship as a learning model. They found that complex set of social relationships in apprenticeship that enabled learning effectively and named them Communities of Practice. COPs became one of the central focuses of knowledge management after their first book on COPs, Communities of Practice –Learning, Meaning, and Identity, was published in 1998. Since then, COPs have been played an important role in the context of KM especially for sharing common knowledge beyond formal divisions/departments, and, indeed, as a tool to break down the barriers of knowledge flow across organizations.  Definition: COPs 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. In the context of knowledge management, COPs are formed –intentionally or spontaneously- to share and create common skills, knowledge and expertise among employees.  Characteristics: COPs can exist in a division or department in an organization, across departments in an organization, or beyond boundaries of multiple organizations, depending upon its objective. COPs are usually for sharing and developing common skills, knowledge and expertise such as group of engineers working on similar problems, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, or a gathering of first-time managers helping each other. There are also some COPs that focus on generating new knowledge and innovation. The size of COPs varies from 2-3 people to thousands of people, and members of expertise could be either homogeneous or heterogeneous. For example, a COP for effective/efficient problem solving on a certain technological domain would have engineers in the same area, whereas a COP for improving quality of a certain product would have members from various areas such as developers, marketers, and maintenance staff. The following three elements are crucial when one designs COPs. ü   The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.ü   The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. A Platform that enables such activities is essential for a COP. It is based upon relationship of trust among members that encourage frequent interactions to share and develop common knowledge.ü   The practice: COPs are not merely a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. It is the combination of these three elements that constitutes a community of practice. And it is by developing these three elements in parallel that one cultivates such a community. Ÿ  Why COPs for SMEs?COPs could have various reasons for SMEs to apply, but the simplest and strongest reason is probably to effectively share and develop skills and knowledge among employees without huge investment, if COPs are designed well. As described in the next chapter, COPs usually does not require significant investment; you can form a COP as long as you have a certain domain and people who have passion on the domain. This is quite appealing for SMEs who usually cannot afford expensive skill development programs for employees. Many companies have COPs in which the company encourage participants help each other; for instance, one raises his/her facing problem and then another advises or shares his/her own experience. Other COPs merely give opportunities to exchange best-practices on a common subject.In addition, relationship of trust among employees nurtured through COPs would contribute increase employee’s satisfaction and eventually retain valuable workforce that are often key issues for SMEs. You can even form COPs to share common skills and knowledge across your company: among workers at various SMEs to create Knowledge Cluster. Sometimes, COPs are also formed for accelerating innovation. In this case, people from various backgrounds get together to discuss and experiment certain ideas. Ÿ  How to nurture COPs?Because COPs are essentially gathering of people, vigor among COP particiapnts is very important. However, we cannot force people actively involve or design active communities artificially, indeed. As a practical matter, the largest reason COPs fail is lack of vigor to attract and keep participants actively involved. Many successful COPs, instead, nurture the seedbed of activities through artful and flexible design although COPs themselves are spontaneous and organic. The following step shows basic principles of designing and sustaining active COPs.  1.      Find opportunities around strong needs: COPs usually work well when strong need for sharing common interest/passion/skills/knowledge exists: for example, common technological expertise among maintenance engineers, or success/failure experiences of designing a common machine among designers. You have to find such key opportunities to connect people and share knowledge that can make a difference. In other words, this is pre-setting of the domain of the COP that attracts people with the common interest/needs. 2.      Invite passionate people and take in their thoughts: To design a good COP, you need key people (2-3 are quite enough to start) who play a role of steward in the COP. He or she is usually very passionate (and often knowledgeable) on the subject that is a central focus of the COP. Then you discuss the COP design with them with the following focuses:- What is the strategic context of the COP?- What is the key knowledge to share and create?- Who are potential participants benefiting from and contributing to the COP?- What are key activities that sustain vigor of the COP?- Where can community members physically (and virtually) interact?- What are key values for both the organization and participants?These key questions are closely connected to the three elements of COPs: domain, community, and activities. 3.      Launch the COP with socializing events: Development of any COP always start at people’s social relationship. If you don’t build trust relationship among participants, the COP will not work even it has rationale for sharing common knowledge. One easy way is to use existing social network, which is often becomes a core group of the COP, and expand it through face-to-face meeting. 4.      Create results through activities and share the stories: After launching the COP, you need key activities that sustain vigor as well as produce results of the community. The activities vary: could be codifying tacit key knowledge shared among veteran workers or sharing good experience through storytelling sessions. The important part is you need to establish the first small result from the COP that can prove the value of the COP. Then you can expand the activities and attract more people by telling the success story. Ÿ   Key EnablersKey enablers of COPs depend upon the three elements of COPs: domain, community, and activities. For instance, if one of the key activities is to share success/failure real experience among engineers across various SMEs, probably passionate stewards and physical space for gathering together become very important. If you want to share daily activities among sales managers in different branches, you may need collaborative virtual workspaces. The followings are distinctive enablers for COPs.– Stewards: Key people who have passionate for the area and are willing to take care of the COP are the most important component of any COPs.– Incentives: In general, you do not need artificial incentive such as money or promotion. Instead, spontaneous motivation for continuous participation is essentially needed to sustain active COPs. Answers to problems participants face, growth opportunities, or just intellectual fun would be important.– Physical/virtual spaces: Since COPs are social, they need spaces where members can interact. It does not necessarily mean that COPs require exclusive rooms. It could be even virtual space if it can meet participants’ needs. Important aspect is that the center of COPs is human relationship built upon trust, and COPs require spaces where they can nurture such relationship.– Information Technology: Some COPs do not require any IT, whereas IT is key platform to share knowledge and do key activities for other COPs. Again, it depends on the three elements of COPs, domain, community, and activities.– Management’s support: If a COP has strong strategic purposes for an organization, management’s support is an important enabler. The support not only allows participants to understand the importance of COP activities but gives sufficient resources. If a COP has more spontaneous nature, too strong management support sometimes even harms motivation of members as they might think it is too controlled. In this case, the best support from management would be “hidden sponsorship” that accepts activities of COPs.

What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming is a simple way of helping a group of people to generate new and unusual ideas. The process is actually split into two phrase: divergence and convergence. During the divergent phase everyone agrees to delay their judgement. In other words, all ideas will be treated as valid. During the convergent phrase, the participants use their judgement, but do so in a ‘positive’ manner – looking for what they like about the ideas, before finding flaws.

Why use this tool?

Brainstorming is appropriate whenever you need to generate a range of options that go beyond the immediately obvious set. Examples might include:

• All the places one could gain customer insights from
• Different ways to learn from competitors
• New ways to use emerging internet tools to support our customers
• Different ways to reward employees for knowledge capture.

Brainstorms can be organised very quickly, and require very little in the way of material. The instructions (below) describe one method, but the tool is actually very resilient and the basic principles can be applied in many different ways.

How to brainstorm

1. Agree who will facilitate the activity
2. Make sure everyone is aware of the basic guidelines (see below)
3. Ideally, give everyone sticky notes and pens, so that they can write their ideas down.
4. Write the problem on a flipchart – or piece of paper, if you don’t have a flipchart – so that everyone can see it all the time
5. Ask everyone if they understand the problem, and whether there is anything that needs clarification?  Deal with any information needs, if required.
6. Potentially, have a group discussion about the criteria that will be used for idea selection.
7. Ask everyone to start writing down their ideas – one per sticky note – and hand them to the facilitator, who then sticks them on the flipchart.  If there are no sticky notes, ask people to shout out their ideas – one at a time – and the facilitator can write them down.
8. When the group has finally run out of ideas, take the flipchart page(s) and ask the group to:
   1. Look for duplicates, and combine them
   2. Vote (by putting dots, check marks or some other symbol) on their favourite X ideas (the number is determined by the requirements of the situation), based upon the criteria that were identified in the previous step
   3. Pick the highest rated ideas and have the group discuss how the ideas would be implemented – typically this involves identifying the critical next steps.

Guidelines for brainstormingDivergent stage:

1. Defer Judgement
2. Go for quantity
3. Seek wild and unusual ideas
4. Combine and associate
5. Write everything down 

Convergent stage:

1. Improve ideas as you go
2. Use affirmative judgement
3. Be deliberate
4. Seek novelty
5. Check with your objectives

When to use ………… (and when not)

Useful when there is a need to generate a relatively large number of options or ideas.  It is not appropriate when a problem is known to have a single correct solution that requires careful analysis to determine. For example, brainstorming about possible solutions to a mathematical problem would probably be a poor use of time.

Where to use ………….

Can be used in almost any situation where a group (2 or more people) can find a space to work together. This can be as simple as a shared desk with some blank pieces of paper.

Knowledge Management