Years ago, I heard a Bombardier presentation about their engineering Communities of Practice, which the company had started in 2012. It was interesting, especially at that time I lived in Canada and Bombardier is a Canadian company (headquartered in Montreal). That was years ago, so I was cursious to hear about their progress in another presentation, an APQC webinar (link to recording and slides).
The presentation, titled "How to deploy a smooth takeoff when launching a collaborative tool", didn't discuss the communities, but the technology that was implemented at Bombardier - a collaboration platform. This (SharePoint) platform has many functionalities, the most important: expertise locator and enterprise search, which were discussed here. To introduce the tool, there were classroom sessions, online, one-on-one executive demonstrations, FAQ. Much attention was paid to the change management side of the introduction (i.e., the people side).
Some of Bombardier's key learnings were:
- Explain how it (the collaboration tool) relates to people's reality: What is in it for me?
- Strong document management strategy at business level needed
- Invest time in change management strategy and communication
Some success factors:
- Full engagement of sponsors and management teams
- Dedicated time for users to participate in training and integrate tool in day-t0-day activities
- High quality data available for users
- Lead by Business, supported by IT.
Although the presenters started with "People-Process-Technology", they emphasize "It's all about the people, the end users".
The platform and the way it was introduced reminded me of the collaboration tool that was implemented at BlackBerry, which I helped to roll out in the Quality department. It was not the same tool (we used IBM's Lotus Connections), but I see similarities and recognize some of the issues the Bombardier team encountered. Although BlackBerry is also an engineering environment, I think the issues are quite generic, related to change in general. The presenters said this article about convincing skeptical people in HBR was very helpful to them, as well as Carla O'Dell's presentation "KM in the Age of Digital Transformation" and the report "The Executive's Role in Knowledge Management" (both from APQC).
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