Lessons learned from experience are lost with retirement. Staff turnover and restructuring break down the informal networks to the point where even long-time staff do not know who to call. Innovative business and government organizations are formalizing these communities to create new mechanisms for creating, capturing, and sharing the knowledge that is critical to their success. With these communities of practice in place, this network emerges as the chartered source to build and deliver knowledge. By providing structure, support, and tools, leading organizations have enabled communities of practice to function far better than their informal predecessors.
Communities of practice are a crucial aspect of knowledge management.
They can be defined as networks that identify issues, share approaches, and make the results available to others. They can be made up of a handful of participants or many dozen. But they all tend to have a core group of participants whose dedication to the topic provides the energy needed to hold the group together. These core participants naturally provide the groups' intellectual and social leadership. Communities of practice differ from work teams in a significant way.