One community at a time.

The following is based on a conversation I had with a prospective client this morning.

Q: Knowledge Architecture’s intranet software looks great Chris. We think that your team has built some great tools to improve knowledge sharing. However, we’re not talking about the elephant in the room. How do we get people to share? How do we change the culture?

A: One community at a time.

Architecture and engineering firms are made up of micro-tribes—practice groups, market sectors, departments, interest groups, initiatives, and so on. We have found that focusing on meeting the needs of individual communities is easier than “fixing” the culture or the firm.

Communities have leaders, influencers, and hopefully, a shared domain of interest or practice. Communities might have two members or twenty, but they are generally a small and discrete number of individuals. When the Healthcare practice leader starts blogging once a week, sharing links or videos, and commenting on posts, his or her tribe will follow suit. Why? The leader has modeled the behavior they want their tribe to exhibit and has simultaneously given permission for other folks to do so as well.

When the Healthcare tribe starts sharing ideas and insights on a social intranet—about projects, clients, competitors, technology, or service innovation—you can bet the other practice leaders and their tribes will be watching and eventually join the movement.

At Knowledge Architecture, we believe that the most successful intranets are actually dozens or hundreds of micro-intranets, each meeting the needs of individual communities. That’s how you get people to share—practice by practice, office by office, department by department—one community at a time.