Presented at ASEM's (American Society of Engineering Management) annual conference in October 2014. It's based on work done at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyards.

1. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Management 2014 International Annual Conference
S. Long, E-H. Ng, and C. Downing eds.
Copyright, American Society for Engineering Management, 2014
IMPLEMENTING COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE IN A MATRIX ORGANIZATION
Harry Lee Juneau
juneau26@earthlink.net
Gregory Robert Thomas
grthomas82@gmail.com
Michael Nystrom
Poulsbo, WA 98370
Andrew Muras
Andrew.muras@baesystems.com
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
Effective, efficient, and affordable industrial operations is achieved through commitment to acquiring the Five Disciplines of a Learning Organization. Acquiring the Five Disciplines in a large organization is a cultural change commitment that requires a Knowledge Management strategy and process. An important element, and a proven best practice, for many Knowledge Management implementations is the Community of Practice. This paper identifies and traces the development of the Communities of Practice within the context of a matrix organization’s transformation into a Learning Organization and the challenges, resources, and role of leadership in establishing the Communities of Practice. Metrics showing the quantitative and qualitative positive impact of the communities on organizational performance and behavior are provided to support the argument that Communities of Practice increase the rates of individual and team learning, development of new capabilities, improved productivity, and a sustainable positive and collaborative work environment, all of which are crucial to a Learning Organization.
Keywords
Communities of Practice, Learning Organization, Knowledge Management.
Introduction
Members of matrix organizations need technical knowledge, knowledge to solve project problems, and knowledge that enables ongoing improvement to meet or exceed performance objectives (Landaeta, 2008). Process and problem-solving knowledge is gained not by traditional cumulative learning, but by the rapid assimilation of new knowledge throughout project-based organizations. According to Lee and Kim (2005), their community of practice management object validated and refined a knowledge management model that addressed the process of building organizational capacity through knowledge management. Lee and Kim’s model explained how organizational capabilities grew throughout four stages: initiation, propagation, integration, and networking. In the initiation stage, organizations recognize the importance of organizational knowledge management and prepare for enterprise-wide knowledge management efforts (Lee & Kim, 2005). During the propagation stage, organizations invested in building their knowledge infrastructure such as knowledge maps and knowledge management systems to facilitate and motivate knowledge activities (Lee & Kim, 2005). In this stage, organizations considered creating a committee or management team to manage the organizational knowledge resources, developed a knowledge management educational program, created a career path or recruiting program to acquire experts, and then introduced the knowledge management system (Lee & Kim, 2005).
The integration stage occurred when organizational knowledge activities were institutionalized as daily activities across the whole organization (Lee & Kim, 2005). In this stage, organizations analyzed the changes of knowledge requirements according to environmental changes, monitored knowledge activities, evaluated quality and effectiveness of organizational knowledge by experts, integrated knowledge sharing, and disseminated best practices. The networking stage was where organizational knowledge, expertise, and best practices were integrated

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not only within an organization but also with external entities such as suppliers, customers, research firms, and universities (Lee & Kim, 2005). In this stage, organizations managed the internal and external resources of knowledge acquired; made knowledge alliances with customers, suppliers, and partners; extended knowledge related policies to those knowledge partners; and facilitated external knowledge sharing activities such as conferences and seminars (Lee & Kim, 2005). This paper identifies and traces the building of organizational capacity at a matrixed organization residing in the ship overhaul industry. The views presented in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or any of its components.
Impetus for Change
Business leaders understand that the possession of potentially valuable knowledge by some members of an organization does not ensure that the other members of the organization benefit from that knowledge (Martin & Metcalfe, 2011; Rogers, 2003; Szulanski, 2000). Hence, knowledge sharing is one of the most important processes of knowledge management. Sharing knowledge is about creating learning processes that evolve gradually, improving the production system and its constituting elements (Du, Ai, & Ren, 2007). Organizational leaders have sought to leverage individual knowledge to disseminate work-related experiences and collaboration, expecting to improve both individual and organizational performance (Lewis, 2004). For example, a community of practice is a proven approach for developing and passing on to other community members those best practices that lead to heightened individual and organizational efficiencies (Hemmasi & Csanda, 2009). Due to several years of underperformance, senior leadership, formally evaluated the organization’s Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats (SWOT) and developed an agenda for change. Significant factors included the organization’s age demographics and work culture.
The organization’s ‘double-humped’ age demographic, a consequence of past hiring decisions in the 1990’s, presented an array of challenges, as thousands of man-years of experience were poised to leave the organization. Senior leadership recognized the potential negative consequences as a call for action to ensure knowledge was transferred to the new generation of knowledge workers. The SWOT analysis also revealed work culture issues, some that required change and many which were to be foundations for performance improvements. Among the issues requiring change were, strained management-labor relations, insufficient support for front-line supervisors, risk-averse leadership, diffuse management focus, and low commitment to developing mid-level managers. A contributor to poor performance was the generally substandard condition of workspaces brought about by historically weak investment in maintaining and upgrading equipment and facilities.
Previous performance improvement efforts focused primarily on the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) process improvement methodology. Improvement efforts were typically stove piped along organizational lines, produced isolated successes, and were only marginally effective at creating sustained organization-wide improvement. Senior leadership performed an in depth causal analysis of its shortcomings and ultimately came to the conclusion that a fundamental change in individual employee, supervisor, and manager behavior was key. A cultural transformation of the entire workforce, from top to bottom, was needed.
Building Organizational Capacity
Initiation
The development of learning organizations depends on the mastery of five disciplines, which together enable organizations, groups and individuals to become increasingly effective in pursuing their goals (Senge, 2006). Senge's five learning organization disciplines are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning. Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that enable individuals to make the full patterns of events clearer. Systems thinking is the fifth discipline that integrates the other disciplines into a coherent body of theory and practice. Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience and seeing reality objectively. Mental models are the deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of the mental models or the effects they have on our behavior. Building a shared vision is the capacity to develop and hold a shared picture of the future we want to create. The discipline of team learning starts with dialogue. Dialogue is the free flow of ideas that enables a group to think together. The discipline of dialogue involves learning how to recognize the patterns of interaction in teams, such as defensive routines that undermine genuine learning.
The initial stage of improving organizational capacity and capabilities was framed by a chartered steering group comprised of mid-level managers. The Think Tank-like team christened themselves the Learning Organization Steering Group (LOSG) and suggested an approach based on Peter Senge’s work as the means to

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change performance. The LOSG conducted weekly beneficial dialogue focused on gaining expert knowledge on the five disciplines, knowledge management, and organizational change. The expert knowledge was applied through an organizational lens to develop a curriculum focused on educating the entire 4,500 person workforce in the five disciplines of a learning organization. In addition, organization-wide visibility and senior management commitment was codified in a comprehensive five-year strategic plan that detailed incremental year-by-year performance improvement measures (PIM) in business area concentrations. The PIMs are used internally and by external stakeholders to ensure accountable for “sticking to the plan” and making progress.
The business area concentrations were people, process, and environment. A balanced approach was exemplified in the organization’s widely published Formula for Shipyard Success. People + Process + Environment = Organization Success. The People component was focused on the application of Learning Organization principles; Process addressed application of Lean Six Sigma improvement processes; and Environment mandated improving the physical condition of the workplace and creating a supportive environment for core capabilities.
The change agents for each variable in the success equation utilized the five disciplines. Systems thinking enabled management to understand how the structure of the existing system was stagnating performance in some areas while not leveraging high performing areas thus inhibiting a higher overall performance curve. Additionally, labor-management forums were established to remedy adversarial postures by both management and the unions. Personal mastery was improved through job and safety passports along with allocated funding for outside training opportunities to encourage employee growth. The approach to problem solving changed from blame to dialogue with balance inquiry and advocacy. All levels of the organization had strong advocates to bind the employees together around a common identity and sense of destiny. A shared vision that galvanized the organization to focused action with genuine commitment and enrolment rather than compliance. Consequently, utilizing the five component disciplines as an ensemble created a new trend for experimentation and advancement to higher levels of accomplishment.
Propogation
The LOSG emphasized during this phase the development and implementation of a successful knowledge management program. Davenport and Prusak (2000) defined knowledge as a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. In organizations, it becomes embedded not only in documents and repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms (Davenport & Prusak, 2000). Knowledge is information that is contextual, relevant, and actionable that has strong experiential and reflective elements that can be used to solve problems based on the individual’s ability to add value through context (Turban & Aronson, 2001). These definitions include four important characteristics. First, knowledge is personal, because it is formed in the context of a social setting and individuals (Polanyi, 1966). Second, knowledge is action oriented because through the process of knowing, individuals make sense of reality by categorizing information into theories, methods, feelings, values, and skills that can be used in the context judged valid by the tradition. Third, knowledge is supported by rules. Rules also serve as filters for knowledge. Fourth, knowledge is dynamic and is constantly changing; therefore, knowledge is not absolute but relative.
Many theorists have described organizations as knowledge-integrating institutions, integrating the knowledge of many different individuals and groups in the process of producing goods and services (Grant 1996; Nonaka 1994). Thus, knowledge at the organizational level can be considered the amalgamation of individual knowledge possessed in the minds and personal repositories of the employees, and the group knowledge embedded in the organization’s culture, structure, work-routines, processes, practices and norms of the organization (Guzman & Wilson, 2005). Choo (2006) viewed knowledge creation as part of a larger model, using the term the knowing organization, an information-based model of how organizations manage external change and internal growth. Choo (2006) intended the outcomes of this model would (1) create an identity and a shared context for action and reflection, (2) develop new knowledge and capabilities, and (3) make decisions that commit resources and capabilities to a purposeful action. Thus, one can conclude that organizational knowledge has some soft features, which are related to the subtle, implicit, embedded, sometimes invisible knowledge, presumptions, values and ways of thinking that permeate an individual’s behavior, decisions and his or her actions (Tsoukas, 2005). Ultimately, organizational knowledge is complex and ambiguous.
Recent literature addressed a variety of knowledge management processes linked to organizational capability (Holsapple & Wu, 2008; Turner & Makhija, 2006). These processes often follow a pattern of acquire, store, present, and apply (Freeze & Kulkarni, 2008). Dreyfus & Iyer (2005) stated the four stages of knowledge management consisted of knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation (Dreyfus & Iyer, 2005). Acquisition was the capability of an organization, or person, to identify and acquire critical operational

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knowledge from externally generated location. Assimilation was the ability to understand external knowledge as being critical to an organization’s operation. Lastly, exploitation was the ability to leverage integrated knowledge for the benefit of the organization. An organization’s knowledge repository maintained the knowledge mining models used to evaluate integrated knowledge that is of interest to the organization. These knowledge-mining models needed to provide full control and high performance, as well as flexibility in data and web mining algorithms and techniques (Castellano, Pastore, Arcieri, Summo, & Grecis, 2005).
Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney (1999) identified two major approaches to knowledge management: codification and personalization strategies. The codification strategy focuses on the codification, storage, and subsequent re-use of knowledge, all of which relies heavily on information technology. The personalization strategy, however, encourages a more creative approach to the application of knowledge and thus allows for deeper understanding (Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney, 1999). This distinction is helpful, as implications can be drawn, in particular, where these strategies are related to the individual working in organizations in certain aspects of knowledge management. The determination of the dominant strategy, personalization or codification, is required when choosing an overall approach to knowledge management. For example, Manuel (2008) suggested three main approaches to knowledge management: (a) Mechanistic Approach, focusing on use of information technology in the management of knowledge resources; (b) Cultural/Behavioral Approach, focusing on work culture and organizational behavior to encourage people to share, transfer, and preserve those resources; and (c) Systematic Approach, focusing on ongoing processes of refining and updating knowledge resources and rational analysis of knowledge related problems and resolving techniques. Choosing a mechanistic approach would point to the dominant strategy of codification while a behavioral approach would have personalization as the dominant strategy.
To facilitate greater acceptance and widespread penetration of LO applications throughout the workforce the LOSG began identifying techniques that could help implement the LO vision. One key element identified was the idea that knowledge management (KM) principles could be used to assist the shipyard in addressing each element in the Formula for Shipyard Success. A knowledge management team was formed, personnel became certified knowledge managers, and a KM strategy was developed. The KM strategy was weighted toward the cultural behavior approach (Manuel, 2008) using elements of Choo’s (2006) information model. The management team quickly acknowledged that KM was a force multiplier and basic tenet for learning organizations. A few of the success factors were achieved by senior level leadership commitment & supporting vision, integration of KM into the organization’s vision and performance improvement measures, annual executive planning session to validate understanding of current reality based on metric analysis, alignment on what was important for the upcoming year, and validation of improvement plans for underperforming processes. Process and skill improvements were codified into engineered work instructions, employee training, project schedules, and standard operating procedures
Integration
In this stage, the organization utilized various knowledge exchange activities and evaluated their quality and effectiveness for improving productivity and organizational learning. In addition to the LOSG, the organization formed an action group called Task Force Learn, whose charter was to operationalize the principles of LO at the lowest working level. One of the first tangible applications of LO was the formation of Learning Cells. Learning cells leveraged and expanded upon the idea of Moonshine events run by the Union. Moonshine improvements were worker-led, typically one-hour, events that were aimed at quickly enabling changes suggested by workers. The union-sponsored program quickly became successful and produced a number of “high impact” improvement projects.
Early learning cells brought mechanics, engineers, quality assurance, health and safety, and management together as team to solve specific problems in 2 to 8-hour sessions facilitated by Task Force Learn personnel. The learning cell environment helped create a shared vision amongst those attending, produced early wins, fostered knowledge sharing and team learning, and as a result began to enable and inspire individuals from multiple organizations and levels in the organization to understand and appreciate the contribution, both positive and negative, their individual decisions and actions had on system performance. Although discrete improvements were achieved, leadership realized that problems solved in earlier learning cells had not been carried forward to subsequent projects and barriers precluded the transfer of knowledge across the matrix organization.
Communities of practice are small, focused, localized groups of individuals within a firm who have a mutual engagement in the joint practice of some activity and through a social process voluntarily participate in creating and sharing one’s implicit as well as explicit knowledge (Brown & Duguid, 2001; Chen, Huang, & Cheng, 2009; Chu & Khosla, 2009). The communities of practice construct proposes that the creation and movement of valuable tacit knowledge within an organization is tied closely to the practice or the actual performance of actions related to creating value in the specific goods or services produced by the individuals within the organization (Frost

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& Zhou, 2005; Hemmasi & Csanda, 2009). Extending this construct, a community of practice could be considered the elemental unit for practice-based, highly tacit knowledge acquisition and dissemination within an organization similar to the process that multi-national firms acquire knowledge via its subsidiaries (Tallman & Chacar, 2011). Senior leadership and the LOSG developed a construct for Communities of Practice (CoPs) within a matrix organization. These were not the traditional CoPs comprised of loosely formed groups or individuals who freely and frequently shared information for mutual benefit in the context of a common interest. Instead, these CoPs were comprised of groups or individuals that directly relied on one another to safely and efficiently conduct work. Each community was required to define specific business goals that were aligned to improving productive capacity and advancing project performance. Further, each CoP was required to define and codify in writing top performing targets in the five areas of safety, quality, schedule, cost, and organizational behavior, and regularly measure their progress towards achieving these targets.
The codified CoP practices resided in a Community of Practice Handbook. The opening paragraphs provided the basic reasoning and purpose of COPs: Communities of Practice are the practical application of Learning Organization behavior at the work activity level. The implementation of these communities was centered on several important principles. The first was to assemble a group of people with a desire to address issues, discuss solutions, share knowledge, and genuinely improve performance of their community. The second principle was for the organizational leadership to place trust, resources, and the means to effect real change within the community. Lastly, the community needed a business goal that positively impacted the organization as a whole. These principles were realized by (1) assigning a full-time Community of Practice leader, (2) allowing autonomy on selecting improvement targets, methods, and events to implement changes aimed at improving performance, (3) the application of Lean Six Sigma, Learning Organization, and Knowledge Management processes, (4) commitment of manpower resources and funding through the business planning and budgeting process, and (5) the utilization of dashboard performance measures to track accomplishment of improvement events and actualization of projected performance increases in the areas of safety, quality, cost, schedule, and organizational behaviors over a two-year time span. Furthermore, these principals addressed the shortcomings of hierarchical organizations clashing with an organic self-organizational nature of communities of practice (Kerno, 2008), mis-alignment of communities of practice member actions with the organizations needs or core values (McDermott, 2000), and insufficient management communication on knowledge-sharing expectations or goals (Garfield, 2006).
CoPs were provided an advanced 4-day training course in the application of systems thinking and were required to develop a detailed performance improvement plan that included: (1) strategy map, (2) top performing targets in each of the five performance measures (safety, quality, schedule, cost, and behavior), (3) quantification and qualification of current levels of performance in each of the five areas, (4) a performance curve that bridges current and future states over a two to three year time frame (Exhibit 1.), (5) specific areas or value streams that improvement areas will be focused, (6) for the two to three year period a quarter-by-quarter schedule of performance improvement events (i.e., learning cells, lean events, knowledge management applications, etc.) that predicts the impact of completing each event on one or more of the five performance measures, (7) estimated manpower resources to execute improvement events and resulting actions, and (8) anticipated fiscal year funding to support implementing the planned improvement actions. Formal command leadership validation of CoP performance plans is required for the community to obtain command sponsorship and agreement to provide the requested resources and funding.
Senior leadership maintained formal recognition and support for between eight and ten CoPs at any given time. Some communities had a broad focus, such as all electrical or mechanical work. Others had a much narrower focus centered on solving a significant command problem. The interrelationship between CoPs, project teams, and feedback loops designed to share knowledge and create an environment of mutual accountability is illustrated by Exhibit 2. The square backdrop represents the Facilities and Equipment Management CoP that not only supports project teams but all of the other CoPs as well. A monthly Project Learning Center meeting is used to gather project team leaders from availabilities in planning and execution stages with CoP leaders and support service departments such as engineering in order to relay recent lessons learned and to communicate requests for assistance. Visible CoP metrics geared to depict the rate of improving performance, quarterly reviews of CoP progress with senior leadership, and the Project Learning Center engagements provide important feedback loops to CoP leaders to both gauge the impact of their efforts and solicit new areas to focus improvement efforts.
Each community leader, enjoyed a high priority in the business planning, programming, and yearly budgeting process, was able to garner employee and supervisor support for participation when conducting learning cells and lean events, and was provided with a senior management champion who was responsible to proactively remove obstacles and drive organizational support to meet community needs. In return the communities were

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expected to be disciplined to the documented CoP processes and to deliver both tangible and intangible returns on investment in the five distinct performance areas of safety, quality, schedule, cost, and behavior
Exhibit 1. Depiction of a Community of Practice performance improvement curve.
Exhibit 2. Depiction of the relationship between CoPs, project teams and the balanced approach to improving performance using Lean, LO, and KM focused improvement analysis and actions.
Networking
Distinct correlations between CoP accomplishments and overall organization performance improvement were identified and exported to other shipbuilding industry organizations. The effect of CoPs was correlated with positive improvement in multiple areas to include a 15% reduction in project cost, ontime schedule performance, 10% decrease in quality problems, and safety performance measured by a total case injury rate 70% less than the industry average. The aggregate result was recognized by the reception of the Robert T Mason award for depot level maintenance excellence. The removal of several knowledge sharing barriers resulted in increased knowledge and proficiency of project managers, improved problem solving at all levels, and coaching of fist-level supervisors to connect the importance of individual mechanic performance to the overall performance of their crew and project.

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Each of these initiatives relied heavily on applying learning organization principles, and was either directly supported by CoP efforts or was complementary. Lastly the adaptation of LO and CoPs in concert with improving safety helped erase the perception that achieving aggressive schedule and production goals while keeping safety hazards and risks as low as reasonably achievable were mutually exclusive goals. Consequently, the organization received the designation as an Occupational Safety and Health Administration Voluntary Protection Program star site.
Lessons Learned
Critically reviewing the return on investment 18 months after implementing CoPs in the matrix organization identified several key lessons learned.
 Full-time CoP leadership is required. When approached as a collateral duty, inevitably CoP duties competed with primary duties thus less urgent, potentially significant, improvement actions were delayed or abandoned. Similarly, when a community leader is promoted to a different area of the organization, senior management needs to promptly recruit a replacement leader to ensure sustaining the performance improvement effort.
 Established cadence for presenting progress curves is required. It was essential to regularly report improvement progress at the senior leadership. When communities fell below projected levels of performance the assumption was that one of two causes were present: (1) the community was not completing improvement events and actions to the agreed upon schedule because barriers existed, or (2) improvement actions were completed but were not having the projected impact upon performance. Depending on the cause, senior leadership aggressively removed obstacles or the community modified their performance plan to accelerate improvements or add in new improvement events in order to achieve the top performing targets.
 Proactived senior leader engagement is required. An actively engaged senior management champion was instrumental to success. Because CoPs compete with scarce resources and the attention of project managers who are always focused and committed to achieving the next project milestone, the senior management champion was the one person with enough authority to intercede when CoP participation waned during high peak workload conditions.
 Middle Management buy-in is required. Given that middle managers take action to achieve senior management vision, it is imperative that they embrace organizational change efforts and actively support CoPs. In order to prevent a “frozen middle” from inhibiting the transformation into LO, targeted training was developed. A five-day off-site Personal Mastery Executive Workshop was both internally developed and conducted, based on training objectives aimed to align middle managers to the organization’s vision, instill individual commitment, and focus the manager’s efforts and the organizations they controlled towards achieving the vision. The highly interactive workshop included a 360-degree individual performance assessment, personal reflection on the manager’s contribution to achieving the organization’s progressive improvement measures, development of personal and professional action plans, and the course culminates in a personal commitment to their supervisor that was codified in the manager’s formal performance appraisal.
 Business Plan Integration is required. By designating CoP efforts as organizational priority, including providing a designated budget and incorporation in the organization’s annual business plans, the communities were enabled to aggressively pursue their goals.
 Exploit unplanned secondary effects. The positive environment created by social interaction within CoPs produced a number of unplanned secondary effects. For example, spontaneous initiatives resulting from increased knowledge sharing, collaboration, and performance introduced a concept and practice of productioneering. In a matrix organization, productioneering was the real-life application of team learning between production and engineering workers and supervisors. The concept requires workers and supervisors to step outside of the traditional mindset associated with one’s immediate job responsibilities and work collaboratively to resolve issues and improve engineering work instructions. The goal was to set the standard for excellence on every job accomplished. This concept promoted the realization that every person, whether mechanic or engineer, brings valuable knowledge and perspective that needs to be shared to find the most effective way to improve the outcome of the job. A workshop utilizing experiential learning techniques demonstrated the application of productioneering. During the workshop engineers and mechanics, in reversed roles, simulated project work by constructing a robot under schedule pressure utilizing the traditional silo communication process within the matrix organization. Participants critique their performance, targeted training on collaboration techniques was provided, and then the robot is constructed using a productioneering mentality, experiencing vastly different outcomes that included improved quality, faster completion of work, and increased job satisfaction.

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Conclusion
Through applied learning organization principles, adopting communities of practice, and garnering benefits from the creative innovations that are spawned, a matrix organization can achieve and sustain a high performing work culture. The multi-year journey to becoming a top performing organization and achieving world-class performance levels will never end, and will at times be fraught with setbacks. As a result, continuously improving performance is a necessity and sustaining the learning organization culture takes constant vigilance by organizational leadership. When thoughtfully established and supported, CoPs help break down organizational stovepipes through increased communication and collaboration, and provide enhanced systems thinking capability that can lead to improved problem solving and accelerated performance improvement. By creating an environment more conducive to knowledge sharing, the improvement gains from other initiatives such as coaching and the application of project management fundamentals is met with greater success and impact than if each initiative were pursued on a stand- alone basis. Ultimately, the balanced approach to improving performance focused simultaneously in the areas of people, process, and environment was critical to the success and sustainment of organization-wide performance improvement.
Recommendations
It is recommended that organizational leaders promote cross-boundary communication through effective community-of-practice events. Community-of-practice members should engage in continual face-to-face engagement with mechanics in the process of performing work and operations. The current management focus should be an approach that balances obtaining business results with creating a collaborative environment. Timely interdepartmental communication could eliminate communication barriers that hinder sagacious problem solving. Such communication would establish diverse interests and thereby promote performance improvement. Representatives of all departments must be aware of activities in other departments, and where possible, the departments should complement each other. Generalized training, such as team-based training, cross training, relationship building, or communication training, is a suggested method to increase knowledge sharing at work and bridge the social identity gap existing between the various subcultures. A more homogenous or unitary culture would tend to foster environments with similar cognitive maps through shared assumptions, beliefs, and practices, thus leading to a higher degree of sharing and use of knowledge. It is also recommended that managers’ approach changing an organization’s culture a journey that requires both process and behavioral changes. A critical factor is aligning improvement efforts and initiatives across the entire organization through the use of progressive improvement measures. This ensures that initiatives, whether originating within communities of practice, individual organizations, or through other internal councils or boards, remains focused in supporting the areas of greatest interest to the organization. The use of visible metrics and the resulting rapid insertion of leadership support when progress stalls are crucial to CoP success.
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About the Author(s)
Harry Juneau has a Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration from Northcentral University, a Masters in Engineering Management from Old Dominion University, a Bachelor of Science from Southern Illinois University, and a Bachelor of Science from University of Maryland University College. He currently serves as the Naval Reactors Representative, San Diego, California where he provides joint Department of Navy and Department of Energy technical oversight of ship’s overhaul, repair, and modification projects. He has over twenty five years of experience in engineering management including fourteen ship overhaul projects with a cumulative project budget of over one billion dollars. His research interest primarily resides with identifying and addressing cognitive, structural, and relational issues associated with a matrix organization’s knowledge channels and investigating barriers for effective learning management systems within organizations.

10. Juneau, Thomas, Nystrom, & Muras
Copyright, American Society for Engineering Management, 2014
Greg Thomas is a Senior Consultant in the healthcare focus area of Exeter Group, Inc., a cutting edge IT firm in Boston, MA. A retired Navy Captain, he served in a broad range of design, construction, maintenance, and modernization billets. Tours include Design Manager for LSV-2, the world’s largest unmanned autonomous submersible, Repair Officer on USS FRANK CABLE (AS 40), Operations Officer at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Shipyard Commander at Pearl Harbor and Norfolk Naval Shipyards, and tours at Supervisor of Shipbuilding in Groton and Newport News. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Naval Academy and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Naval Engineers, and PhD in Hydrodynamics from the Massachusetts Institute Technology. Under his command Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard earned the Robert T. Mason award in 2010 as the Department of Defense top depot maintenance facility, the first NAVSEA command to ever win the award.
Michael P. Nystrom is currently the Director of the Quality Assurance Office at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, located in Bremerton, Washington. revious to this assignment he was the Director of the Shipyard Performance Improvement Office at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He has over thirty-four years of experience in ship maintenance, nuclear engineering, and project management in naval shipyards. He has led command-wide programs associated with Quality Assurance, Lean Six Sigma process improvement, application of Learning Organization, and Performance Management. His educational background includes a Master of Public Affairs degree and Public Management Certificate from Indiana University, and an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) from the University of Washington (Seattle). Mr. Nystrom is also the recipient of two Department of Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Awards.
Andrew Muras is an Advanced Learning Manager at BAE Systems. He is responsible for delivering collaboration and knowledge management, social learning, performance management, and organizational improvement solutions and is a certified PMP. His implementations and talks in knowledge-management and performance-measurement techniques are well-known across North America. Mr. Muras has published a book, Process Improvement and Performance Management Made Simple, and dozens of articles in such publications as the Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance, Performance Management Institute’s Measured Quarterly, and Training Institute Quarterly. Mr. Muras earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech.