It’s hard to imagine the future.  Yet, if we could, our strategic advantage would be enormous, setting us up to reach and exceed our dreams.

In 1992 it would have been difficult to imagine the Internet as a pervasive resource and business tool. Consider your response if someone had said to you, “You will have access to the sum total of human knowledge, at your fingertips, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  You will be able to teach yourself accounting, how to repair a computer, or the history of space exploration at 3am on New Year’s eve if you’re motivated... and so will everyone else.”

Those who understood what was coming positioned themselves to win big:

·       Yahoo! – First to make it really easy to find sites on the web

·       Cisco – Provider of the cables & computers that built the web

·       University of Phoenix Online – Helping people earn degrees over the web

What radical innovation is today emerging that can be used for strategic advantage? 

Imagine this... a new kind of community in which people work together with colleagues, stakeholders, business partners... and in some cases, even competitors... to share what they know and achieve results that are far beyond what any one can accomplish alone.  The learning takes place in real time, drawing on all levels of experience to take performance and output to extraordinary new levels.

Organizations around the world have been studying just how to do this for decades, with major advances in the last ten years.  We are learning how to bring people together and turn them into learning-communities that accelerate performance.  I call these unique groups, beehives.

In your imagination, envision a buzzing hive.  Hear the hum.  Feel the vibration of bees at work.  No one is in charge – not even the queen bee.  Research shows she does not direct the workers. In fact, each bee “knows” what to do. They carry out their cooperative tasks based on cues they receive from each other and the environment.  Yet, they work together as if guided by a greater intelligence.  Together, their efforts cascade into the wisdom of the hive. They are building honeycomb, lining it with sweet rewards at speeds that defy the imagination.

What a wonder it is to see a project team, a meeting, a committee or a group of volunteers turn into a beehive.  The transformation can be startling.  One moment they are all over the map, moving in random fashion, blocking each other and coming up with off-the-wall ideas that go in different directions. Then, in a turn of events, as if a hidden conductor stepped in, the group gels into a highly coordinated collaboration.  The results are marvelous. People compliment each other in their approaches, playing off each other’s strengths and supporting each other’s weaknesses like a champion sports team.

Much work has been done in recent years to study how people work and learn together.  Research on collaboration and social learning has spawned experiments in many organizations. This handbook is the result of my experience with some of those companies. 

Equally, there have been great strides in collaborative technologies.  However, I steer clear of them in this handbook. I have seen communities form with no more technology than a three-ring binder, and I have worked on some of the most advanced Knowledge Management Systems being developed. My focus in this brief handbook is to give you tools for improving human interaction, regardless of the technology in use.

In the World Bank I helped establish the successful knowledge management initiative that began in 1996. Communities (called thematic groups) were named the “heart and soul” of the effort. They were recognized to be the source of group learning and know-how, where professionals shared their experience and applied it to new situations.

I participated in think-tanks that included diverse industries and academia, all interested in the power of communities to develop and apply knowledge.  Present were professionals from Harvard, MicroSoft, Intel, Buckman Laboratories, IBM, Disney, Defense Information Systems Agency, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Ernst and Young, Lucent Technologies, Johns Hopkins University, and the American Productivity and Quality Center.

In 2001 after I received the Visionary award from the Center for Association Leadership I began to work with associations.  Community is a core competency in the association world, where member benefits join the bottom line in priority.  Meetings, conferences and conventions, play a critical role for every association, providing learning and networking opportunities for members, and often serving as a primary source of revenue. 

Together with executives from diverse organizations I have explored the uses of community to generate returns that are meaningful to associations. These included those that were large and small, professional and trade, local and global.   CEOs and senior staff from the American College of Cardiology, Project Management Institute, Center for American Nurses, the Fulbright Association, the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the International Real Estate Federation, the Urban Land Institute, and the American Society of Association Executives have all been involved.

Community is how people have always worked and learned together.  For thousands of years we have depended on communities for survival.  Modern research is showing that our unique capacity to and learn was made possible through our relationships to our families, our tribes, our villages.  Your presence here today, as you read this handbook, is a testimony to the success of our ancestors’ communities to deliver on the bottom line: survival.

Times have changed, but community continues to give us the upper hand.  We use technology to reach around the world and bring the best minds available together in virtual communities.  We cross organizational boundaries, bringing together senior managers and workers to collaborate.  Communities grow outside the organization when business partners, stakeholders, members and employees come together to develop new solutions to tough problems. They are in coffee shops, living rooms, hallways and board rooms... Beehives are everywhere.

But, most organizations today do not make use of community. They rely on traditional management alone to get work done.  They are like those in the early 90s who didn’t understand the Internet and plodded along thinking it to be a fad that would come and go.

This is why building beehives can be a strategic advantage.  Embrace this way of working and learning together, and you will move out in front. You will harness the power of collective wisdom, leading the way into the next generation of professional development and innovation. 

In this handbook I have put the tools and techniques I use to create organizational communities which generate returns, beehives.  I hope you will put them into practice. Because if you do, the rewards will be sweet!