Our project teams and business units work in a document management system. The home page for each of these is a bunch of folders. Basically all you get are documents, all the conversation and news is in email…no corporate memory at all.

So some BU's have started CoPs. Let me clarify, they are using our CoP tool because it has a homepage, blogs, forums and wikis to do their work. This does not make them a CoP, they are just using the tools the CoP offers as the document management system doesn't offer this or cater to their desires.

So what started off as CoPs are no longer pure CoPs, but a mixture.

“The tools don't define the group”

Really there should be one product with homepages, documents, blogs (microblogging), wikis and forums…and they can be hosted on 3 different servers….CoPs, BU/shared services, project teams.
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/10/30/the…

Social tools need to move away from a place where people share and learn, into being features of existing products.

I look foward to the day where we have an internal type Facebook. Find people on the network and form a task group to do work. Right now at work we have about 5 tasks going on. If each one was like a Facebook group would be much better than email. You could feel the pulse of the organisation if task work was done in ad-hoc online groups rather than email.
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/08/18/des…

The goal is for a MyPage where all my tasks live, rather than email folders

>>> Right. That's why there are two approaches. For such people, a team approach based on simple things that help to deliver more quickly is needed. They don't see the benefits of social media but see the benefits of getting things done. A “team approach” aims at that.

As for the “10%” they don't need managers…they need that top managers say “that's good…even if we don't participate” and they need community managers to facilitate things. Those 10% will always find time and energy to participate on top of their “official tasks”.

Now, what matters is the mecanism that brings more and more of the 90% to be activite in communities.

• They don´t get the meaning of communities for the company. And even worse it´s those people in power whom will get less power in an enterprise 2.0 who need to take the necessary decisions and allocate money to the development of the new way of working.

What I see today is that more and more CxOs are getting it, and are ready to invest some money. The issue is more often with middle managers who don't see the interest and think it's a waste of time. They're not wrong because running a team and a community are two different things. Employees may be part of both, but managers are paid to make their team work and get the most from the ressources they're given.
That's why I say that using social media to make teams more efficient and develop networks and communities are different but complementary. (Also read : http://www.duperrin.com/english/2009/11/17/comm…)

To end, I'd like to make it clear that it also depends a lot of the org. culture and even on the local culture. Things may vary depending on the company and the country I'm thinking of the standard, average organization.

I have more posts to come to add to this one…starting this afternoon. Hope you'll find what you need…