MindTree: A Community of Communities

Name: Bassal Mehmood Talha Matriculation no: 75681 Case: MindTree: A Community of Communities

Q1: What are the key elements of mindtree’s approach to knowledge management? How effective are

they? Ans: The key elements of mindtree’s approach to knowledge management focused largely upon human interaction and relationships and communities of practice. At mindtree “Communities of Practice” was an initiative which were a group of people who shared a common interest or concern and wanted to learn how to do it better, members engaged in joint activities and discussions helping each other by sharing information and building relationships that enable learning and developed a repertoire of resources such as experiences, stories, and tools on order to enhance t heir capabilities. Mindtree believed that KM’s role is to help people perform their jobs better and develop themselves, and the key elements were four four things, things, enabling knowledge creation which leads to innovation; enabling the

environment which leads to knowledge sharing and collaborating; enabling processes, practices and systems which helps build a knowledge culture; and enabling change and shifts in mind-set. The company encouraged employees to self-organize and collaborate through communities of practice which in essence was that creating cr eating output was not mandated but people were given the full liberty to set their own goals, and individuals were motivated by the creative process and their interactions with peers. In addition to such approaches mindtree ensured a supportive environment for cultivating KM. The people function as a part of its competency framework, had included KM as an organizational competency. The performance management system gave people f reedom for getting involved in organization building activities that went beyond the job descriptions, such as communities of practice , and the company set out to create a comprehensive knowledge ecosystem consisting of four reinforcing elements: social space (e.g communities, knowledge fairs, and tech festivals), mind space (e.g tools for personal development and creative thinking), virtual space (e.g collaborative IT systems), and physical space (e.g an inspiring building and workspace). All of such approaches to KM has led mindtree reap many benefits, some which are an extensive data repository where all resources and solutions to most com plex problems are shared, and anyone facing any problem from any department can take help from it or ask on the communities portal for help, a friendly environment is created which makes them feel like a community therefore a reduced labour turnover rate, encouraged, energized and motivated workforce and liberty to work the way they (employees) want resulting in efficiencies, knowledge sharing, idea sharing and over all profits growth, such are the approaches that led mindtree to win MAKE award in 2009 which is most admired knowledge enterprise and also some other awards. Neuron is also a seed put into the or ganization

through the approach that mindtree had bee n following, an incredible portal where the entire life cycle of an idea can be t racked, linked, commented, suggested and rated. Anyone can contribute to any topic or start up a new topic, which also lead company to reduce its energy consumption by about 28% in 7 months through ideas shared on neuron.

Q2: How does mindtree create, develop, and sustain communities of practice? What role do they play in the company? c ompany? Ans: To create communities of practice is fairly a simple process in mindtree; a group of people who shared a common passion simply decided to get together for learning, knowledge sharing, business development, or self-development. Champions were self-selected , anybody wanted to take on the role and was passionate enough to reach out to others could volunteer. To avoid dependency on a single person, however, all communities had to have multiple champions. Every potential champion had to first attend a workshop with Datta in which he or she sought to weed o ut those who were not fully committed. Community champions then determined the process by which ot hers became part of the community. Members collectively determined their community’s objectives and champions then drove them towards those objectives. To sustain the communities company’s company’s executive Datta had developed a maturity model through which he created a vision for communities as they developed overtime and tried to achieve g reater impact and influence. There were 4 stages of the community maturity model

1. Community Community of interest: collection of individuals sharing an interest and talking about it. The company, did not emphasize on such community because of its unpredictability

2. Competency building: with a much greater importance this community focused on building p2p relationships through face to face meetings and its focus was on to developing collective objects and developing individual human capital

3. Capability Capability building: These communities has direct impact on company’s processes and it focused on building relationships between communities and other organizational entities. It also focused on organizational development and building structural capital such as content, methodology, and systems

4. Capacity building: Finally at the highest level of maturity this community focused on building relationships between communities and the outside world, also focused on environmental scanning and building a sense and respond mechanism When the champion of a community felt that he had delivered he would let the other person who is capable of it take his position. Also when a community was at the point of maturity, and was a question of fading away, the champion decided to take a diverse route and put the community on another project or community to sustain. All of these m easures helped mindtree to sustain the communities and extract their usefulness in the company. Communities play an important role in the company as they allow workers to bond with each other and retains the workforce, motivational levels increase and company’s company’s benefits from different ideas and solutions that are given on such communities. Different projects and problems were discussed on the

communities with a purpose and it would result in great solutions and ideas. This would help the company to form a family like environment in the co mpany and an employee is given the full opportunity to practice his ideas which later helps company on c apitalizing on such ideas. One such example is the energy preservation which was achieved through community involvement. The other is 5*50 initiative which was a strategic goal of the company which could have never been able to exist without such communities.

Q3: How (if at all) does the 5*50 initiative alter the roles and responsibilities of the Knowledge Management function? What Changes (if any) would you propose? Ans: The 5*50 initiative may not alter the roles and responsibilities of KM function but it may increase them. As the 5*50 initiative took place, mindtree already and now more progressively enhancing itself to help and support the 5*50 initiative as its success critically depended upon KM function. Some of the ways it increased its roles and re sponsibilities were that it would help ideation process and provide critical IT systems support through Neuron (the idea life cycle portal). Experts modified neuron so it becomes harvesting and tracking mechanism for thousands of ideas. Neuron would also be linked to the company’s new enterprise content management system so that mindtree’s partners such as customers, academic institutes could work with employees to develop ideas. ECM w ill allow mindtree minds to work together seamlessly with stakeholders, facilitating discussions, sharing and collaborating. The innovation council which the KM function had setup was also expected to play an important role by bringing together idea nurturers from ever y functional area to discuss and help develop the top few ideas. The KM function will also provide essential data for mini-MBA program. Thus far KM had focused on building culture of ideation and improving delivery process, now with 5*50 initiative it will start facilitating direction. It will assist in business planning and take on a route to quantitative contribution as well. Proposals: 

KM function should not only limit neuron to idea lifecycle tool or a ware house of ideas instead they should increase its scope to provide leaders of ideas with prototype testing of such ideas in real terms and people from inside and outside the company can comment or suggest ideas to make things better.

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Km function can make a slight tweak in the neuron that when the idea is shared on the neuron all the relevant information and discussions relating to it, new and older both from inside and outside sources can be linked to it so that the leader of the idea has extensive knowledge about it and also can know whether such things already ex ists or not or are the y similar and how are they performing, and also can get practical help from internet sources from people who have done such things earlier.