Every Knowledge Café should be designed for a specific purpose or intent. It’s not just about having learning conversations, although this is one of the primary uses. You start with the business purpose and design a Café to fulfill that aim.
A Café should have a well-defined purpose but no planned, desired or preconceived outcomes.
Other than setting the theme and posing the question to broadly define the context and the scope of the conversation, no desired outcomes should be articulated; hinted at or implied in the setting of the context.
The outcomes of a Knowledge Café are emergent i.e. not pre-planned.
There is a fine distinction between a purpose and an outcome.
A purpose might be to build better relationships, to understand an issue better or to learn from each other while an outcome might be to make a decision or to define a plan.
A purpose is a form of outcome, but it is broad, it is not specific and not binding.
Here are some potential purposes for a Knowledge Café. Each Café should be designed to meet its goal and cater to the different contexts in which each is run. e.g., the people, the culture, organizational history, etc.
- Gain a better understanding of a complex issue
In a fast-changing, competitive environment, the consequences of change are not always obvious, and one person rarely has all the insights.
The Café allows a conversation that brings diverse perspectives together.
- Connect people and build relationships
Many people in organizations do not know each other well. This leads to misunderstandings, erosion of trust, and the inability to work together well.
One of the simplest and most effective uses of a Café is connecting people, building relationships, and improving the organization’s social fabric.
- Identify risks or unintended consequences associated with a project.
Many projects or courses of action get well underway when serious problems arise – ones that were entirely foreseeable if only time had been given to think about the risks beforehand.
Convening a Café specifically to discuss the risks of a high-profile project is well worth the investment.
- Share knowledge and learn from each other.
Some departments, teams, or individuals regularly outperform others in many organizations.
Bringing these groups together to have conversations focused on specific issues, problems, or technologies is an excellent way of sharing critical knowledge.
- Surface hidden problems
Many organizational problems go unseen as people do not realize the consequences of their actions or lack of effort. For example, two separate departments are unaware that they are working for the same client, bidding for the same job, or duplicating work across departments. Sometimes people are aware of problems but do nothing about them as they think they are minor or have little impact, and it’s not until they talk with people that they realize their full effect.
By bringing people together who work in different departments and talking to each other, conversation can help surface such problems.
Each gathering serves two functions: to address its stated purpose, its business issues, and to be an occasion for each person to decide to become engaged as an owner.
The leader’s task is to design the place and experience of these occasions to move the culture toward shared ownership.
Credit: Peter Block
- Surface opportunities
Opportunities to develop new products or services; work in new ways; form new business relationships or partnerships abound in any organization. But by definition, an opportunity does not exist until it is seen.
Time is rarely found to identify such possibilities. A Café is an easy way to do this.
- Co-creation
Co-creation involves a diverse range of people, including customers, suppliers, and the general public, in the ideation phase of a new product or service. It works best when you build an active community: people share ideas, build on each others’ work, critique, praise, and compete.
The Knowledge Café is ideally suited to this purpose.
- Break down departmental silos
It is surprising how many people work in departmental silos, never talking to each other, taking the time to understand each other, even competing with each other, and causing all sorts of problems.
Cafés are an excellent way to break down such silos.
- Creating ownership
Far too many initiatives are ideated and developed by a small group of so-called experts or senior managers. They then try to “sell it” to the people in the organization they wish to adopt. They try to get so-called “buy-in.” They often fail. What is needed is ownership, not buy-in.
The Café and the conversation it engenders is an excellent way of creating ownership.
Every Knowledge Café should be designed for a specific purpose or intent.
Posts that link to this post
- Knowledge Café: Process How to run a Knowledge Café
- Knowledge Café: Measuring Success The outcomes are what you take away in your head - note taking is a distraction
- The Differences Between the Knowledge Café and the World Café There are some significant differences
- Knowledge Café Outcomes The outcomes are what you take away in your head
- Knowledge Café: the Speaker The role of the Knowledge Café speaker
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