“Water Cooler plugged me into a ‘network of networks’ ”— Case Manager and Patient Transfer Coordination supervisor, VA hospital

Many participants in WCL projects express that an important side effect of discovery visits is how they get plugged to an array of networks. Having met and talked with a wide range of staff, they are better positioned to call on a person when needed and get ready help. As a ‘communications’ enhancement process at the operations level, WCL harnesses networks and communities of practice to positive ends.

Where is everybody? What do they do? In large scale organizations, the ‘natives’ are staff working “elsewhere” in the organization, perhaps in another facility in another city or building; sometimes on another floor or just down another hallway. Location matters. It influences greatly the amount of informal interaction among staff.

Just as significant as physical location and the distances it creates is what we call social distance: the degree to which staff interact with others in units and communities of practice other than their own. WCL connects and re-aligns key staff in these nearer or farther groups on a more direct, peer-to-peer basis.

WCL Discovery is about looking with fresh eyes at what people do in their jobs and listening carefully to what they say about their work.

We bring team members up to speed on the basics of ethnographic interviewing and observation methods, and skill in using them. These methods developed within cultural anthropology as a way of seeing and hearing from the “native” or “locals” points of view. They include skills that help render the routine and familiar unfamilar again, which greatly aides in seeing and hearing with fresh eyes and open ears.

WCL Discoveries feature:

• Open-ended, informal interviewing and in-site observation skills
• Work practice analysis skills (to be used extensively in Co-Design)
• Conceptual skills in helping to understand complex organizations in new, helpful ways, including concepts such as communities of practice and local knowledge, culture in organizational settings.

WCL Discovery is an active, emergent event, with far more elements of an investigation than a survey (which it is not). It goes where it needs to go, guided by what the team is learning. During the visits, there is time for comparing notes, amending and revising questions, and discovering other people who should be included in the conversation.

WCL Discovery contributes a realistic, helpful base from which to consider changes or performance improvements in Co-Design. The kinds and amounts of vital, detailed information relevant to the change effort that Discovery turns up regularly astonishes everyone.

WCL Discovery also exercises vital communities of practice and networks of staff, and thus builds organizational knowledge in diverse parts of your organization. All of which is great for the long haul.