How It Works
A GRC community goes through a number of evolutionary phases as it matures. It moves from an early stage “Community of Interest” (COI) to a mid-stage Community of Practice” (COP) and then, ultimately, to the full-fledged "GRC support ecosystem" stage. Our 4 step process maps to these phases. Here is how you can get started, today:
1. Orientation Stage – Meet and interact with others who share your GRC interests. Once you have identified other individuals who have similar aspirations to yourself, you can begin to explore the composition of your member team. Here are some examples of GRC community roles;
• GRC Community Leaders – Individuals who may be interested in helping to organize your community.
• Knowledge Masters – Knowledge Masters are Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) who have reached a MUCH better than average level of knowledge and skills. These high-level practitioners are often open to… and capable of… teaching, guiding, and mentoring others.
• Practitioners – GRC practitioners are individuals at varying levels of knowledge and skills who have, most likely, not reached the Master level. These SME’s usually want to further their capabilities or they may be new to the GRC community and are interested in picking up a practitioner track of learning (potential apprentices). Often practitioners are ranked by the level of knowledge and skills that they posses, or through the various professional certifications that they may accrued.
• Patrons – Patrons are companies or industry consortiums who support a GRC community by purchasing GRC services or GRC product content.
• Benefactors – Benefactors are companies or industry consortiums who may be interested in funding a GRC community.
• GRC Incubator Coordinator – Our role as a GRC business incubator coordinator is to help your organization, or yourself, to foster and guide the growth of your chosen GRC community. We can help your community with a number of mission-critical activities such as providing marketing support, providing a community-branded web site, and a whole lot more. Please contact us to discuss your business objectives.
2. Mobilization Stage – You are now a part of a GRC community that has reached critical mass in terms of member interest levels, yet your community needs to continue to organize and achieve consensus on the directions and growth paths that you want to take. There are multiple individuals who are vested in taking the community into the “mobilization stage” where activities are centered on fleshing out any missing roles, strengthening your community’s cohesiveness, extending visibility, and enhancing the community’s marketing clout. This stage also initiates the more intense aspects of building infrastructure through activities that we call the “4 C’s”. These groupings are; Communication, Coordination, Controls, and Collaboration. For instance, in the mobilization stage your team may leverage such basic community coordination capabilities as publishing a community calendar for organizing and announcing community events (at physical locations or over the web as “virtual events”). The mobilization stage also includes the start of project management activities. The community now initiates projects, organizes them, and oversees the completion of the projects.
3. Build Stage – Once your GRC “community of interest” has surpassed the mobilization stage, it then moves into the Build stage. This is the point where a loosely organized "Community of Interest" is transformed into a thriving “Community of Practice” (COP). Members of the GRC community are now highly participatory and collaborative. They are intent in building out the community’s infrastructure and knowledge base. Real work is being conducted, and e-commerce activities become a driving factor in generating community-owned revenues. The community-of-practice can now guide industry consortiums on their GRC specialties and knowledge content. In this way everyone wins, and the costs are spread across all of the member organizations to make the time and effort well worth the strategic investment.
4. Perpetuation Stage – The final stage is the “perpetuate the community” stage. This is the point at which a Community of Practice is transformed into a sustainable "GRC support ecosystem”. The GRC community has now solidified their infrastructure, achieved global visibility, manages a vibrant brand, cultivates a well structured educational and training environment, and manages all changes to the GRC knowledge base. The community's knowledge is represented as “requirements artifacts”, business rules, standard operating procedures (processes), Frequently Asked Questions, and well-structured courseware content. The community provides regular books, ebooks, dvd's, streaming videos, educational courses and training workshops. The vibrancy and business impact of the entire GRC support ecosystem is notable and thrilling. Everyone is consumed with pleasure and satisfaction because they have achieved a global following and are bringing a stream of new apprentices into the ecosystem to start their educational growth.