Author
Emily Webber
Year
2016
Review
A short insight packed book about building communities of practice. There’s nothing revolutionary but it provides a good overview to anyone interested in starting or improving a practice. Prior to reading this book, I hadn’t considered using skill benchmarks as a way to pair individuals with a learning parter or buddy. Worth the time.
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Key Takeaways
The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.
- Community of Practice: a group of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly
- The case for CoPs…
- Support organisational learning
- Accelerate professional development
- Enable knowledge sharing and management
- Support better communication
- Build better practices
- Make people happier
- Break down silos
- Help with hiring and retention (happier and more motivated people)
- There are three major ways you can learn:
- Learn from reading, training
- Learning from doing
- Learning from others
- Knowledge is created through the transformation of learning experience
- Concrete Experience: having a new experience
- Reflection Observation: reflecting on that experience
- Abstract Conceptualisation: concluding and learning from that experience
- Active Experimentation: Trying out what you’ve learnt
- Learning activities that create for a more rounded curriculum. Most of which the community of practice makes easier…
- shadowing people and learning from others (CoPs create connections)
- formal classroom training (CoPs can build their own curriculum)
- self-initiated learning (networking, speaking to colleagues, reading, writing, speaking)
- sharing ideas and support from others (CoP is a place to share and get support)
- small experiments and running short projects
- questions, retrospecting and feedback loops
- Bringing together a diverse group of people that share the same challenges, but have different experiences, creates a wider pool of knowledge to draw from when it comes to problem-solving
- As a CoP matures → it will move from sharing knowledge to solving shared problems
- Happier people do better work and are more motivated (happiness makes people 12% more productive)
- Daniel Pink’s three points of motivation:
- Autonomy → the desire to direct our own lives
- Mastery → the urge to get better and better at something that matters
- Purpose → the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
- Community leadership roles:
- Build, sustain and develop the CoP
- manage people and dynamics
- support and facilitation
- informing, advising or coaching members
- defining professional direction and standards
- representing community members within and outside the organisation
- Create an aspirational, achievable and easy to understand vision
- SMART goals can help
- Involve the community in creating them
- Increase knowledge within the permanent staff to reduce reliance on contractors
- Who should join? Do they share a similar…
- Role
- Environment
- Work goals
- Challenges
- Learning goals
- Learning relevant to day to day work
- CoP members should be aligned on purpose, learning, challenges and teaching
- Your community should collectively decide on how to spend its time. Allow for:
- Building social connections
- Learning as a group
- Talking, solving problems and building better practices
- Sharing outside the community
- Creating community improvements
- Do skills confidence mapping
- The 5 stage model of adult skill acquisition (link)
- Novice: follows the rules
- Advanced beginner: recognises patterns
- Competent: chooses a perspective
- Proficient: responds to situations
- Expert: Writes their own rules
- Help people rank their own skill level
- Another model of skill acquisition Dreyfus Model → ShuHaRi
- Shu → the protection stage, follows what the master teaches them
- Ha → the breakaway stage, learning principles behind a technique, begin to integrate learning into their practice
- Ri → the creating stage, student creates their own approaches and adapts what they’ve learned to their own circumstances
- If you know everyones skills, you can match people with learning buddies.
- If you’re all weak in one area you could bring in an external trainer
- Types of members:
- Core
- Active
- Occasional
- Peripheral
- Outside
- Key elements of a self-sustaining practice are:
- Leadership → CoP members are comfortable with leadership
- Membership → are engaged, and focused on vision, organise interactions and activities
- Knowledge and practices → continues to learn, create better practices and standards
- Skills development → take the lead on member professional development
- Visibility and support → people outside of the community advocate for it
Deep Summary
Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.
1. Why you need Communities of Practice in your organisation
- Community of Practice: a group of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly
- The case for CoPs…
- Support organisational learning
- Accelerate professional development
- Enable knowledge sharing and management
- Support better communication
- Build better practices
- Make people happier
- Break down silos
- Help with hiring and retention (happier and more motivated people)
- There are three major ways you can learn:
- Learn from reading, training
- Learning from doing
- Learning from others
- Most behaviour is learnt observationally. From observing others, you form an idea of how to behave. Later, that information serves as a guide for action
- CoPs take advantage of social learning between members
- David Klob learning model
- Knowledge is created through the transformation of learning experience
- Concrete Experience: having a new experience
- Reflection Observation: reflecting on that experience
- Abstract Conceptualisation: concluding and learning from that experience
- Active Experimentation: Trying out what you’ve learnt
- Communities of practice give people opportunities to experiment with what they have learnt, in a safe environment and with the support of other people
- Learning activities that create for a more rounded curriculum. Most of which the community of practice makes easier…
- shadowing people and learning from others (CoPs create connections)
- formal classroom training (CoPs can build their own curriculum)
- self-initiated learning (networking, speaking to colleagues, reading, writing, speaking)
- sharing ideas and support from others (CoP is a place to share and get support)
- small experiments and running short projects
- questions, retrospecting and feedback loops
- Communities of practice can break down organisational silos improving communication and workflow
- CoP are great for knowledge sharing → capture what people know about a topic to transfer it through people changes, inform others, identify important practices and minimise loss of corporate memory
- Knowledge management is never solved by technology alone
- You need people to keep it alive
- Only a subset of knowledge is easy to share and write down (Explicit Knowledge). Much of our knowledge is Implicit (or Tacit)
- Tacit knowledge is practice
- Explicit knowledge is process
- If you don’t support the sharing of Tacit knowledge, you’ll lose knowledge when people move on
- Bringing together a diverse group of people that share the same challenges, but have different experiences, creates a wider pool of knowledge to draw from when it comes to problem-solving
- As a CoP matures → it will move from sharing knowledge to solving shared problems
- It’s easier to hire if you have a strong CoP:
- It’s a draw in itself for new candidate
- As a group you define what good looks like better
- Each new joiner gets the CoP to support them during onboarding
- Having a strong CoP enables you to hire more junior members (as you know you can build their skills)
- Happier people do better work and are more motivated (happiness makes people 12% more productive)
- Daniel Pink’s three points of motivation:
- Autonomy → the desire to direct our own lives
- Mastery → the urge to get better and better at something that matters
- Purpose → the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
- Ryff and Keyes highlighted 6 points of motivation:
- autonomy
- environmental mastery
- personal growth
- positive relations with others
- purpose in life
- self-acceptance
- Clearly a CoP can support with mastery and purpose
2. The stages of a CoP
- Stages are from the Book ‘Cultivating Communities of Practice’ (by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder)
- Stages of a CoP
Potential | Loose networks becoming more connected. Low energy levels |
Forming | Build relationships and connections → become a community
Exploring opportunities.
Let the group form. |
Maturing | Growth in membership and depth of knowledge shared.
Forming strong bonds of trust.
Requires more structure and support. |
Self-Sustaining | Has enough momentum to continue without input from a leader
Members take ownership. |
Transformation | Big changes call for radical transformations. |
- These stages follow Tuckman’s stages of group development too: Forming - Storming - Norming - Performing
3. Creating the right environment
- The ability to meet regularly
- Need to communicate regularly
- Getting together in realtime (helps build trust) as well as asynchronously
- Vary content to avoid repetition
- Do the hard work to get people together
- Familiarity and trust is built through ad hoc conversations, when people start to share things about themselves outside of work activities.
- Consider appointing coordinators to get the group together
- The right community leadership
- Need to be knowledgable, passionate, respected and empowered
- Can be a full time role to do it well
- It’s hard for a community to flourish if it’s a side project
- Empowering leaders through org structure → structure your organisation around communities of practice. Everyone belongs to a team, but everyone belongs to a community of practice too. Spotify calls CoPs (tribes).
- Creating a safe to
faillearn environment - Trust is the basis of a successful community of practice
- Safety: whatever their experience, they can contribute and ask questions without being judged.
- Everyone needs to acknowledge they can learn from others within the community too
- Important to be welcoming and friendly to new members
- Address any bad behaviour that ruins the safety of the space
- Keep the community closed in the early stages
- Getting support from your organisation
- Organisations must support CoPs for them to reach their potential
- Get up front support to establish the community quicker
- If you’re unsure about how supportive your company will be, gain momentum behind the scenes first → get some evidence of how it’s working
- Support = time (reducing billable time), people and money
4. CoP Leadership
- Different Types:
Single Leader | Senior
Hired into the role
Part of their job
Could be chosen by community (provided the leader would have time)
Could happen naturally |
Shared Leadership | Shared among a core group
People will move in and out of this core group
Could be additional overhead.
Each person needs less time. |
Fully co-owned Leadership | Everyone takes responsibility |
Distributed Leadership | Leaders by location |
- Community leadership roles:
- Build, sustain and develop the CoP
- manage people and dynamics
- support and facilitation
- informing, advising or coaching members
- defining professional direction and standards
- representing community members within and outside the organisation
5. Identifying Who is in the Community
- Your job description probably defines the members. If not…
- What need is the greatest?
- What are your trying to accomplish with your CoP?
- Are there existing connections you can build on? It makes it easier.
- Find pockets of people already meeting and build upon that
- People working in the same place and in the same role.
- As the community matures, you’ll find new people
- Create an aspirational, achievable and easy to understand vision
- SMART goals can help
- Involve the community in creating them
- Increase knowledge within the permanent staff to reduce reliance on contractors
- Who should join? Do they share a similar…
- Role
- Environment
- Work goals
- Challenges
- Learning goals
- Learning relevant to day to day work
- CoP members should be aligned on purpose, learning, challenges and teaching
6. Becoming Community
- What makes a sense of community? (Chavis and McMillan 1986)
- membership
- integration and fulfilment of needs
- shared emotional connection
- influence
- First steps in creating a community
- Get everyone together
- Icebreaker
- Share what you’re working on, stories from your week
- Talk about what to do next as a community
- Encourage people to come → role out the welcome mat when they do
- Stick to a regular day and time
- If people travel a long way, make the most of their time and build social connections
- Make time for people to get to know each other in a more relaxed sitting
- Create alignment around shared goals
- What is your community vision?
- How will you work together?
- What will you do together?
- A vision creates shared understanding and helps create common tasks
- Ask people to feed in and comment on the vision
- How will you work together?
- Community principles → how you work together
- Community Values → set of beliefs that everyone shares
- Create a shared backlog to work against as a community.
7. Getting Value from Community Interactions
- Your community should collectively decide on how to spend its time. Allow for:
- Building social connections
- Learning as a group
- presentations and talks
- deliberate practice
- games and workshops
- visits and tours to other places
- Talking, solving problems and building better practices
- Less-structured meetings where they can discuss things together
- Lean coffee (create options, vote on topics, set agenda)
- Solving problems in smaller groups (break to discuss challenges)
- Three is a great number for this (triads are great)
- Sharing outside the community
- Show and tells
- marketing material
- presentations and training
- crossovers with other communities
- Creating community improvements
8. Identifying Skills Gaps to Work On
- What skills are needed to do the role?
- Start with job descriptions
- Capture everything CoP members do on a day to day
- Group similar things together (de-duplicate)
- Discuss if they’re part of the role or not
- Do some iterations to come up with a list of skills
- Ask people to highlight additional skills they have or want (that might not be role specfic)
- Do skills confidence mapping
- The 5 stage model of adult skill acquisition (link)
- Novice: follows the rules
- Advanced beginner: recognises patterns
- Competent: chooses a perspective
- Proficient: responds to situations
- Expert: Writes their own rules
- Help people rank their own skill level
- Another model of skill acquisition Dreyfus Model → ShuHaRi
- Shu → the protection stage, follows what the master teaches them
- Ha → the breakaway stage, learning principles behind a technique, begin to integrate learning into their practice
- Ri → the creating stage, student creates their own approaches and adapts what they’ve learned to their own circumstances
- Create personal development plans:
- Get people to focus on one important area
- If you know everyones skills, you can match people with learning buddies.
- If you’re all weak in one area you could bring in an external trainer
9. Growing the Community of Practice Model
- Growing the community:
- Initially you’re limited to your immediate network
- As the community grows, focus more effort on growing it’s membership past just these people
- Resources to help you grow:
- Your extended networks
- Your community’s networks
- Your story
- Things to consider?
- How can CoP members get the story out? (tap up your network)
- Are there formal or informal structures you can use to reach people? (Line management)
- What marketing tools can you use? (posters, or digital equivalent)
- Are there any other people whose help you can enlist? (use a common connection to introduce you to new pockets of people)
- Making the message easy to understand (make it easy for people to self-identify)
- Types of members:
- Core
- Active
- Occasional
- Peripheral
- Outside
- Identify and grow community leaders → natural leaders will be active members and will start to identify themselves by the amount of effort and engagement they give to the community.
- Let them become part of it
- Leadership needs to be taken on by the group
- Be careful about bringing in people to your safe environment and upsetting the dynamics
- Setup open learning sessions on areas of interest outside of the community
- Where there is cross-over knowledge work with other CoPs to get together with a particular topic in mind
10. Self-Sustaining Communities of Practice
- CoPs only exist if there’s interest from members in maintaining the group
- A community will best survive when it becomes self sustaining and organising
- Self-organisation comes from a clear understanding of the communities goals
- On regular occasions, the community will need to revisit it’s vision to see that it’s still relevant
- Key elements of a self-sustaining practice are:
- Leadership → CoP members are comfortable with leadership
- Membership → are engaged, and focused on vision, organise interactions and activities
- Knowledge and practices → continues to learn, create better practices and standards
- Skills development → take the lead on member professional development
- Visibility and support → people outside of the community advocate for it