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
1. Concrete Experience: having a new experience
2. Reflection Observation: reflecting on that experience
3. Abstract Conceptualisation: concluding and learning from that experience
4. 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
1. Concrete Experience: having a new experience
2. Reflection Observation: reflecting on that experience
3. Abstract Conceptualisation: concluding and learning from that experience
4. 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

• 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 fail learn 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:

• 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