Review

A short insight packed book about building communities of practice. There’s nothing revolutionary in it 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 partner or a buddy. Worth the time.

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 organizational 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 and training
  • Learning from doing
  • Learning from others
• 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
• 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
    • Novice: follows the rules
    • Advanced beginner: recognizes patterns
    • Competent: chooses a perspective
    • Proficient: responds to situations
    • Expert: writes their own rules
  • Help people rank their own skill level
• If you know everyone’s 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, organize 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

In-depth Summary

1. Why you need Communities of Practice in your organization

• 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 organizational 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 behavior is learned through observation. 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 Conceptualization: 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 organizational silos improving communication and workflow
• CoPs are great for knowledge sharing → capture what people know about a topic to transfer it through people changes, inform others, identify important practices and minimize 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 real-time (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 knowledgeable, 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 organization 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 behavior that ruins the safety of the space
  • Keep the community closed in the early stages
• Getting support from your organization
  • Organizations 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 person 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 organization

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 a Community

• What makes a sense of community? (Chavis and McMillan 1986)
  • membership
  • integration and fulfillment 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 specific)
• Do skills confidence mapping
  • The 5 stage model of adult skill acquisition
    • Novice: follows the rules
    • Advanced beginner: recognizes 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 everyone’s 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 organizing
• Self-organization 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, organize 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