Remembering Community of Practice principles
One doesn’t implement communities of practice nor create them by management edict. Rather they require the right conditions to grow. Management’s role is to make it clear to potential community members that they support this new way of working.
In helping senior managers and the community support team remember some of the key community of practice principles, Chris Georgiou and I developed the following mnemonic. The mnemonic refers to Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” because communities of practice encourage tipping phenomena.
(T)echnology does not make a community but it is an important enabler.
(I)nsiders must decide on what happens within the community.
(P)eers and practitioners form the membership. This is no place for managers.
(P)assion provides the energy. Find passionate people and connect them.
(I)mportance of the community comes from increase responsiveness, innovation, ability to bring new employees up to speed faster, and avoiding reinventing the wheel.
(N)urturing a community requires resources. Companies need to invest in their support.
(G)rowth takes time. Communities are an organic entity.
Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:
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Remembering community of practice principles
Shawn Callahan has written a blog entry outlining some community of practice principles. To quote: One doesn’t implement communities of practice nor create them by management edict. Rather they require the right conditions to grow. Management’s role is…
Sweet! Thanks, Shawn!
Good to see your views Shawn. I had few thoughts and observations when i reflected on the TIPPING phenomenon. The (I) and (N) are infact the Mnemonics that need to delved further as they are detrimental to the sustained momentum of a community. If we look at (I) , It says that , “bringing new employees up to speed ….”
Who wants that , who sets that expectation , who commits to live up to that expectation anyways ….
It is all implied , yet they exist and intagiable expectations.
In a business scenario . i do not think it close to possibilty of not relating some deliverable to communities , else they shall never get sponsored, supported my management.
Peripheries of a community exist within the larger umbrella of BUSINESS , which means business. until the BUSINESS starts thinking beoynd the obvious , that is ROI and start maturing on the lines of Organisation with evolving structures , cultures and intelligence, which is violated even in largest of organisation in pockets of management groups and time.
TIPPING talks of sutainability and health in true sense. But just look at widespead reality
IS you (I) not getting stressed and (N) getting a toss for ROI is the language we talk in business.
Share you views and help me with what i see to see it changed.
Cheers
Piyush