We as a Community: Why Get Together at All and How It Can Be Useful
The 21st century is the era of information and digital technologies. Artificial intelligence, podcasts, instant news delivery from the scene, an infinite amount of content, opinions, and formats for every taste and mood. If you sometimes feel like this chaos needs to be treated and fixed, I have great news for you: You can try to do it within your company! How can you do that? You can create (or help someone who has long wanted to create) a community of practice (CoP). How will this help cure the chaos that reigns in the information field? Let’s explore this now.
Why participate in this?
There are benefits to the existence of CoPs. For example:
- It’s a way to discuss professional topics and address issues that concern you.
- When you ask a question, there’s a good chance you’ll get a relevant answer. Given the specific nature of your company (e.g., you might not be able to share something specific on forums like Reddit because of an NDA, but you can for sure share it inside your company), the answers will be more relevant than random forum responses.
- You can build good relationships with colleagues, share your skills, and learn something new.
An interesting example of a CoP was described in this HBR article. My simplified version goes like this: At a cannery, there was a significant material consumption issue on a regular conveyor belt, so the engineers at the plant formed a group, discussed how to fix it, shared experiences and ideas, consulted with their colleagues, and concluded that using pneumatic tubes might be a good solution. After discussing it within their group, they presented the idea to the management and had discussions. Eventually, they implemented the new approach in production, saving the business a significant amount of money.
How to create it?
To create a CoP, you need to adhere to just a couple of rules:
- Consistency is needed. Your meetings should be predictable and regular. If you meet once every six months, it will feel more like a rock concert than a community.
- You need a leader who will oversee the community and help it in difficult times.
- The community needs to have almost complete freedom. It should be self-regulating, and if, in the moment, you want to discuss “Barbenheimer” (and most people agree), you can discuss “Barbenheimer.”
- And, most importantly, you need trust. You can ask any question, discuss any issue, and be sure that you won’t be ridiculed or judged.
The last point is the most important, so don’t forget about it. The picture that comes to mind when we talk about freedom, trust, and leadership looks like this:
William Wallace is indeed a charismatic and vibrant leader. However, he had one flaw: He was irreplaceable. In our ideal community, there should be no irreplaceable leader because we want to create not an evening show named after someone but a sustainable and useful community.
How to destroy it?
So now that you have a great community that’s thriving and evolving, let’s try to kill it. What can we do to make people stop attending such events?
- We can introduce censorship and give one person the right to decide which topics can be discussed and which cannot.
- We can add mandatory reporting to a higher level or come up with metrics and reviews.
- Even better, we can appoint a special manager to manage this community.
- And all of this will lead to a complete loss of trust in what’s happening among the participants.
Congratulations! You’ve destroyed the community. But you won’t do that, right?
When we defend our community and recognize and prevent horrible, destructive actions, we can examine what the formal values of this community are. In reality, they are very simple and powerful:
- Share techniques and knowledge amongst yourselves.
- Support each other in learning.
- Record learned techniques and apply them in your work.
Discussing things is not enough, however. It’s essential to understand how to apply them. In the example above, the engineers could have eloquently talked about how pneumatic tubes were a great technology, but without specific actions, it would have remained just words. If you are confident that a new approach will benefit your group and business, then you must proceed to the next step: implementing and applying the acquired knowledge. Your community will support you if you are a pioneer, and if you are experienced, it will seek advice. After all, you trust each other, right?
What’s the difference from a product team?
If you think that communities force you to attend their meetings and actively participate in them, that’s not true. All communities live only on the initiative and passion of those who are in them — and as long as it makes sense.
In comparison to project teams, communities look like this:
What is the result in the end?
In the end, we get that communities of practice are primarily about knowledge. About the form of its transmission. A fair question is, “What about courses, lessons, mentoring, and so on?” Each has their advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
- Excellent scalability: A community can exist with as few as five or as many as 35 members.
- Greater interactivity than traditional courses: You can manage the agenda yourself and ask questions directly to experts.
However, it’s not without its drawbacks:
- It’s not an individual approach, as it would be in 1-on-1 sessions with a mentor.
- Topics are often not related to each other, although they do belong to the same field.
Communities of practice are always about your passion for the subject area, not about duties. If you want to share something or, on the contrary, learn something, it’s a great place. But also, understand that this knowledge is unlikely to pay off for the company instantly. And, in general, predicting this payoff is impossible. Remember the example with the factory? Of course, all this is about knowledge. Don’t devalue your expertise; what you know can be a revelation to someone. Even if it’s just one or two people from your community, sharing it makes your group’s existence fruitful.
