Communities of Practice
I've been asked by a few people if I have any information on starting and maintaining a Community of Practice.
It's taken me longer than I would have liked, but I finally have compiled some information, with thanks to Ellen Grove and Tyler Motherwell (and Wikipedia , too), for lending their support. I hope you find some of this helpful, and will share what, if anything, you've found helpful or have tried yourself to help others. With their assistance, I've actually found material better than what I had to share anyway. So hopefully you find this useful, if you're interested in setting up and maintaining a Community of Practice.
That, by the way, is at the heart of a Community of Practice (or CoP). Helping others, and finding ways to improve ourselves.
Communities of Practice extend beyond what team you're in. CoP's are best when they're an amalgamation of people from different teams, with different experiences, but aligned with a common purpose. As we think about building cross-functional team in order to provide teams with the skills and expertise to get work done quickly and effortlessly, we're likely going to find that teams will be comprised of various job families, each with their own skill-set.
Let's just say I happen to be a Data Scientist (for example) - if I'm not working on a team with other Data Scientists, I may not learn and grow in my area of expertise on a daily basis. Since my team might be comprised of BAs, Designers, and Product Managers, I'll gain an appreciation for those roles... But I want to continue to improve my skills as a Data Scientist. This is a perfect place to introduce a Community of Practice.
Quite simply, a Community of Practice is a group of people who share a common craft/profession, have a passion for what it is that they do, and want to learn how to do it better through regular interactions. So how do we make this happen?
A couple years ago, Mitchell H. "Mitch" Ruebush wrote a nice intro to ways to start a CoP. He's got some key steps outlined in the appropriately named Starting a Community of Practice post. Some key thoughts to consider when setting up a Community of Practice (kindly provided by Tyler):
Objectives:
Provide a safe forum which - above all - serves to disseminate knowledge about the subject the members gather to discuss
Anyone can attend
All members have an equal right to participate
Subjects & Topics:
The overarching subject of the CoP can be any shared interest, and as broad or as specific as the members want it to be
Meeting-specific subjects can be selected one meeting in advance through participants’ voting
The Facilitator can be responsible for proposing a list of subjects for the upcoming meeting, and any participant can add to the list
Members & Roles:
CoP participation should be voluntary. Meetings can be open to anyone across segments, functions, and levels, or restrictions can limit participation to certain groups
Participation is not driven by enforcement, but by staying relevant to core participants
Two voluntary roles are recommended: a Segment CoP Champion and a Facilitator
The CoP Champion raises CoP awareness within the segment, organizes the first meeting, and provides/receives input and feedback
A Facilitator organizes subsequent meetings and facilitates the sessions. Role rotation can be every month or two
Agenda:
If CoP selects subjects in advance, subject selected in previous session
Moderated discussions of recent experiences, impediments, and learnings
Status updates are not part of a CoP meeting
Frequency & Duration:
Cadence and duration are at the discretion of the CoP’s core participants
Normally, CoP meeting duration is between 30 and 60 minutes, with cadence varying anywhere from weekly to every two months
As a suggested starting point, try to set the CoP meeting cadence to be weekly. And then adjust as applicable to the group
Communications:
Communications developed by the Facilitator. Channels can extend beyond email
SharePoint or a wiki can be used if members will be sharing documents frequently
Communications are internal to the members. External communication happens on an ad hoc basis
Internal communications include meeting highlights, sharing of material used during presentations, and any other internal CoP announcements
Some fantastic ideas to consider in that list, for sure.
And, if you've made it this far in this post, I'm hoping you're looking for more. Have a look at these:
https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/
https://www.wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/13-11-25-Leadership-groups-V2.pdf
I was going to extract bits from these documents, but I think they're worth reading and having in their entirety. I hope you'll also find them useful.
The first one, titled a Brief Introduction to Communities of Practice provides an intro to CoP's. And while it claims to be an "intro", it has a wealth of information and includes suggestions for further reading.
And the second one, titled Leadership Groups - Distributed Leadership in a Social Setting , is really designed for CoP "facilitators, conveners, or coordinators who want to develop the social learning capability of a community of practice or other type of learnin partnership." This is an exceptional read, with great ideas to consider.
Hopefully some of this is helpful. It certainly was helpful to me when starting and sustaining CoPs in various places I’ve had the opportunity to work. Good luck!
What’s Wrong with ‘Best Practices’?
There’s a problem with best practices.
Don’t believe me? If you’ll take a few minutes to read this post, I hope to convince you I’m right. And, more importantly, get you to think about problem solving a bit differently.
But let me start here: A best practice is the best. It can’t get better. It already is the best. We don’t have bestest practices. Once we have a best practice, we’re done.
In almost every industry, and in every line of business, having a best practice would make our lives easier. If there really is a best practice, why don’t all companies do whatever that best practice is? Maybe it’s because there isn’t one best way to do everything. Maybe it’s because what’s a best practice in one company, isn’t going to work in another. Maybe there are cultural differences in the companies, or lines of business.
I believe best practices are a cop-out. I believe they’re a lazy way to decide what to do. They’re a way to solve a problem, or exploit an opportunity, that someone else has decided on a solution that worked for them. And it may or may not work in this new situation. But we adopt it without understanding why. We adopt it because someone decided it was a best practice.
It’s way harder to dive into understanding a problem, getting to the root of the issue, and then researching multiple approaches for solving it. Or, using the wisdom of the teams directly involved with that area of the business. Or leveraging what others have done in similar circumstances to come up with our own hypothesis, which can be tested and validated. It’s much easier to simply implement something because someone else did it in a situation that looks similar to ours.
What’s worse is when we do something because it’s an “industry best practice”. How does a person, team, line of business, or company differentiate itself from another, if it’s simply adopting things that have already been done by others? In today’s world, for something to be considered a best practice, it has to have been done, and work, somewhere else. But isn’t there a problem with wanting to be the best at something, or the number-one something, when, by definition, you’re copying someone else’s approach?
In the 2004, a British newspaper, The Independent , switched it’s paper format from broadsheets to tabloid format. For over 400 years, in order to be considered in the industry a quality and respected newspaper, you printed on broadsheet sized paper. This was an industry best practice, well established, and unquestioned. So in 2004, when they switched their format to the tabloid size, you can imagine the industry’s surprise when they saw a circulation boost. And other papers followed, also seeing circulation surges.
Our brains are wired to look for patterns and quickly find solutions.
Sometimes, when we’ve found what we believe is a best practice, what we’ve really found is something that helps us view our complicated, complex, and often chaotic world. But it’s often an overly simplified perspective.
I worked for a company in my career, a company who will remain nameless. This other company has a SOP – their Standard Operating Platform. Effectively, this is their best practices, and is used for managing their business today. I was part of a team at this company that was trying to help the company expand into new, customer focused solutions. Instead of providing individual products, from different silos in the organization, they wanted to bring products from different areas of the business together, which would make sense for a specific customer demographic.
Seems like a good business idea – increase the number of products and services, in a single location, so customers could see that the products, while good on their own, could even be better when brought together.
But there was a problem. Each department, or line of business, wanted their products featured in their area. They didn’t want to include other departments products or services. That’s not how their bonuses were calculated, and it flew in the face of placing higher margin products in certain areas. They were focused on local optimization for their area.
Every time I tried to make a change, I was told by the silo’d departments and the marketing team that what I was doing was going against the SOP – this company’s best practices. The initiative failed because we couldn’t break through the current best practices of this company. They missed the opportunity to show their customers how the products & services they sold increased the value of each of the products individually.
Part of the problem is that there’s an assumption that if there was a better way of doing something, someone else would have thought of it.
What may have been a best practice for one company or industry may very well have been true. At that time. But rarely does someone do the work and research, expending effort to determine how long it remains a best practice. Or even if it is, in any other context.
One of the things that many companies talk about doing as part of their Agile journey, is measuring our team’s heath. Spotify did something that seems to have worked for them, and this was one resource I’ve provided in many companies. But, I always caution that this works for Spotify because it organically was developed, and as such, worked for them. Transplanting something from somewhere else may not work, even if it is a best practice elsewhere. What made it a best practice at Spotify is that it made sense for their teams, in their context, at that time.
By the way, if Apple had followed best practices, they would have released a six-button mouse, instead of the zero-button mouse. Whether you like or use the Apple Magic Mouse, the business result is that Apple doubled its market share overnight.
This doesn’t mean we can’t learn from others successes. And it doesn’t mean we can’t look at what others have done, and figure out how they’ll work for us. We absolutely need to look at what we’ve tried, as well as what others have tried. While we can’t, and shouldn’t accept that what’s worked elsewhere, or in the past, will work for us now, we would be remiss to not try to learn from existing knowledge.
And it also doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for a best practice. When the relationship between cause and effect is obvious, a best practice might make sense. For example, if I spill my glass of water, a best practice of getting & using a paper towel is a very applicable best practice. When my computer stops working, turning it off and then back on is a perfectly applicable best practice.
So, let me propose that we take what we think are our best practices, and call them our current practices.
The world is moving way to fast, and changing with such frequency that being complacent with thinking we’ve found the best practice won’t allow us to excel. Maybe we should simply think that we’ve found a current practice that works for us today, in our current context; one that we’ll need to continue to review and reevaluate on a regular basis.
In a complicated world, there may be many good practices to solve a problem. In a complex world, we may be looking for emergent practices.
Following best practices won’t make you the best. They make you the same as everyone else who follows them.
The Expert
When you hire the best people, it’s important to provide them with the environment where they can do the best work of their lives. It’s important to recognize that those closest to our customers, and closest to the work, often have some fantastic ideas on what will, and what won’t make an impact.
It can be easy to forget sometimes. And sometimes, without thinking about it, it can be possible to not really listen to those who are experts in a certain domain.
If you have seven and a half minutes, I’d encourage you to watch this humourous video featuring an expert, simply called “The Expert”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
Sadly, I’ve been in these meetings.