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Developing and Nurturing a Community of Practice

Just because communities of practice arise naturally does not mean that organizations can't do anything to influence their development.

Most communities of practice exist whether or not the organization recognizes them. Many are best left alone–some might actually wither under the institutional spotlight.

And some may actually need to be carefully seeded and nurtured. But a good number will benefit from some attention, as long as this attention does not smother their self-organizing drive.

Whether these communities arise spontaneously or come together through seeding and nurturing, their development ultimately depends on internal leadership… to legitimize the community as a place for sharing and creating knowledge...

But internal leadership is more diverse and distributed.

‘It can take many forms

Consider your organisation as a community of practice ….

What metaphor might you use to describe it? Is it like a bee hive? Or a block of flats? Or... Or…

Try to draw the organisation as your metaphor and sketch in the details. For example, who is the queen bee, how do the other bees behave... etc etc.

You might want to do this as a cartoon drawing exercise with colleagues.

Ask them to extend the metaphor as far as they can, drawing in more detail in response to questions such as...where is your hive, what does it look like, what does it sound like….how does it feel?

Who...

Who are the members of the community and where are they in relation to the core of the community? Try mapping members in relation to the diagram on the next slide….

  • What contribution to the community do the different members make?

  • Where do they connect, communicate and collaborate?

  • How might people be supported to move from the periphery towards the core?

  • Wenger emphasises the distributed leadership in communities of practice. Who are or who could be the different kinds of leaders

INSPIRATIONAL leadership by thought leaders and recognized experts

DAY-TO-DAY leadership by those who organising activities

CLASSIFICATORY leadership by those who document practices

INTERPERSONAL leadership by those who weave the community's social fabric

BOUNDARY leadership by those who connect the community to other communities

INSTITUTIONAL leadership by those who maintain links with other organizational constituencies

CUTTING-EDGE leadership by those who shepherd "out-of-the-box" initiatives

'In all cases, leadership must have intrinsic legitimacy in the community. To be effective, therefore, managers and others must work with communities of practice from the inside rather than merely attempt to design them or manipulate them from the outside.’

Wenger @ http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml

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