McDermott's Articles

Okay, they aren't rocket science.

However, McDermott never fails to explain, in its usual terse way, both what he thinks and the logic behind it.

You can find a clear example of best practices in what he shared with the Knowledge Board community here and here.

Leadership in CoP -- More

Today I read a piece "Vigilant vs. Operational Leaders: Changes at Ford, the Coke-Pepsi Fiasco, and Other Management Moments" on Knowledge@Wharton newsletter.

It looks a little bit like a matrioska... however, George Day and Paul Schoemaker built on top of their research (not "expert opinions"!!!) and analyzed the four traits of leadership:

(a) external focus
(b) conceptual ability
(c) organizational role and
(d) time horizon.

Now, does it apply to CoPs and if so, how?

External Focus.
"Vigilant leaders" - they say - "are more externally oriented: They are open to new ideas, seek diverse perspectives, listen to a wide array of sources and foster broad social and professional networks."

Reading this description, one immediately thinks of Kolb's learning styles and of the diverging learning style in particular:
"Diverging (feeling and watching - CE/RO) - These people are able to look at things from different perspectives. They are sensitive. They prefer to watch rather than do, tending to gather information and use imagination to solve problems. They are best at viewing concrete situations several different viewpoints. Kolb called this style 'Diverging' because these people perform better in situations that require ideas-generation, for example, brainstorming. People with a Diverging learning style have broad cultural interests and like to gather information. They are interested in people, tend to be imaginative and emotional, and tend to be strong in the arts. People with the Diverging style prefer to work in groups, to listen with an open mind and to receive personal feedback."

Now I ask: is there any doubt about the fact that, in a CoP, problems and ideas are concrete and have to be looked at from different perspectives, idea are generated mainly through group brainstorming, and the capability of giving and receiving strong and open personal feedback is an asset, especially for the resident facilitator(s)?

Also note how Day and Schoemaker define operational leaders: "more narrowly focused, have less interest in outside opinions and confine their networking to familiar settings". That is, they are concerned with one or few topics, don't like apparently "off-topic" threads and don't like unfamiliar territory, often resorting to ipse dixit (like many people in the CoP field do anytime Wenger is contested, as if his works were an infallible religious book which doesn't even need interpretation).


Conceptual Ability.
Vigilant leaders also "probe deeply for second order effects", that is, they do not stay content with analyzing their experiences through the lenses of process management, ROI or McElroy's first generation KM. In other words, they aren't ISO 9000 compliant.

Their counterparts, operational leaders, are those first generation KM dinosaurs one can stumble when joining KM groups. They are predictable and focused mainly on the task at hand, they rely on past experience and try to avoid mistakes like the plague. In their brain, Popper's philosophy hasn't sunk yet and they think that for their knowledge to be valid all they need is to try to verify it over and over again, often resorting to qualitative descriptions without any rigor whatsover. They still regard induction as the main pillar of science and behave like Russell's inductivist turkey (slide #14), they call deduction a "theoretical approach", a "generalization" and/or a "lack of context". They have what Piaget would define pre-operational thinking.

CoPs strongly need a leader whose culture and interests go beyond first order effects. The ideal CoP leader would look at the CoP s/he leads in terms of Value Networks rather than first order outcomes.


Organizational Role.
But vigilant leaders also enable people in their company by allowing them to explore areas outside their main focus. The dinosaurs I described above are controlling, focused on efficiency and cost cutting and don't explore outside potential. This is particularly unfortunate when leading a CoP which is all geared onto idea generation and sharing.

Even though methods to measure and test a CoP's effect, impact and outcome, existed and there were consensus among scholars and/or practitioners on which one to use first and why, there would still be a lot of problems related to these measurements.

For one the effects, impacts, outcomes of a CoP cannot be measured for months or even years after its institution. For two, some of those outcomes and impacts do not impact finances, so it might happen that financially there is no ROI (or even a loss) but the return on investment happens through the enhancement of a non-monetary value (say I set up a CoP and its members feel better about working, and are more relaxed and available in the workplace). Furthermore, cost effectiveness is reflective of another unfortunate paradigm called the scarcity model). This does not:
1) take into account that some tangibles are, indeed, limited (not scarce!), and yet some intangibles are abundant (not unlimited!), It just assumes that everything is always scarce, which introduces a theoretical bias in the very system that should be objective enough to represent and quantify a pros/cons analysis;
2) realize that not every outcome can be measured in monetary terms and that doing so is yet another source of lack of science in this practice.
It basically measures abundant intangibles as if they were limited tangibles and as if all tangibles and intangibles were to have the same unit measure (it's like measuring liquids in meters.... plain old stupid).

Time Horizon.
Finally, a vigilant leader's time horizon is longer while an operational leader's is shorter.

But in order to be effective at doing so, one needs to come from an abundance perspective. If time is scarce, one has no time to wait for results. If time is limited, one decides which results to wait for. If time is abundant, one participates to the creation of new perspectives, opportunities, concepts without having an agenda on which one to find or explore.

Since CoPs just die if they are managed (or led) toward an agenda, it's particularly evident how one needs to come from abundance in order to get any result out of them, and needs to be patient as well. This also explains why CoPs are so good in getting results about unstructured practices, where nobody has agendas to push.

Dutch Soccer and CoPs

In Dutch "total soccer" players follow their natural role but *stretch* it
to serve the community (team) and the one having the ball (say, speaking at
a given moment, or having fame etc) has to be willing to pass the ball to
the one in a better position. Plus, when a player is wrong, he better learn
from it or next time the coach kicks him out of the team. Which btw that's
how I see moderation/facilitation in CoPs.

If we espouse the "everything goes" theory we play like Brasil: virtuous
soccer, 85 minutes of *sleep*, 5 minutes of action and no fun on the
observer (lurker) side, a bunch of primadonna worried about them, the, them.

If the lurker doesn't read and enjoy what he reads, something in the "CoP"
is wrong (Miguel?). That's also why inviting people to skip messages is
deleterious (for a CoP).

Mumble mumble

The right word for CoP is FERMENTATION

No I'm not flipped out.. I just noticed a great analogy that I'm going to explain.

Today I was reading a post on com-prac posted by my friend Pete Bond:

"I agree with Fred that they can be seeded but then there's no gurantee that what emerges is what is envisaged by the seeder (no guarantee that a successful attempt to cultivate a CoP will lead to the success of the 'host-sponsor')"

I read it and as I did a big fat "NO" resonated in my head.

Mind you, 95% of my thinking is intuition, so my thoughts don't come with an explanation, unless I decide to find it. Thus, I started thinking it over while I was doing other things. The "no" became deeper and deeper, but no explanation was emerging.

I looked at my watch and remembered it was about time for me to strain my kefir. For the ones of you that aren't familiar with it, kefir is a fermented milk. In order to make the "real one", you need kefir grains.

Looking at my grains, I had the feeling that I was near the explanation of my "no" to Pete's post. My heart was beating fast, meaning a solution was close.

Back typing now and reading some stuff in my emailbox, mumbling. All of a sudden, I get thinking of kefir again. Namely, I think about the grains.

Kefir grains are composed of a polysaccharides that hosts 4 bacteria genuses in a symbiotic relationship: Lactobacilli, Streptococci-Lactococci, Acetobacter and Yeasts. Some individual genuses may be or not be there, it's not important. What's important is the "family" they belong to, and the quantitative relationship among families. My heart is beating faster. A solution is very close.

Here it is!

Like with Kefir, one can not "make" the grains, but it does not mean that kefir can not be replicated! You have to detect the "grains" and put them in the right medium (did I say nucleation of a CoP?) and you have to use special precautions to preserve their aliveness (did I say facilitation). After which you WILL obtain kefir, everytime, even if it will have different thickness, flavour, tanginess and even if you might like it more or less depending on the batch. It will still be kefir.

We think we can't reproduce a CoP because we don't know what the equivalent of the kefir grain is and which kind of facilitation it requires. That doesn't mean we can't produce CoPs. It does mean we didn't understand (yet) WHAT the equivalent of the grains is.

To come to a conclusion, only a person (or a group of persons) that has seen the pattern (consciously or unconsciously) can reproduce it.

And here we get into Jostein Gaarder's world ;;)

Steve Denning

Today I was reading Steve Denning's newsletter when all of a sudden I was taken aback from what I read here.

What's wrong with it?

Aside from the various logical gaps in the case he builds, you wouldn't find anything particularly bad, unless you were a member of com-prac....

...in which case you would remember how the so-called reflections of Mr Denning did not happen in a vacuum: the link to the article he refers to was posted on that group and his several reflections were generated by an interaction among him and other persons (namely, me who originally posted the link, Roy Greenhalgh, Randall Kindley, Benoit Couture, and Miguel Cornejo Castro, in temporal order of contribution).

Mr Denning (may I say conveniently) does not say he wasn't the one who found such link to the article he is referring to and he does not say that his reflections were originated through interactions with members of the com-prac group. Isn't learning a social activity, Mr Steve? Aren't you a fan of Vygotsky? How come you don't acknowledge it?

Oh, no, wait a moment, you do cite "participants" without putting down names and places... participants to what, one of your workshops? I wonder if you asked them before including their contributions to your pamphlet!

However, the only participants you end up referring to are the ones you do have rebuttals about, because the objections you weren't able to overcome aren't even cited. Aren't you the one citing Popper and his falsification theory? How come it doesn't apply to what you write? Is it about winning an argument and demonstrate how good you are, or is it about understanding more of the environment around us?

So.... how do you generate trust? *grin*

Incidentally, Steve, in case you haven't realized it, you have just proven with your behaviour that such experiment, though conducted in a lab, is valid... just look at what you did!

In a group with no rules and especially no punishments, such as com-prac, free-riders (like you) exploit the good faith of members that freely share knowledge, therefore leading straight to knowledge hoarding.

This is not storytelling, Steve. This is telling stories.

CoP Nucleation

There are two ways of forming a CoP (I say two cause I don't believe in the third, the "built" one):

1) "spontaneously":
I don't believe it is really spontaneous, it's more like somebody is doing the work without knowing what s/he is doing... according to the Johari window, it's the state of "unconscious competence". It's is more or like the case in which an "unconscious" nucleator starts aggregating a CoP not knowing what s/he is doing:
2) "nucleated":
you follow me on this, my background is in medicine. Stones get formed in a liquid that is supersaturated with a given solute. However, supersaturation is necessary but not sufficient for a stone to get formed. It takes a little "piece of something", like a cluster of some 5-10 cells, a kidney cylinder, few bacteria. That "piece of something" in a supersaturated solution starts what is known as stone "nucleation". So, what I do in my practice is to search for the supersaturated solution (aka: a 10-20 member network among 3 or 4 departments, like Verna Allee would say) and then I search for the "piece of something" to shove into it. The piece can be my "formal/informal" leadership, but most often it is my detection of a subgroup of people that could be autochthones leaders, a topic that can create debate (and therefore emergence of a leader), sometimes shifting focus/technology attracts the "right" leader. It depends.

What you have to search for, however, is a particular kind of leader, a servant-leader (if you are familiar with Greenleaf.. if not, see here).

On difficulties in recruiting:

That might also mean a good thing, such as you nucleated a CoP with a peculiar identity, that isn't a fit for everybody under the sun. It might also mean the CoP is functional to the point that members are having productive lives without having to always resort to the CoP. However you are right, there is a danger in that and Gongla and Rizzuto in their "Where Did That Community Go? - Communities of Practice that "Disappear" described pretty well.

Volunteer recruitment (and CoP members are *volunteers*, NOT workers!) works in a different way than workforce, so one reason might be it. Have you tried administering the VFI to your CoP members and see what their motivations are? Basing on that, you might want to craft an announcement attracting volunteers with similar motivations. Dig in the work of Clary, starting from
this).

This paper is the one that explains the connection between motivation and kind of advertisement: Clary, E. G., M. Snyder, R. Ridge, P. Miene, & J. Haugen. (1994). Matching messages to motives in persuasion: A functional approach to promoting volunteerism. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 24, 1129-1149.

CoPs in Practice

My colleague Bhojarju posted a set of interesting questions on com-prac.

"How practically these CoPs will work ?"

They will work as practically as you make them to. Groups in general cannot be studied in a laboratory fashion, ie by randomizing a group of people, throwing them in, and see how it goes , UNLESS we are willing to obtain results that cannot be generalized, exported, replicated or even ***talked of***.

Two things are very important from a practical perspective:

1. the goals of your CoP:
supposing your CoP is already a CoP that doesn't need nurturing/cultivation, you still need to create a shared expectation of what its "acceptable outcomes" are or should be. All of it can be obtained through an initiative that generates consensus (I use dynamic facilitation) whenever the outcomes are not mandated or requested from the above, otherwise a set of outcomes has to be clearly stated and subsequently enforced (even if the set of outcomes was generated through consensus).

Remember, there is a difference between a CoP and a mess: the latter has no rules and accomplishes the outcome herraticly, the former has as few rules as possible but still accomplishes the outcomes with fair reliability.

Also remember that two different CoPs can have the same domain, even the same people, and still be very different with respect of the kind of goals they can accomplish. The key word here is the facilitator, whether conscious or unconscious, which is the person that enforces the "tone" on the kind of deliverables that are expected.

2. the values of your CoP:
Again, two different CoPs with the same domain, and even the same people, can have different values! Think of a CoP where the facilitator fosters "experts", and experts on their turn punish/reward others for thinking or not thinking like them. Now think of another CoP where the level of ownership is so diffuse that experts are silenced whenever they don't provide a rationale for their "expert opinions" and frankly laughed at when they go into the punish/reward mode. It's all the difference between a "la-la-land" CoP (that will be a CoP but won't accomplish much) and a practical CoP.


"For Example if we have a any platform say Sharepoint, will they add value in collaboration there ?"
A platform can add OR ***subtract*** to collaboration, depending on:
1. the fit between the CoP and that specific platform in terms of needs, functionalities, customization options;
2. the degree of interest in mastering the software possibilities on the facilitator's side
3. the level of ownership participants will feel toward the choice of platform


"DO they add their knowledge to KMS thro virtual or physical meetings?"
Well, I can tell you through meetings for sure. In my language, the word meeting is translated as "to move forward to another person". That is to say, a meeting will work if it is able to generate an ***encounter***.

Now, many people would say it's impossible to do it online because THEY aren't able to. But some people can have "online encounters". Others get fixated that they can't do it online, and therefore they won't, and will need a physical meeting.

Don't you ever overlook the impact that self-generated bias have one the outcome of an interaction!

Moderating and Facilitating a VCoP

When you moderate and/or facilitate VCoPs composed of "professionals", the most important word is: beware. And the second one is: beware.

In particular watch out for the warning statement: "how can I get onto digest".

That might mean many things, I concede it, yet one of those meaning can be that the person that says it just wants to search for the "meat" without acknowledging the meaning and importance of negotiating meaning thorough conversation and thinks of an "online community" as a list of links, resources, repositories.

The first danger in that is, this is but first generation KM (definition coined by McElroy) with a codification approach only. The codification approach alone fails, period (see Huysman & de Wit, 2002).

The second danger I see is all in the difference between legitimate peripheral participation (ie: enjoying reading conversations, threads, and the like as well as how insights are generated and shared) and egocentric "what's in it for me, me, me" (ie: adversarial conceptualization of the reader with respect to the community, where the reader has to "bear with" ongoing conversation in order to "get something" out of it). The "proper" legitimate peripheral participant is one that enjoys reading the threads and the conversation so much that sets aside some time to delve into insights/opinions/ideas that are offered, even if s/he participates only occasionally.

What I always do in these settings is:

1. I remind whoever protests about "too many emails" that conversation is precious because it is in conversation that new knowledge is generated (and I add referrals and pointers to the social learning theory, if I really need to shut the dear one up);
2. I remind this very same vocal person that s/he is supposed to enjoy the conversation or else it's no place for him/her to be.

That usually weed out many persons that would later be troublesome for the proper "nucleation" of the CoP.

CoP facilitators/moderators, differently from facilitators in other settings, enforce negative rules mainly: that is, like in Carver boards, they set a rule on what has not to be done, the rest is for free experimentation of the members to find out. Occasionally, posting articles and links elicit some dialogue in case the CoP is kind of "dormant", but a healthy CoP does not need the facilitator to participate, even if s/he might want and/or like to do so.

A CoP facilitator also needs to try to resist the idea of engineering the community life. Sometimes backchannelling with members about the community helps, but it does backfire if you use it too often. A CoP faciliator does backchannel, however, in order to establish a personal relationshipwith those members you find more in tune with your moderation style. If s/he asks something, s/he does it naturally, NOT out of the blue to people s/he has never talked to, and NOT to the "old same buddies", otherwise members would have the impression of being kidded around by a clique.

In order to have a group of people helping the facilitator, complimenting with them privately for something they spontaneously said or posted feels much better, to them and to the group, than it feels to "schedule" the conversation. I am a member in a community in which the moderator often backchannels to ask members to post summaries (still the old repository/codification approach!!). The funny thing is that summaries do get posted, but without *anybody* saying "hey I thought it would be neat to post this" (aka spontaneous contribution), and the posting of the "assigned homework" sounds very artificial.

In short: depending on which kind of members you have and which kind of person you are, you will have different results, however:

1) Always be your natural self: do not play a role
2) Do not distort yourself or your community in order to follow an artificial scheme
3) Keep in mind where you want to go and let go of the controlling attitude most moderators have (enhancing/slowing email flow, having people posting requests/summaries/questions, getting afraid/p*ssed toward whoever posts "too much" or "not enough")
4) Let people be themselves with a list of basic donts.

A community is like a tissue: it will "create" and "heal" by itself whether you are there or not, but if you do your job you will make it easier (facilitation comes etymologically from the Latin word "facile" that is, in fact, EASY).

CoPs at UNDP

Hello dear ones,

today I found in my inbox a link to an article The knowledge sharing approach of the United Nations Development Programme for practitioners, and this is the actual abstract:

"This paper shares practical experience gained in establishing and implementing communities of practice (CoPs) – referred to as ‘knowledge networks’ within the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – as entry points for our knowledge management initiatives. The paper outlines the history and evolution of CoPs in UNDP, placing them in the broader framework of knowledge management and practice architecture. The paper also describes how CoPs have generated cultural change within UNDP, taking the organisation from a situation in which staff could not send e-mails without clearance by senior management to one in which staff today are rewarded for sharing rather than owning knowledge. In addition, the paper identifies the ingredients of a healthy CoP, successful operating modalities, methods to promote participation and ways to link CoPs to policy outcomes. It also looks at what has not worked: pitfalls to be avoided in establishing and managing CoPs. Finally, the paper examines our experience with adding new procedures and tools to this initially successful approach, such as enhanced collection and codification, which have yielded mixed results."

Guess what? The "key ingredient for well-functioning CoPs is to
have moderated or facilitated communities" -- DUH!

Managing VCoPs

Most studies on VCoPs simplicistically equate them to CoPs, while there are
some that doubt that a CoP could even exist in a distributed form (Harasim,
1993; Hung & Nichani, 2002; Lueg, 2000). I do not agree with them, but they
point out some interesting perspectives one has to be aware of when dealing
with a VCoP.

Johnson wrote "A survey of current research on online communities of
practice", that analyzed the state of the art of research up to 2001.

Dube, Bourhis and Jacob extensively wrote on VCoPs.
In 2003 they published "The impact of structural characteristics on
intentionally formed virtual communities of practice" on the site of the HEC
Montreal (which they work for). This very same article, polished to get to a more scientific outlook, has been published in 2005 and is available from EMERALD database:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/0230180204.pdf

These articles analyze which characteristics of VCoPs are related to a
favourable outcome of their launching. They also give you some ideas on
which metrics to use to define "success" in a VCoP. An important part is the
concept of structuring characteristics, already considered to be a focal
issue by Neus in 2001.

Dube et al also published, in 2003, a much needed "Toward a typology of
virtual communities of practice", digging more into the managerial aspects and wrote
"The success of virtual communities of practice: the leadership factor"
(2005) and ""Structuring spontaneity": the impact of management practices on the
success of intentionally formed virtual communities of practice".

Why Self-Help groups are CoPs

Etienne Wenger and Jane Lave include a group of Alcoholic Anonymous among their examples of CoPs in their 1991 book Situated Learning. But, they never explained how so, or verified such hypothesis aside from noticing some suggestive and striking comparisons between practice in CoPs and practice in an AA group.

The key of such comparison is the fact that, if social interaction shapes the sense of self as Vygotsky claims, then one of the main functions story-telling accomplishes in CoPs is identity formation (the other one being: allowing implicit-to-implicit knowledge flow and sharing).

Just recently, the Scottish Recovery Network started a research project on storytelling, unravelling details on how story-telling reshapes the self. I'm anxious to see the rest of this work!

CoPs or CoBs (Community of Bias)?

The role that intrapersonal and interpersonal biases have in the life of a person has always fascinating me a great deal.

Emily Pronin is a nice looking person that wrote some very interesting pieces of work. For example, a book chapter whose title is Understanding misunderstanding: social psychological perspective.

Among the many things, she points out how low tolerance to ambiguity makes a person go beyond the real facts and information that s/he is given. It would sound like low tolerance to exploration of ambiguity (that is, presence of more than one meaning in a word/statement) doesn't match with having a meaningful interaction (where meaningful means one that can generate meaning) either.

If men and women are, as Katz claims (1960, explained here), more rationalizing than rational, and therefore more influenced by their attitudes than by logic or evidence, and if we humans have the tendency toward accepting more easily what is congruent with our interest (Edwards & Smith, 1996; Ross & Lepper, 1980), then CoPs can be a source of bias. I am wondering if that plays a role in how a CoP has to be facilitated.

Pronin - and this is verrrry interesting - suggests that such bias fosters harsh evaluations. I would add that it might be worthy addressing this very issue when speaking about CoP facilitation.

In CoPs

Just today John D. Smith in his group wrote:

"Communities of practice are only observable by people who are IN a social web."

This statement has bounced in my mind for all the day long... What do we mean when we say "IN ..[something that has to do with CoPs]..."?

• if by "IN" we mean an observer has to be in closeness to members' proxemics (see Hall, 1966) in order to be able, capable and aware enough to observe a CoP in action, I would say "Yes, maybe so" (supposing the term "proxemics" to also include virtual ones, and VCoPs as well) and sometimes even "No" (supposing F2F contact with persons to be so full of clues that it might overwhelm/mislead you... or supposing a person in such F2F situation to have poor social skills);
• if by "IN" you mean an observer has to be a "part of", I would say "Not necessarily". In a VCoP, one has to be a member of it, belong to it, be subbed to it, in order to observe it. In a CoP, you can just be an observing.

Denying the role of the separate observer, means undermining the theoretical framework of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (and lurking, in VCoPs), experiential learning and action learning, that is, the very basis of CoPs.

1. LPP works because it is by observing the active engagement of core participants without taking a part in it you learn how to BE one of them (vs how to make one of them... sounds similar, or the same thing, but they are at least ontologically different).
2. Experiential learning works because tacit knowledge is passed by through observation of an experience and its reproduction (even when, or especially, when it's not codifiable! -- see Kolb, 1984).
3. Action learning works because after an action, reflection is necessary for learning to happen (Argyris, Putnam & McLain Smith, 1985)
   

By practising we are in action, but being in action per se does not account for learning. It's reflection after action that accounts for learning from experience (at least, in action/experiential/situated learning, which is the way one learns in CoPs).

Speculating about an experience, trying to find an explanation, a model, a reason is mandatory and far from being idealistic, detached or "not into" the experience. After such "modelization", in action/experiential/situated learning, comes the moment for experiments, which as I said some times before need definitions, methods, and ways to be reproducible. And, of course, next step is.. another experience!

This is all to say, learning is not all from being INSIDE things (ie: practitioners), or all of being OUTSIDE them (ie: academics), but rather a concerted cycle of experience-theory-experiment-learning progressions (or if you prefer, an inside/outside, in-touch/detached cycle).

In this way, from this perspective, system thinking is the way to go. It gives you direction, reminding you that wherever you are at, you have to tilt your perspective before merely hoping to find any grounded solution.

So, how I mean that "IN", is the way we say to one another: "You are IN(to) CoPs aren't you?", where "IN(to)" means "having knowledge of".

Collaborative Disagreements: Negotiating Clashes in CoPs

There is a lot of fluff over cooperation, namely how to contrast those situations "when the pursuit of self-interest by each leads to a poor outcome for all". Of course (and I say of course because some people, to my astonishment, still doubt about it), if you (generic) want to be part of a group, you have to learn to be cooperative, can't possibly expect the group to do what you want (or not to do what you don't want do).

A CoP is something more than a group. When we look at a bunch of books on a shelf, we might refer to them as a group of books, for sure not as "a CoP of books", and that is because they have no personal relationship with one another.

Some could say that a CoP isn't necessarily the best outcome for all the involved parties, however. I claim - and this is an opinion - that being able to generate meaning together with other people is always better than generating it alone, because one mind is always more limited that many minds, even when your mind (supposedly) know more.

Then the issue becomes a methodological one: is cooperation a better way to have many minds generate meaning, or is competition a more appropriate means? Again my opinion is that cooperation is always better because it harbors the possibility of a more balanced solution to a dilemma, over a one-sided black-and-white I-won-it-all one.

This being said, the focal points become:

1. Is consensus the best way to foster a cooperative behaviour? That is: do we have to disagree first and compromise after, or try to reach an agreement as first thing in the morning?
2. Which topics (if any) should be solved by consensus?
3. When does consensus become groupthink?

Consensus might be dangerous, especially for a CoP, which is said to be (by many) a place where debates and innovations are possible because of a trusting climate that allows members to engage in experiential learning without fear of being corrected, discouraged or reprimanded. So if consensus is the first target, members will go for the agreement right away, rather than being themselves first, and then negotiate.

On the other hand negotiation, handled by an expert facilitator, is mandatory whenever some real problem arises.

I'll go beyond this: if you are a CoP facilitator, whenever clashes don't happen, engineer them. That is: ask controversial questions, post controversial material and let the CoP raise its wisdom above your facilitation skills to learn how solve the clash in action, in a creative way.

Lead your CoP members to:
1) treat other members the way they treat themselves
2) learn to cooperate with one another
3) crash happily
4) enjoy the process
5) be happy with whatever the outcome
6) learn something out of mistakes

They will have fun and better themselves, you will have fun and better yourself too.

Theory vs Practice

Last night I was working on one of my incoming conference papers and I happened to read some criticisms to CoPs, namely Gourlay (2003) and Cox (2004), together with some bits and pieces of Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002).

Aside from the specifics, which will be treated in my paper (and probably in some further work), I got a sense of disillusionment beyond belief, more pronounced on the academics side, I must admit.

Basic, what I see here are two "fronts": academics and practitioners. The former too rigid to reformulate an old concept in ways that could be worthy being explored right here right now, the latter too - again - rigid to give some directions from the field on how to implement studies that might go beyond anedoctal stories.

Cox, for example, criticized Wenger et al. because -guess what?- they face the issue from a practitioner perspective... why did he, Cox, insert that book in his review of seminal works if it is so flawed at its basis, then? It's like saying: "The main drawback of the sun is that it emits light" DUH - I didn't know that!

Gourlay criticized the concept of community of practice and the fact Wenger didn't review the literature on teams and groups, entirely missing the fact that CoPs are neither team or groups.

What can I say? I'd like to read a serious critique to CoP theory, rather than a Gee-I-am-so-afraid-I-didn't-think-of-it-myself-that-I-better-destroy-it.

The main bug of the practitioner literature is the fact it doesn't suggest any design whatsoever for possible validation of anedoctes through clear definitions (even at the end of the book, if you just don't like to give them at the beginning GRIN), appropriate studies, intellectually balanced conclusions. Kind of saying "I know I am right because I saw it happening many times, and even if it's not scientific because I could very well have self-selected only the experience my mind would/could understand, I don't care, because all I really care about is my opinion" -- typical of practitioners I must say.

It sounded clear to me, however, that neither part had a clear idea of about a method, neither proposing (practitioners) or formulating one basing on observations (academics). I care to tell the latter, that yes, we are aware that CoP theory, practice and methodology is somehow different from anything in the past, but that's not enough to claim it invalid just because nobody did that before...! And, to academics again, get out of your discipline: there are others that employ other methods (action learning, story-telling, qualitative research, not just numbers).

So what am I so disillusioned about?

William Blake would call them mind-forged manacles, AKA cages produced and built by the mind ON the mind ABOUT the mind, that generate more misunderstandings, separation and pain.

All of this for what? For playing Who's More Right On The Topic.

Discomforting.

Idealising CoPs

Sometimes, theoreticians and practitioners alike get into idealisation of a concept. And this is a time in which, sadly, I see it happening to CoPs.

How? Let's see some examples....

A) Theoreticians

One of the most common is, over-reliance on Wenger's definitions , even when nebolous and/or incomplete, as pointed out by Gourlay (though his critique was one-sided on principle it still has some huge merits). Some go far beyond this, thinking that, if Wenger didn't theorize/describe it, then what was added from, by and to the "field" is false/inaccurate.

Another risk I see is overtheorization. Some folks pile definitions on top of definitions and what is said to be informal, dealing with implicit knowledge and not enforceable begins to have more rules and definitions than a Catholic Catechism.

Frequently, you can stumble into nonsense classifications, with people splitting hairs into definitions that aren't operational at all and, often, are all on the same level rather than being branched. The net result of it is a long long list of names, usually "community of something", that aren't characterized well enough to be useful and/or aren't ordered in a hierarchial taxonomy to be applied.


B) Practitioners

Most frequent thing you can see is the lack of and/or allergy to methods, and by that I mean any method. Now, there is a difference (I hope) between a CoP and a mess, and I'd like to see it characterized more often. Methods for both action learning/research and participatory research were hard to find and get defined, yet having a codified method gave dignity to the discipline and (especially) its findings. Wondering why academics "snob" the field...?

Another problem is the lack of conceptual definitions that could help divulge the findings of the practice. Anedoctal stories could be studied and theorized on much better in presence of some unifying concepts (which by the way would help communication, since it happens through language, which in turn is impossible without codified concepts). Still wondering why academics "snob" the field...?

A huge, almost unexplored part, is the way of "nurturing" a CoP climate, how it works, why, etc., which I believe to be a priority, if we want CoP implementation to be a widespread successful practice. Not addressing THIS part means, de facto, preventing others from reproducing CoP implementation, which means none of our findings can be tested. Again... still wondering why academincs "snob" the field...?

And finally (this is for all, practitioners and theoreticians) there is no one-size-fits-all: even CoPs are inadequate solutions for some situations.

CoPs and complexity: Conversation and culture (featuring Peter Bond)

Peter Bond who I consider to be one of my mentors, wrote yet another excellent piece "Communities of Practice and Complexity: Conversation and Culture".

CoPs, as Peter writes, have been confused with anything under the sun involving more than two persons getting together for reasons related to work.

"The self-organising quality of CoPs can put them at odds with those who would seek to control them"

Ah, the management! Aren't they the same folks speaking in terms of job descriptions, reports and external rewards? How many of them do practice the management by interaction?

"the very knowledge they create serves as the basis of their continuous reinvention."

How many times some smart*ss in some "smart group" b*tched about "not reinventing the wheel"? Such statement betrays a haughty attitude, a general lack of interest for how another person implements a solution to a common problem (the fact a problem is very common does NOT mean the implemented solution will be as common....) and a naive faith in the wheel, meaning "everything that could have been invented has already been invented, kiddo" (again, "best practices" can not be improved, there is nothing better than what is already there, etc etc).

"For them to be effective vehicles for competence development and knowledge transfer, and conducive to creative solution making, they must maintain a certain degree of autonomy (from host organisations), flexibility, and responsiveness."

OR the manager/leader/facilitator has to proactively foster autonomy, flexibility and responsiveness... ;) Meaning, a CoP needs a flexible and responsive leader that changes managerial style according to the situation, in order to foster self-organization (ie: gives more structure when CoP is chaotic, pushes on more autonomy and flexibility when CoP is too rigid).

"The key to maintaining the creativity and inventiveness of a CoP, bearing in mind it is emotional energy we are speaking of, the CoP needs to be continuously challenged by problems that excite its members, and if this is not quite enough, by appropriate forms of leadership, which will be dependent on the context from which the CoP arose."

It is important to stress out how such excitement is emotional in nature and cannot be elicited through a job description or anything rational like that. Being able to motivate and excite people means being able to be a good coach and mentor, and present managers need to have coaching and mentoring skills as well.

"The key to understanding how a community forms is the role of the independent learner, how her natural motivation is to share her knowledge of the result-of-actions, and how they are produced, which leads to the formation of social relationships."

So the key to form a community is NOT about sharing results or "best practices", but to explain even mistakes, how they happened, why,and the like. Interesting! It does, indeed, explain some things to me, such as, for example, why people spreading "best practices" (or always the same old concepts/links) tend not to be a part of a successful, vibrant community. It's because they cut off the conversation: "follow these best practices and shut the f*ck up".

"The more an individual learns and the more she shares, the greater the variety of situations and events she and her community are able to handle. The more problems she is able to solve, the more strategies the community has for dealing with unanticipated events."

And I reiterate: the more she learns (as opposed to: saying the same old things and practicing always in the same old way), the more the community is able to handle.

"Conversation is a process that can, but not always, give rise to strong emotioning, which may influence a decision to share a result-of-action, individual and collective, with others. Järvilehto also associates the production of results of action with emotions. The depth of emotioning experienced during and after the production of a result, might also influence the value an individual attaches to it. Similarly, the value placed on a particular means or process of production, and the components thereof, will also be influenced by the depth of emotioning produced."

These lines do not need any further comment *grin* The days in which people thought that conversation was a mere information exchange are OVER.

Next question is: when will they get it? ;)

Online Communication, CoPs and MDGs

Every now and then, reading here and there, you find some neat piece of information, that prompts some nice reflection.

I have some of them today, so... I've been lucky! ;)

In her Computer Mediated Communication, Jennifer Geary, a PhD candidate, digress on the characteristics of such kind of communication:

"The nuances, processes and structures associated with computer-mediated communication need to be explored and developed so that its full potential can be realised. In this article my thesis was that computer-mediated communication is a form of text paced dialogue that enables challenges associated with time and space to be transcended to unite knowledge based professionals including adult, community and distance educators throughout our “world villages”.

I had been writing for a loooooooooong time on how the supposed "inferiority" of computer-mediated communication (CMC) becomes a big advantage in some situations, for example in self-help groups for anxiety disorders, like the imponent work of Katelyn McKenna.

The second kudo for you all is something on One World, an article on building CoPs in order to achieve the MDGs. And guess what? Using ICT!

The world of dinosaurs claiming CMC communication to be "less" or "just like" f2f one are fading off.

FINALLY!

Communities of Practice and "Best Practices"

I was reading John's group and JMH posted a link to a Guide And Toolkit For Communities Of Practice so I got side-tracked and started reading the pdf files I want to comment.

On Part 1 I find a stimulating:
"Clear and visible analysis of the type, range and location of information, knowledge and expertise that the organisation collectively holds."
that reminded me of Miller's and Stuart's wonderful Network-Centric Thinking: The Internet's Challenge to Ego-Centric Institutions I bugged NG with.

On Part 2 I found an astonishing:

"CoPs have four major roles: helping, knowledge stewarding, best practice development and innovation." (p. 2)

Wait a moment!!! "Best practices" OR innovation?

As Etienne Wenger said:

"As a consequence, a community of practice that spreads throughout an organization is an ideal channel for moving [emphasis added] information, such as best practices, tips, or feedback, across organizational boundaries" (1998).

which is in fact what Xerox does, but creating best practices via CoPs is a whole other thing! That is, something meant to fail.

CoPs are communities of:

• implicit knowledge, as opposed to explicit
• practice (experimentation): as opposed to academical/theoretical understanding
• situated learning: as opposed to analytical one
• people that share, as opposed to personal achievement
• peers as opposed to (academical/managerial) hierarchies
• knowledge as opposed to tasks
• self-selecting people

For all these reasons, CoPs with a task especially when this task is about "best practices" (as an academic I know defined them: what is always best for everybody --- helloooooooooooooo) are a nonsense. Even if they were the best for most people, it still doesn't mean they would be the best thing to do in that situation...

I want to reiterate how CoPs are well-known to foster creativity (rather than "best practices") and unusual solutions (rather than solutions that are good for most people). So again, I can't see why to force them into producing "best practices" when a team would be enough.

I am perfectly conscious that I don't like the term "best practices"... and I don't like because:

1. It implies that there is nothing better, which is simply impossible, since they were made by humans;
2. It is discouraging in that, since there supposedly is "nothing better", what's the point in trying to find new solutions (Sounds like Hercules Pilasters: "Don't go ahead, there is nothing after them" YEAH RIGHT)?
3. It curbs down innovation, shaming anything that goes out of what they are able to understand (same old narcissistic refrain: "Since I can't understand it - and you know how intelligent I am, it must be wrong" YEAH RIGHT);
4. It reveals a shameful holier-than-thou attitude in who uses and backs them ("I am better than you, cause I follow best practices" YEAH RIGHT);
5. It is stupid because if something is really best it doesn't have to be crammed down other people's throats (this is what they don't understand, speaking of leadership Dan!!!!).

This one-size-fits-all approach puzzled me a whole deal even when it has nothing to do with supposed (and often self-proported) "best practices".

I also remembered of the work of Dubè, Bourhis & Jacob in 2003 and 2004 and their conclusions... their studies were specifically on intentionally formed virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) and showed how there is no such approach that is valid for any VCoP, but it has to be tailored on that specific VCoP's characteristics.

Anyway, more when I will be reading on :)