Communities of Practice
a capability-development approach to strategy
Interactive workshops
by Etienne Wenger
A modular syllabus
My workshops on communities of practice consist of a set of modules on different topics—from introductory to advanced. The number of modules covered in a given workshop depends on the length of the workshop, the audience, and the topics that are relevant. In many cases, this choice is made in advance. For small audiences, we can even decide together which topics to address as we proceed.
Typically, a module will take 2-4 hours, but the actual length of each module will vary depending not only on the topic, but also on the size of the audience, the interest in the topic, and the familiarity of participants with basic concepts. For instance, a training module for community leaders can easily take all day or more. It is not recommended to try cover more than three modules in a day. In my experience, it is easy to underestimate the need for clarifying basic concepts and principles, even with a relatively experienced audience.
Each module starts with a brief presentation, followed by a general discussion of the ideas presented. Then we often form small groups to apply the concepts, frameworks, and methods to a variety of situations. These activities assume that participants are involved in leading, developing, or sponsoring some communities or a community-based initiative.
These workshops are very interactive. The purpose of these modules is to establish the basic as well as explore some leading-edge issues in communities of practice as a key to managing knowledge and driving innovation. All the modules engage participants in a shared exploration of important issues rather than merely delivering ready-made wisdom. We will constantly move back and forth between what is being done at leading firms and current issues in participants’ organizations. The idea is to push the envelope and combine our perspectives to explore emerging issues and possibilities. Even though there is an initial agenda, much of the content is determined by the interests and questions of participants. We usually end the workshop exploring opportunities for action in the context of the organization of participants and outlining next steps.
The modules described in this document include:
I. Introductory modules
II. Community development modules
III. Organizational initiative modules
IV. Theory modules
I. Introductory modules
These introductory modules lay the foundations. They provide stories and definitions, and outline some basic characteristics of communities of practice. They also explore the value of communities of practice for organizations.
In this introductory module we will look at examples of communities of practice in various contexts. We will define communities of practice and contrast them with other organizational structures that participants may be more familiar with, including workgroups, teams, and task forces. What are communities of practice? What are the key characteristics that make them a natural "social knowledge structure"? Where can you find them? What examples do you know?
The experience of participation:
We explore our own experience of participation in a community:
An increasing number of organizations are turning to communities of practice
as a key to their knowledge strategy. They find that it is a way to put
practitioners themselves in charge of managing their knowledge, making knowledge
management the responsibility of the entire organization. What is the
significance of building communities among actual practitioners in terms of
potential for learning? How does a community fit within an organization and how
do people belong to communities as well as to other units? What are the trends
that make this approach to knowledge relevant today? How should knowledge
management be conceived of from this perspective?
The value of communities of practice:
We explore the short- and long-term value of communities of practice to organizations and to members:
II. Community development modules
These modules focus on the level of communities. They address practical issues involved in developing communities of practice in organizations. They assume that participants are familiar with basic concepts.
As more and more organizations become involved in cultivating communities of practice, we are learning more about community development in organizational contexts. What are some principles that are emerging regarding the work of fostering the development of a community? What are the stages of development that communities of practice tend to go through? What to watch for? How to balance active intervention with natural community-development processes?
Diagnosis:
Taking a real community of practice as an example, we use the development principles as a diagnostic tool to analyze how well the community is doing:
As communities evolve they go through a series of stages of development. This module takes up the development stages introduced in Module 3 and explores the challenge of taking a community through each stage. What are the issues to be addressed at each stage? What are the activities and roles typical of each stage? What are signs that a community is ready to move on?
Case work:
Members of communities of practice learn much by helping each other solve problems. We will select a few cases of communities at various stages of development and work on them together.
A key activity is the launch of a community, including the design of the launch process, a launch workshop, and follow up. What are the decisions to make about the design of a launch process? What are the elements to pay attention to and the questions to ask?
Community design and launch:
We simulate the launch of a community with a design template that addresses the various areas of community design.
Communities often reach a stage where they need to reconsider their developmental process and sometimes even their overall direction. A good way to do this is to involve members in a renewal event. This is a bit like a launch event, but with the purpose of renewing the community. Where have we been and where are we going? Should we continue? If so, how? If not, how do we take care of our legacy?
Community renewal:
We engage participants in a process of reflection on the life of the community, on its rhythms and accomplishments, and on possible ways to proceed.
Leadership in a community is not usually a matter of leader and followers. Rather it is more useful to think of a community as involving a whole ecology of leadership. Indeed people can play many leadership roles in a community of practice, including community coordinator, event facilitator, thought leader, mentor, networker, broker (bringing knowledge from other communities), knowledge manager, question manager, sponsor, etc. Some of these roles can be assigned, while some simply emerge. What are typical roles? How to understand these roles as they evolve with the development of the community? What are the requirements of these roles and characteristics of those who take them on? How to prepare people for these roles? When is it important to be a member or to be an outsider?
Job descriptions:
Participants prepare job descriptions for a variety of leadership roles in a community. They present it in the form of a job interview.
One role that has turned out to be key to the success of a community of practice is coordination, the act of intentionally cultivating a community from the inside. It can be fulfilled by one person or by a small team. (A coordinator is usually a member of the community. Some communities also need one or more facilitator(s), who may or may not be a member but helps the community with some of its activities.) What are the functions of a community coordinator? How does the role evolve from the early days of discovering and launching a community to the later processes of sustaining and renewing it? Who is in the best position to take on such a role? What skills do they need? What training do they require? How does a coordinator work with a core group?
An educational event for community coordinators:
Participants design a two-day training event for community coordinators:
Communities of practice that are having a high impact on their members and on the organization share a number of characteristics. They assume a high level of intentional stewardship for their domain. They have a core group of passionate individuals, but they invite multiple forms of participation and manage their boundaries explicitly. They engage in a deep inquiry anchored in the details of their practice. What factors make these activities possible? What are the conditions under which such communities can flourish? What are roles and responsibilities associated with high impact?
Diagnostic case work:
Looking at various communities of practice, we explore the level of impact they are having:
Communities of practice come in many different sizes, but the combination of globalization and communication/interaction technologies has created new demands for large communities and for communities that cover large areas. What are the specific challenges of such communities? What are typical structures used to deal with size and geographical distribution? What are boundary issues that need to be addressed? What are roles and responsibilities associated with weaving together distributed subgroups in a "fractal" community?
Case work:
Consider a large, distributed community of practice:
This module focuses on the online aspects of communities of practice. As a key to the management of knowledge, communities are increasingly turning to technology as a tool in their knowledge-stewarding role. We are finding new roles for technology in support of these communities—not as a replacement for them. What community activities are amenable to technology support? What are the issues faced by communities that interact mostly online? What are the issues faced by mostly face-to-face communities that add an online component? What are the dimensions of the landscape of useful technologies? What do these dimensions reveal about communities? What is our personal experience with community-oriented technology? What kinds of systems are useful for what? What are the pitfalls and limitation of technology? What is your experience of technology?
A technology platform:
We review platforms that participants have been using, taking into account the criteria discussed in the presentation.
III. Organizational strategy modules
These modules focus on the level of organizations. They address issues involved in starting and sustaining community-based knowledge initiatives, from developing a knowledge strategy for the whole organization to creating the support structures that will enable an organization to integrate communities in its operations.
An increasing number of organizations are focusing on building strategic capabilities and using communities of practice as a centerpiece of this effort. To them, knowledge management is not an operational, but a strategic question. It is a matter of intentionally managing strategic knowledge assets to develop the capabilities that can ensure the organization’s sustained success. A community approach to this purpose involves practitioners centrally in this process by supporting their role as "managers" of their collective capabilities. They do this by focusing on knowledge domains that they care about and that have a direct impact on the business. Communities of practice are then a vehicle to connect their identities as practitioners to the strategy of their organization. The connection is two-way. Practitioners ensure that they develop the capabilities needed to sustain the strategy of the organization. Conversely, they contribute to the strategic thinking of the organization from their perspective as practitioners by cultivating an awareness of their evolving capabilities’ potential to open new possibilities. What are the knowledge implications of the organization’s strategy? How do communities fit within this overall knowledge strategy? How do communities contribute to the strategic thinking? What business case can be made for such an approach? Where is this leading and what picture of a knowledge organization is emerging?
Strategic connections:
Participants build a business case for a community-based knowledge initiative in a company and develop a presentation for management:
Small groups role-play the presentation to a management team composed of the other participants, including some skeptics.
An increasing number of organizations, knowledge management includes extensive knowledge initiatives based on communities of practice. From this perspective, knowledge management entails not merely information storage and flow, but a process of organizational transformation through which communities gain a rightful place in the functioning of the organization. Unlike traditional organizational transformation processes, however, these initiatives engage primarily with the informal aspects of the organizations and address formal issues to the extent that they enable informal processes. These initiatives therefore need to combine bottom-up community development with top-down legitimization. Unlike formal change efforts that require a lockstep process, community-based initiatives can proceed incrementally, building on experience with communities in the organization. How to get started? What decisions need to be made? What are the typical phases of such an initiative? What are emerging principles? What resources are necessary?
Designing a plan for communities of practice knowledge initiative
Participants develop an overall approach to deploying communities of practice in their organization as a way to manage knowledge
Leveraging the power of community in organizations requires a subtle dance between for the formal and the informal, through which they each contribute what each is good for. There is a profound difference between institutionalizing communities themselves by formalizing them into regular organizational structures, and institutionalizing the fact that communities are part of the organization, that is, recognizing within the formal organization that the informal has a place. This module introduces five organizational structures that help connect the organization and the communities. How to institutionalize the importance of communities of practice without formalizing them more than necessary? What organizational structures can support this fine balance? How are resources allocated and where do communities fit in the process? How is are their contributions recognized? How to connect communities of practice with other organizational units that deal with knowledge and learning?
Designing a formal system for the informal:
Considering the five organizational structures in your organization, explore the interaction of formal and informal systems and how the design could be improved:
Organizations that have deployed communities of practice on a large scale have provided resources for a support team of community builders who help community leaders in their responsibilities, provide coordination among communities, ensure access to knowledge, and more generally run the knowledge initiative. This team often convenes a community of practice for community leaders. What are the possible roles for such a support team? What is it charter? What skills does the team need? Who should be on it and where should it be "located" organizationally?
Chartering a support team
We build the charter of a support team using a chartering template.
Communities of practice imply new forms of organizational leadership, both within communities and around them. These new leaders do not rely on control and traditional reporting relationship, but use their organizational authority to enable communities to find their voice, expand their inquiry, and contribute to the organization’s strategy. Their leadership provides an active link between the formal and the informal aspects of an organization. What are the different forms of sponsorship that are typical of a community-based knowledge initiative? What roles can managers play? How does community sponsorship differ from traditional management?
Emerging forms of leadership:
Thinking about your organization, define the ecology of forms of leadership in and around communities of practice:
Organizations have developed ways to assess their performance in order to decide how to allocate resources. When communities of practice require organizational resources, they often need some process for establishing the value they create. Doing so also help community leaders and members appreciate what the community can contribute and where it could be going. But assessing the value created by communities of practice is not a simple matter because this value manifests outside the community and with a delay, when members apply their knowledge to their participation in projects. What are the dimensions of a knowledge value web? How to understand the relationships between community activities and organizational performance? How to make sense of the value being created?
A value-creation measurement plan:
Using a project-design template, we take an organization through the questions needed to build a measurement system for communities of practice:
Once communities of practice are established, organizations face the second-order problem of interconnecting them into a learning system. The boundaries between communities of practice are a fertile ground for innovation. In fact, the innovation potential of an organization can be defined as a combination on the one hand of strong communities with deep practices, and on the other, of intense boundary activities that connect these communities into a learning system. How to conceive of innovation processes in the context of communities of practice? What are various processes for crossing boundaries?
Weaving communities of practice into a learning system:
Considering your organization, explore the interaction of formal and informal systems and how the design could be improved:
IV. Theoretical modules
These modules explore the theoretical underpinnings of communities of practice. They are designed for more academic audiences.
We discuss the basic principles of a social theory of learning. Why is such a theory useful? What are the basic concepts? How does it differ from other learning theories? What are its limits?
Implications of theories of learning:
General discussion of how our theories influence the ways we operate in the world and how we design environments for students and workers.
This module builds on the foundations of the preceding module to provide more in-depth of the theory. Concepts include the duality of participation and reification, the construction of identity through participation and non-participation, modes of belonging, and a theory of power based on the construction of identities in a community.
This module addresses the broader implications of this approach to knowledge and learning. How can the framework of communities of practice be used to understand the structure of large-scale learning systems, such as a company, a city, a region, a country, or the world. How does this perspective apply across sectors? What does it suggest for education? What roles does it imply for government? What picture of a world learning system is emerging?
Let us imagine the world as a learning system:
If you were the CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) of the world, how would you go about running your knowledge initiative?
This module presents a new research project to expand the community of practice framework to address issues of scale. The goal is to theorize learning as individual trajectories constructed in the context large-scale social learning systems. This module address themes that are similar the last module, but it focuses on the five elements of the research agenda, including the expansion of the theoretical framework, the uncovering of relevant trends in learning, the design implications of the framework, the collection of evidence in the form of stories, and the reflection on the overall methodology.
Suggested reading
For the application of a community-based approach to knowledge in organizations:
Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. By Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William Snyder, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.
Communities of practice: the organizational frontier. By Etienne Wenger and William Snyder. Harvard Business Review. January-February 2000, pp. 139-145.
Knowledge management is a donut: shaping your knowledge strategy with communities of practice. By Etienne Wenger. Ivey Business Journal, January 2004.
For technology issues:
Supporting communities of practice: a survey of community-oriented technologies. By Etienne Wenger. Self-published report available at www.ewenger.com/tech, 2001.
For in-depth coverage of the learning theory:
Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. By Etienne Wenger, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
For a vision of where the learning theory is going:
Learning for a small planet: a research agenda. By Etienne Wenger, available at www.ewenger.com/research, 2004.