What communities of practice are you part of?
The Community of practice (CoP) approach described by Wenger and colleagues overlaps with others like the two-loop model and the collaboration spectrum (1). Wheatley and Frieze suggest CoPs are a step along the way to creating system change. The collaboration spectrum doesn’t use the label of CoP, but the spectrum illustrates the same basic set of relationships: communication can give rise to cooperation and coordination which can lead to collaboration and even Integration. Like the collaboration spectrum you don’t need to target full integration or become a system of influence, you can just stick with modes like knowledge weaving / exchange or collaborative learning if that suits the members of the CoP.
In working with Sam Bradd to develop the new images, I found myself reflecting on what I understand about CoPs from my own experience. For many years I brought people together in collaborative efforts primarily for research purposes (2). Although I didn’t call these groups CoPs, upon reflection they fit as aspirations to build systems of influence. Currently, I am facilitating three CoPs that are focused on knowledge exchange or are at an early stage of collaborative learning.
The oldest group, the Impact Assessment Collaborative started with a collaborative learning agenda. In its earliest format (before my time), the agenda was to develop comparative statistics about the impact of funding by provincial health research funders in Canada. This evolved into a new theory of change for health services research and a how-to-guide for applying the theory.
When the products of that collaboration were complete and no new project emerged for this CoP it evolved "backwards" into a group that focused on just exchanging knowledge and experience, not doing something specific. Currently, we meet monthly for dialogues on a variety of impact assessment topics brought to the fore by members of the CoP. We get good attendance and members have been known to say it is their favorite Thursday morning of the month.
My Systems Pedagogy CoP is part of my passion (like this website) to spread systems thinking. Like the Impact Assessment CoP, this group always has a lot to say, but no fixed agenda. They help me reflect on whether I am walking the talk of systems thinking and have lately been giving me some feedback on the Frameworks Collection. This is probably my favorite Friday morning of the month!
My newest CoP is quite a bit more specific and intentional. It developed out of a project motivated by a group of people who identified a gap in hospice and palliative care for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities. We started by asking why we have this gap and what can be done about it. After looking into why, the conclusion we drew was the two systems of care (hospice and palliative care; disability care) are almost completely disconnected.
In the UK there is a CoP for people working in these systems that has existed for more than 25 years. That gave us the confidence that starting to build such a community here in British Columbia might be a good strategy.
Soon we will be having our fifth gathering. Until now, we have focused on getting to know each other and surfacing our impressions of the relevant systems and what we might need to do if we want to see change. After 4 gatherings, the focus on building trust has some of the more action-oriented people wanting to know “what are we going to do?”
To ease this tension, I will use our new framework to prompt a discussion of where we are headed and what we need to do next to get there. I can’t wait to see if the framework helps us deepen the conversation and build a shared understanding of what we are hoping to become given the complexity of changing two disconnected systems.
References
- Wenger, E, RA McDermott, W Snyder. Harvard Business Press, 2002.
- Canada on the Move. Canadian Journal of Publich Health Vol 97 (suppl 1), March 2006.