Why Communities of Practice?

vickywalker
Oct 20, 2022
4 min read

The ultimate goal of a professional learning community (PLC)/community of practice (PoC) can be summed up in three words: improved professional achievement. Although the term has grown to encompass a wide variety of concepts and practices, a professional learning community/Community of Practice (PLC or PoC) is a group of people who are motivated by a vision and passion for organizational and professional improvement and who support one another towards meeting those goals.

When talking about communities of practice, there are two names you may hear: Professional Learning Community (PLC) and Community of Practice (PoC). Your team can decide which term you prefer. However, PLC is often tied to Education initiatives, and PoC is often corporate.

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A Community of Practice (CoP) represents a collective effort to enhance professional learning, promotes and sustains the learning of all professionals in the community, builds knowledge through inquiry, and analyses and uses data for reflection and improvement (Bolam et al., 2005).

The term Community of Practice (CoP) was coined in the early 1990s by educational theorist, Etienne Wenger, to describe “a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis.”

ProSci's (2021) recent Best Practices in Change Management study revealed that 45% of participants leveraged a change agent network. Change agent networks are universally important, but they look different from one organization to the next. They may include one particular role, practitioners from every department, or a mix of individuals, such as business unit leaders, change practitioners and the executive team. However you create one, know that networks matter. They help amplify the impact you’re bringing to the organization and help keep your change management momentum moving.

As many organizations move from hierarchical models to flatter, networked models, organizations are looking for the most effective ways to support greater collaboration across departmental, organizational, remote or hybrid working, and geographic divides. Virtual CoPs, aided by the latest collaboration technologies, are an excellent tool for this. They help people who share a common area of practice come together to learn from one another and, in doing so, advance individual levels of productivity, professionalism, and performance.

CoPs are distinct from other internal groups, such as departments, units and project teams. They are self-selecting and have fluid goals around learning rather than strict, management-driven objectives and outputs.

While CoPs can take a variety of forms, they are generally positioned within an organization to achieve the following:

1. Support a continual cycle of learning and doing

2. Bring together a range of perspectives to address critical challenges

3. Link people with shared functional expertise across organizational boundaries

4. Ensure “mission-critical” knowledge is accessible to those who need it

5. Supporting the use of tacit and explicit knowledge through reflection, interpretation and feedback

Focus on DATA

Communities of Practice create a group learning environment in which learners collaboratively work on problems facing the individual or group to advance and improve the professional environment. According to Dufour (2004, p. 10), "A reflective cycle must be initiated – that is, a cycle in which every learner team participates in an ongoing process of identifying the current level of achievement, establishing a goal to improve the current level, working together to achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of progress." Focusing on results requires careful monitoring of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and objectives to ensure that the team objectives are met.

Who should be involved?

A PoC begins with a group of employees committed to building professional knowledge. Professional Communities of Practice can merge to form learning networks across an organization. Ideally, people are grouped according to interest and are not placed in the same departmental groups they work within. Creating PoCs means that individuals - professionals - can work towards solving a problem they are passionate about - a passion project.

Measuring Success

According to Pyrko, Dorfler, and Eden (2016), for a CoP to be successful, it must generate value for the organization and its members. Making sure this happens is primarily the responsibility of one or more CoP facilitators. While CoPs can be self-organizing, it’s highly recommended that one or more people act as facilitators to ensure the group remains active and relevant to its members.

According to Wenger and Trayner (2015), CoPs should be routinely monitored to assess their organizational contribution. This can be done through the measurement of group activity (quantitative) and the active collection of stories and perspectives from group members on how the CoP contributes directly to their work (qualitative). Information gathered should be routinely shared with group members and key stakeholders within the organization to demonstrate the organizational value of the CoP and drive member engagement. Types of measures that can be used to assess the productivity and value of a CoP include the following:

Quantitative

1. Proportion of active/contributing members among all members

2. Total number of questions and/or discussion threads posted (broken down by member- vs. facilitator-initiated and topic)

3. Average number of responses per question/discussion

4. Proportion of questions/discussions that received at least one response

5. Number of outputs/products produced

6. Number of resources (e.g., tools, guidelines) shared

Qualitative

1. Member stories of how knowledge generated through CoP positively impacted their program/project (can be in the form of a written narrative or video clip)

2. List of promising/good practices shared

3. List of ideas or innovations shared

4. Examples of successful peer-to-peer learning instances

5. Member feedback and suggestions on group management gathered through routine surveys

CoPs can be a great way to accelerate knowledge exchange and learning across the organization, but they require some work.

Hopefully, these tips will get you off to a strong start.