1. Communities of practice the art of learning partnership
Etienne Wenger-Trayner
CSTD Community Leaders Workshop
Toronto, November 17-18, 2011

2. Orientations ways of experiencing togetherness
… meetings
… open-ended conversation
… projects
… content publishing
Community activities oriented to …
… access to
expertise
… individual
participation
… relationships
… community
cultivation
… context
In collaboration with Nancy White and John Smith

3. A social discipline of learning key processes
Reflect and self-design
Meaning
Identity
Domain
Push practice forward
Bring practice in
Learning together
Community
Practice
This slide refers to four processes that a key to the learning of a community of practice.
Bring the practice in: make sure that there are ways for practice to enter the learning space and that the diverse voices of practice are heard
Push the practice forward: drive an inquiry that pushes practitioners to inspect and develop their practice, questioning assumptions and exploring new ideas
Create a self-representation: help a community find how it can represent its learning in useful artifacts
Reflect and self-design: make sure that there is time for the community to design its learning process and reflect critically on how it is working as a learning system for the members
Boundaries
Competence/power
Create self- representation
In collaboration with Beverly Trayner

4. Learning activities a great variety
Exchanges
Productive inquiries
Building shared understanding
Producing assets
Creating standards
Formal access to knowledge
Visits
Outside sources
Pointers to resources
News
Information
Informal 1
Hot topic discussions
Stories
Broadcast inquiry
Polls
Exploring ideas
Tips
Debates 3
Document sharing
Case clinics
Community members learn together, develop their practice, and share and build knowledge through a wide variety of “learning activities.” This slide is a list of the learning activities that communities of practice typically engage in to learn together.
Dimensions
In the slide this sample of learning activities is organized along three dimensions:
1. Horizontally: Learning from and learning with
When members interact, they learn both “from” and “with” each other. They learn from each other’s experience of practice through stories, lessons learned, and advice; and they learn with each other when they act as learning partners in debating issues or exploring new solutions together. Most activities involve both processes. Even a simple request for information can lead to a debate about the relevance of the information provided. Still, it is often the case that one aspect is more salient in defining the basic structure of the activity.
On the diagram, this dimension is represented by the horizontal axis: activities that are primarily “learning from” are toward the left and activities that are primarily “learning with” are towards the right.
2. Vertically: Informal and formal activities
It is important not to confuse the self-governing nature of communities of practice with an absence of internal structure. Learning activities range from very informal to very formal activities. Some activities require almost no facilitation or organization, such as requests for just-in-time information or spontaneous conversations. Some activities are quite formal, requiring facilitation, organization, and even protocols, such as training sessions, practice-development projects, or the setting of standards.
On the diagram, this dimension is represented by the vertical access with more informal activities towards the top and more formal activities toward the bottom.
3. Inside and outside
That the main thrust of communities of practice is peer-to-peer learning does not entail members have all the knowledge and information they need internally. Finding sources of information and knowledge outside is just as much of a community activity as learning from and with each other. Inviting guests and experts or reading research papers together are ways that communities incorporate broader knowledge into their practice and keep abreast of developments in relevant fields. Such boundary-oriented activities help the community avoid the trap of becoming insular and caught in its own limitations.
On the diagram this dimension is illustrated by the two rectangles labeled as “each other” and “outside sources.” Activities located in the inner rectangle mostly involve members. Activities located on the outer band centrally involve sources of learning outside of the community.
Note
Because activities in the upper left require less commitment, communities often start there, and move progressively to activities in the lower right as they mature.
Activity clusters
In addition to locating activities along these three dimensions, the slide also groups them into clusters of related activities that have similar learning effects. These clusters represent variations on a theme and are represented by the bubbles on the diagram:
Sharing: information, stories, tips, documents
Productive inquiries: asking for help, working on a case, exploring an idea
Negotiating shared understanding: discussing a topic, reading a paper
Producing assets: documentation, bibliographies, tools,
Creating standards: benchmarks, maturity scales, warranting knowledge
Formal access to knowledge: training, practice transfer, invited expert
Visits: visiting a member’s site, a community website
While this sample of learning activities cannot be exhaustive, it is large and varied. Obviously, not all communities engage in all these activities. In most cases, this would not be a good goal to strive for; many communities function very well with a small subset of these activities. But having a broad panorama of various kinds of activities is a useful tool. It can open the imagination of members and facilitators as to what their community could do to foster learning together. This is mainly a menu that community leaders can choose from to help organize their communities. 2
Reading group
Joint events
Project/ after-action reviews
Documenting practice
Guests
From
Each other
With
Visits
Peer assist
Collections
Joint response 7
Field trips
Problem solving 4
Formal practice transfer
Practice fairs
Role play
Learning projects
Boundary collaboration
Q&A 6
Mutual benchmark
Case studies 5
Help desk
Models of practice
Training and workshops
Formal
Warranting
Invited
speaker
Systematic scan
External benchmark

5. Community rhythm finding the heartbeat of a learning partnership
Each community needs to find its own rhythm of activities, interactions, and events to fit into its members’ lives.
Too slow and it feels like not much is happening and the community.
Too fast and people are overwhelmed and give up.

6. Forms of participation a common picture
transactional
outsiders
lurkers
peripheral
occasional
experts
alumni
active
beginners
Communities of practice usually involve multiple levels of participation. Because involvement can produce learning in multiple ways, the boundaries of a community of practice are more flexible than those of organizational units or teams. Typical categories of membership and participation include:
Core group—a small group of people whose passion and engagement energize and nurture the community
Active participant—members who are recognized as practitioners and define the community (though they may not be of one mind as to what the community is about)
Occasional participant—someone who only participates when the topic is of special interest
Peripheral participant—people who belong to the community but with less engagement and authority, either because they are still newcomers or because they do not have as much personal commitment to the practice
Transactional participation—outsiders who interact with the community occasionally to receive or provide a service without being members themselves
Passive access —a wide range of people who have access to artifacts produced by the community, such as its publications, its website, or its tools.
Note that people will move in and out of these categories over the life of a community. Interactions and knowledge flows between these constituencies create many opportunities for learning and are a sign of community health. Different types of participants in a community of practice have different perspectives, needs, and ambitions.
When are different levels a problem?
Usually, a layered structure with various levels of participation is not a problem. It is a natural state for a community. But there is a need for balance. On the one hand, peripheral members can be marginalized, but on the other, core members can be distracted and even overwhelmed by the demands of a wider periphery.
There are cases where this situation can be a red flag and require active intervention. This is when the distinction between levels of participation reflects a distinction that comes from outside the community. For instance, if the core group is entirely from headquarters and people in the field are peripheral participants, this is usually a situation that is going to require some corrective action.
core group
leaders
coordinator
sponsors

7. An ecology of leadership community nurturing roles
Coordinator
Subgroup leader
Cybrarian
Technology steward
Community roles
Convener
Core group member
Subject matter expert
Networker/weaver
Broker
Outpost/scout
Questioner
Member roles
Support roles
This slide describes typical leadership roles found in communities of practice. These roles a important. No matter how much external support they receive, all communities of practice ultimately depend on internal initiative for their development. This leadership, however, is not of the leader-and-follower type. It is diverse and distributed. Rather than think in terms of leaders and followers, it is more useful to think of roles in a community of practice in terms of an ecology of leadership. In this ecology, everyone can potentially take a leadership role.
Types of roles
There are many leadership roles in a community of practice, some formal, some informal, some that can be assigned, some that emerge over the course of the community’s life. They fall under three main categories (community and support roles are in the same column on the slide):
Community roles
Some roles correspond to clear functions in the cultivation and support of the community. They are usually assigned explicitly to a member or a group, who is then expected to fulfill the attendant responsibilities. These functional roles include:
Coordinator: running the day-to-day functions of keeping the community going
Practice group leader: taking charge of a subgroup for a specific purpose
Cybrarian: taking care of the online resources of the community
Technology steward: responsibility for making best use of existing and new technology for the specific needs of the community.
Member roles
Some roles are integral part of membership. They usually are not assigned to people, but emerge from interactions in the community and/or from characteristics of members. These emergent roles include
Convener: senior practitioner(s) who can hold the inquiry space of the community and invite members with legitimacy
Core group member: member dedicated to the development of the community
Expert: contributing exceptional mastery of an aspect of the practice
Mentor: taking newer members under their wing
Broker: using membership in multiple communities to bring knowledge and perspective across practices in ways that make sense
Weaver/networker: connecting people and helping build relationships
Scout or outpost: looking for the new things, going to conferences, exploring possible futures for the community
Community support roles
Some roles are assigned but need not be fulfilled by members. These support roles include:
Facilitator: a professional who supports community processes, and meetings
Administrative support: logistical support to those who take leadership
Journalist: someone who helps produce documents such as stories or codification of practice
Help desk: point persons for requests for help or information
Role assignment processes
The bottom arrow on the slide lists a variety of processes by which people take on roles in their community. To the left are processes where the assignment is explicit and to the right are processes by which the role emerges.
Tacit: some roles do not involve any decision or assignment. People take them on in the course of their participation in the community, whether recognized or unrecognized.
Self-selection: in many communities, people volunteer for roles, either because the role interests them or out of “good citizenship.”
Nomination: people are often asked to take on a role by other members who think they would be good at it.
Rotation: in some communities, people take turn assuming roles that involve work or authority, such as the coordinator role.
Election: some communities organize elections for key functional roles, with candidates “running for office.”
Interview: leaders in various roles are discovered in the process of interviewing members (see interview guide).
Mandate: in some organizations, key roles such as coordinators are assigned to people as an organizational mandate. While this process usually ensures that the person will have enough time assigned to the role, it is important to consider the legitimacy and acceptability of the person for such a role in the eyes of the community.
Organizational position: in some organizations, people take on a role such as community coordinator or expert because of their position in the organization. This is not uncommon, but it presents the risk of conflating organizational roles and community roles.
Note
Note that the roles described in this section do not characterize individuals. Rather they are aspects of leadership, which can be combined in the same person, concentrated in a small subgroup or more widely distributed through the community. In fact, a more distributed responsibility for community cultivation is a sign of maturity in a community. In all cases, those who undertake them must have intrinsic legitimacy in the community. (Some organizational leadership roles are described under “Organizational context” below.)
Facilitator
Assistant
Help desk attendant
Journalist
Elected
Volunteer
Appointed
Consensus
Tacit
Assigned
Emergent
Rotation
Self-selected

8. Self-design activities …enabling distributed community cultivation
Enabling participation
Convene meetings
Initiate activities
Facilitate interactions
Enabling reification
Gardening website
Records and summaries
Capturing learning
Distribute leadership
Cultivate core group
Form leadership groups
Coach leaders
Learning agenda
Challenges of practice
Emerging issues
Hot topics
Community
cultivation
Self-care
Pursue own learning
Meet other leaders
Visit other communities
Backchannel work
Keep in touch
Invite members to act
Notes and newsletters
Assessment
Health checks
Monitor indicators
Value-creation stories
Community building
Manage boundaries
Welcome newcomers
Build identity and trust
Institutional brokering
Talking with sponsors
Making business case
Budgeting

9. How to get going … the first three steps
Potential members
What are your challenges?
Who do you talk to?
Is there a community?
1. Conversations
What do you think of the idea?
Are you willing to help make it happen?
What would that mean to you?
Who else could help?
2. Internal leaders
Choose a launch approach
Plan a launch activity
Prepare a follow-up
Do it
3. Launch design

10. Etienne Wenger-Trayner
Thank you!
Etienne Wenger-Trayner