102 – Communities of Practice, Part 2

Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. My name’s Lucie Hazelgrove Planel, I’m a Social Impact Scientist and I’m here today with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS. Hi David.

[00:00:17] David: Hi Lucie. What are we discussing today?

[00:00:21] Lucie: I would like to continue on our discussion about communities of practice. So we had a previous episode which was generally looking at what communities of practice are and how IDEMS is involved in different communities of practice.

So communities of practice often need management, I think we discovered, and I wanted to dig into that and find out what sort of management or guidance or, prodding or opportunities, what it means to create a community of practice, create, again, it isn’t the right word.

[00:00:53] David: I understand, I think, where you’re going with this. And I want to have a disclaimer at the beginning that there are real experts out there who are really studying this academically and looking into this. And what we’re discussing is much more observational and it doesn’t necessarily cut across.

But I think there are some interesting reflections on that element that the idea of a community of practice is all well and good. And if you sort of have looked at some of the research, there’s amazing things that can come out. The reality of it is, it is the right people doing the right hard work to make communities of practice work.

It is not a given just because you decide something will be a community of practice or because you bring a set of people together, you’re going to actually form one.

[00:01:39] Lucie: This is a great place to start then. Who is part of the community of practice? How is that often decided? Have you ever had experience where either that you have had to make decisions or where you have seen members not perhaps being productive members of the community.

[00:01:54] David: So certainly people not being productive members of the community, that is a common feature. But, actually, decisions around who’s included and who’s not, this is very much dependent on the nature of the community of practice.

We’ve been involved in communities of practice which have grown almost organically, and others where it’s been around funders actually creating them. Interestingly, I think I had preconceived notions that these should be organic.

[00:02:28] Lucie: Who’s we here? Sorry, is that IDEMS or?

[00:02:31] David: That’s a good question. I’ve been involved with partners in both sort of types. And we as IDEMS have been involved in a few more through other members of the team in different ways. I think here I need to talk to my personal experience rather than institutional experience.

[00:02:51] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:02:51] David: Having been on both of these, my preconceived notion was always that this is something which should be organic, inclusive, you know, really… I guess that a community of practice is something which emerges more than something which is designed. No, that’s probably not true. There are cases where emergent communities of practice do form, but I’m not sure that those communities of practice are more effective or more impactful than actually designed communities of practice, which might be more exclusive in certain ways, such as a funder forming a community of practice between their grantees, and these more inclusive approaches.

I believe both can be extremely productive and in some sense, the problem with the organic ones is that they lack direction, and almost by definition they’re organically emerging. It’s something which brings people together, rather than the ones which are formed, where they actually have that sense of vision and that sense of direction, which the people in the community are actually buying into.

This is a generalisation, I can think of examples either way on where there’s formed communities of practice which don’t really have direction and there’s emergent ones which do. But I do think that it’s recognising where our own internal biases, one way or another, can actually narrow our thinking. I’ve had to do that with respect to things like communities of practice. And I should be clear that actually my understanding of communities of practice has been really deepened by being part of communities of practice, which are formed with direction.

I’m very grateful to the McKnight Foundation for the work that we’re part of related to their agroecological support in Eastern Southern Africa, West Africa, the Andes, where those communities of practice have now been established for over 10 years. I got involved halfway through that history. No, sorry, they’ve been around for closer to 20 years, and I’ve been involved for over half that time, because I’ve been involved for 10 years! [Laughs].

I was underestimating that. I just remembered being part of the 10 year reunion, but that was about 6 years ago. Anyway. But yes, these structures, I’m so grateful to have been part of this and seeing how they can evolve over time with that sense of direction and long term support. And I think there is an element of actually patience required in certain ways.

[00:05:53] Lucie: So, if members are productive members of the community, then you can’t expect everybody to suddenly find their place and see how they can participate, but sometimes it takes quite a few years for them to find how they can support others.

[00:06:08] David: Exactly, for how individuals, whatever that means, that could be individual organisations, individual projects, individual people, but how individuals come together as community is something which just takes time. It’s something where if you’ve got a three year program, there’s no point putting a community of practice in it.

If you’ve got a vision for something which is going to be ten years or more, then a community of practice is probably a good way to enable emergent ideas to form and collaborations to form within that community. So I think there’s definitely, elements of this approach where I believe having vision bearers within a community driving the community forward, it creates tension because that’s not what everyone wants from the community.

But I think it is something which the best communities I’ve been part of have had elements of drivers taking the vision of the community forward, changing even direction of the community in slight ways, and then finding ways to bring others with them on that journey. I think this is a really important point.

Now, I am aware of many initiatives, which I think would be called or would be defined as community practice, where that vision bearing actually leads to division, and you actually have a splitting of a community. But I think that’s not always a bad thing, that can lead to there being two different communities taking things forward.

And of course, there are older structures that are not defined as community of practices, but probably emerged from them. I’m thinking now of things like the societies and the professional organisations.

[00:08:00] Lucie: Yes, that’s true.

[00:08:01] David: Where these are, in many ways, emergent from communities of practices, formalising their structures, in some cases over hundreds of years. And it’s really interesting to see both, I’ve got experiences within a number of such organisations, to see both the power of these organisations and how, despite their long history, they’re still trying to find their place in the same way that the emergent communities of practice are, in some ways. The idea of well, what would it mean to become a member? Who’s a member? Are individuals members? Are institutional members?

These are things they’ve been thinking about for years, and there’s no easy answer. And those type of organisations do bring with them prestige because of their long history. But in many other ways, they mirror a lot of what I observe within communities of practice.

[00:09:00] Lucie: Yeah, but they’re sort of, you’re thinking of academic type of societies, are you? Like discipline specific. Are there societies there which are not discipline specific? I’m just wondering.

[00:09:12] David: Oh, that’s an interesting question. The ones that come to mind to me are all discipline specific.

[00:09:16] Lucie: I’m sort of wondering if there’s a difference in terms of impact, basically.

[00:09:20] David: Where you feel a community of practice is really around the impact it has, as opposed to these societies which are around the discipline that they promote. I would argue that the societies all emerged because that discipline was having impact.

[00:09:35] Lucie: Yeah, like a community of practice is normally defined, it doesn’t need to try and change the world. It’s more just about sharing knowledge of something that they’re all interested in.

[00:09:44] David: Yes, and that’s what, you know, the community of practice, this is where those societies, that sort of long held instances of people who have a common practice actually wanting to have a way of getting together and sharing knowledge and sharing learning. I don’t believe that in the discussions around community of practice, these sorts of societies are a central example.

Communities of practice are an emergent sort of approach, but it’s an approach which actually resembles…

[00:10:22] Lucie: They’re not emergent in the sense, like in craft work they’re not emergent, people have been talking about them for a long time. But they are in terms of companies and the more business world, perhaps.

[00:10:34] David: Let me just check with you on that. My understanding is by emergent, I mean within the last 50 years.

[00:10:40] Lucie: Well, I think it’s about 50 years. Yeah.

[00:10:42] David: Okay, yeah, 50 to 60 years. Exactly. And to me, in terms of if you think of the old societies, these are hundreds of years.

[00:10:52] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:10:53] David: Actually many of them have been established over hundreds of years and survived the ups and downs in different ways that I think is a learning point for communities of practice in general. Because this is part of where what might a community of practice become and what role might it play in society? These are really interesting questions.

And I don’t know that long term, if you have a sort of longer term view on this. And I know in our society we don’t tend to have those long term views anymore. A lot is seen as being, the world is changing very fast, everything’s moving fast. I have a feeling that actually things like communities of practice, because you need to be patient for them to emerge and evolve, actually, if you want something to become inclusive, maybe it needs to become inclusive over a very long period of time in some cases, rather than seeing the communities of practice always needing to be everything from the start.

[00:12:00] Lucie: Straightaway.

[00:12:01] David: And I think this is, to me, if we recognise that in essence the concept of community of practice is still relatively young compared to the concept of, let’s say, professional societies, then there is an element, I believe, of the fact that we are potentially still looking at young communities of practice. And either communities of practice might be considered as things which come and go, but if we are finding that some communities of practice endure, I wonder what shape that will take and how they will have to evolve to do that.

And that’s something I’ve thought about a lot with some of these communities of practice which have existed now for well over 10 years and we are in the process of discussing how they change in nature and what becomes of them.

[00:12:56] Lucie: If I can go back to the example of craftwork though.

[00:12:59] David: Yeah.

[00:12:59] Lucie: So if you think of a group of artisans in, I’m going to say in a city, who were architects or something. Sorry, I’ve got a particular example in my head, and it’s not architects like in the UK sense. It might be in Niger, in fact, something written by Trevor Marchant, if I’m not wrong. Something where there’s a group of artisans who work in a traditional sense. As a community, it isn’t closed, perhaps it is closed, but it has been maintained for centuries, as in the traditions, the ways of working have been maintained for centuries. And yet they still evolve and learn new techniques and new ideas, come up with questions as to whether they can let new people in.

Perhaps you haven’t followed the sort of traditional way of becoming an apprentice or something like that. I don’t think community of practice is a new idea, perhaps it hasn’t been theorised enough.

[00:13:53] David: Okay, no, this is a really good point. The ideas behind communities of practice I think they go back as long as you want because, as I say, these ideas are probably the same as many other forms of collaboration which form.

So the concept of retrofitting community of practice ideas onto existing structures, that I absolutely understand and I agree. I was thinking more of people actually trying to start communities of practice. This is where actually having them either, as we discussed before, and this is where we started the discussion on them emerging or them being designed.

But I absolutely agree there is a third route, which is to recognise that something which has existed before is a community of practice. And maybe that’s what we should be recognising in terms of these societies, that these are a form of community of practice. The problem with that, which I think is interesting is when you’re retrofitting, you probably want to be learning from their structures, rather than trying to direct their structures.

Whereas the community of practice literature research piece, the reason it’s so valuable and interesting is if you’re starting something new, these are sort of like guiding principles you can almost use to try and understand how to build something which is going to work and actually add value. That’s the key point. Communities of practice really exist because they add value to the practitioners.

[00:15:39] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:15:39] David: If they don’t add value to the practitioners, community of practices fail. That’s almost by definition.

[00:15:47] Lucie: So, if we come back to the idea of a vision, then, I’m wondering what the relationship between having a sort of visionary community of practice and having a…

[00:15:56] David: No, the example you gave is a really good example of one where I’d see this has been retroactively identified as a community practice, but it has a vision about maintaining what it is that they’re about.

[00:16:07] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:16:08] David: A vision is also about what you’re not as well as what you are and that seems to be a part of what they’re describing, or what you’re describing in that context. If you have a vision of what you’re not as well as what you are, then it helps you to actually put your boundaries on a community of practice. This is one of the reasons that if I think about societies, there has been huge multiplication around such structures because when you define what you’re not, people who are excluded or feel excluded look for community elsewhere. And so they either create something new or they find something else which fits them.

[00:16:49] Lucie: There’s a nice example of that, I think, which you’ve given before, where statisticians did not want to be thought of as data scientists, and so data science became a completely different discipline.

[00:17:00] David: Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s not quite how I’d frame it. Statisticians got very narrowly focused on their definition of what good statistics was, and then people who were doing things which were not considered good statistics but were really important were therefore not excluded from that, undervalued within that community. And therefore they found community elsewhere.

That’s a way of framing it, which I think is very common in different contexts where those who are valuable but not valued within a community can find themselves in a situation where that value is then separated out and recognised elsewhere.

[00:17:50] Lucie: We’ve talked about boundaries in communities of practice, and I’m wondering if there’s a sort of question of size. Should there be size limits? And I’m leaning towards no.

[00:17:59] David: I think the interesting part of that is that I think it’s obvious that there shouldn’t be any predefined size limits. But I think it’s also fairly clear that, pretty much any community of practice, its value will change if its size changes. And so there might inherently be size limits which emerge to maintain the vision or the focus of a particular community of practice. That’s a really interesting observation. And actually, again, I come back to these societies and actually observing them over time and how new societies are formed, existing ones break down.

[00:18:39] Lucie: But there’s also an element of well, with our work with the McKnight Foundation, the fact that a number of us are able to meet in person, it makes such a difference to actually being a community.

[00:18:51] David: Absolutely. And I think the element there, which I feel is so important to recognise, is that members of that community are very quick, or very forceful to sort of state is that the meeting doesn’t define the community. So that meeting is really important to keep that sense of community, to get that sense of community. But that meeting is not the community because the meeting is less inclusive by definition because of costs.

And so I find that’s a really interesting tension point that communities are often defined through how they meet in many ways. But that if a community is only the meeting, then it probably doesn’t have the strength that the community needs.

I have a lot of respect for the research which has happened and which is happening around communities of practice. As you know, we’ve learned a lot from trying to learn about how you evaluate communities of practice and how you learn from them. But at the same time, I love emergent communities. And emergent communities don’t always follow the same path. And that’s good, there’s nothing about this where the concept of community of practice should be enhancing communities that form naturally around practitioners rather than directing them in certain cases.

I think if you’re consciously forming a community practice as a funder or in other contexts, then learning from communities of practice makes sense to me. But if you’re an emergent community, I think I much prefer the context where the emergent community actually is just thinking very hard and actually reinvents a lot of these things, rather than just taking the learnings from, the literature or whatever it is.

[00:21:05] Lucie: They’ll be less aware of what the needs for their community are, and less what’s the word? inventive, as it were, finding their own solutions, creative.

[00:21:14] David: I think that is the key point that, that creativity, that thought that goes in the process of discovery, there’s nothing new under the sun as an interesting expression for this. Probably they won’t do anything totally different, but they might come to something which is subtly different because of their needs as a community.

And those little differences that emerge, that’s what I think makes communities really work. Just having and finding ways to create a sense of community, a sense of ownership in that community, within the constraints of your context, is actually, it’s a very individual process. And I don’t mean individualised in terms of an individual, but as a community, has its own nature which emerges.

[00:22:07] Lucie: Great.

[00:22:09] David: This has been interesting. Maybe the one thing that I wouldn’t mind just digging into a little bit before we finish is what’s the danger of these sorts of communities popping up, cause I love the idea of emergent communities versus actually the coherence you can get from bigger communities and actually becoming part of something more, which is bigger.

And I feel that’s a tension, which I observe quite often. I don’t know that I’ve reflected deeply enough on it.

[00:22:41] Lucie: Is this though a sort of distinction between networks and communities?

[00:22:49] David: Go on.

[00:22:51] Lucie: I think there’s a certain scale where perhaps a community is less of a community and it’s more of a network where you only interact with people in order to get something out of that interaction. I think a community, there’s more give and take perhaps, and there’s more construction towards a shared goal. Whereas a network in my understanding is more ‘available people’.

[00:23:14] David: That’s an interesting thought.

[00:23:16] Lucie: So there isn’t necessarily a tension between the two.

[00:23:19] David: Okay, let me reframe the tension that I’ve observed and see whether it relates to this. By creating multiple small communities which are potentially disjoint, the individuals within them often find themselves where they’re at the intersection between multiple communities and therefore they’re torn in different directions. Why don’t these people just talk to each other, why am I stuck in the middle?

Which is a sentiment that I’ve felt on a number of occasions, but others have felt as well. I’ve discussed different points where the relatively similar communities, they’re not disjoint, they have overlap. But would it be better for them to be a single larger community or is it better to have these smaller overlapping communities which have difference in direction?

And there’s importance, there’s value to coherence, there’s value which can come from bringing things together into something bigger. And there’s value which comes from the emergent small communities. And that’s the tension as I see. And the journey that I feel for many communities that they’re on, are they growing in number and scale and whatever?

Are they staying the same? If they are trying to stay the same, are they actually in decline? Maintaining communities in different ways is very difficult. That’s the point which I think I was trying, or the tension that I feel. And it’s possible that your question around networks versus communities is about some communities becoming networks, as they grow.

[00:25:03] Lucie: No, there’s definitely a question there in terms of what happens to people who are split between two communities? And should different communities forget about their differences and just think about what brings them together? Which is an interesting struggle. I don’t think we’re going to…

[00:25:22] David: We’re not going to solve this. [Laughs]. We’re not going to solve this. I think this is a good tension point to finish on. It is another reflection, another discussion for another day. But it is something where this idea of evolving and how things evolve over time as well as what they are that being comfortable with that uncertainty is hard.

And if you think about communities, to imagine a time when the community may not exist or may not be relevant is always sad. There’s a sense of loss.

[00:25:57] Lucie: Yeah.

[00:25:58] David: But in some sense, unless communities are evolving, then I think there’s a danger that they, almost by definition, are probably declining. I wonder whether there is something in that which would be an interesting topic to delve into on another occasion.

[00:26:17] Lucie: The decline of communities.

[00:26:18] David: Not the decline of communities, but thinking about maybe the evolution of communities.

[00:26:23] Lucie: Yeah no, absolutely.

[00:26:25] David: Which includes, of course, decline as part of the unfortunate components, but there are the rise of communities as well. I think there has been a lot of work on this, which I am not aware of. But it is a topic where I think… Well, maybe we should finish by just recapping the things that we think maybe are insights related to this, and this is this distinction between, or this fact that my preconception that emergent communities are better than designed communities, and I feel that I was wrong on that.

I feel that both can be really valuable and both can build to something really, which serves and adds value to the community in question.

[00:27:09] Lucie: Thank you very much, David. It’s been interesting.

[00:27:15] David: It’s been interesting. Speak soon.