Communities of Practice Workshop – Feb 28, 2005



Communities of Practice Workshop – Feb 28, 2005

Individual/personal outcomes of workshop:

What are essential factors of a strong community

Major issues in which a communities are not strong

Tools to strengthen communities that are missing these factors – tune up existing communities.

Bill – get an understanding of ELE; how you’re interested in it in a University Of Idaho

Dept barriers in college.

Dan and Steve – opp to step back a level; I’m immersed in details of several comm’s; stepping back to meta-level.

Background on “communities of practice.”

Don’s first pages: Group with common goal. setting up a common definition; issues and managing and leading similar across depts..

Work collectively to improve performance.

Work on one particular person’s problems – and the whole group learns.

Not a project team, and not a project.

Wenger definition = domain of knowledge + Community + Shared Practice

Operational def’n of a community of practice p3 reviewed – Dan A asked which are causes and which are effects? Some are process elements; and some are results; factors of the community, and the entrance conditions. Individuals will participate as a function of how much passion they come in with. So that’s a third dimension – multiple levels of involvement. Let people self-select. Bill: We don’t have forever – the players are all busy. Jump-start the idea. By next year, everyone will be a member of a community AND DON E. it has to become part of the evaluation system.

Leaders are also members of communities

We may need to distinguish among communities, teams and organizations. Skiing club has a hard time being an organization – they’re really a community. There are o’s in c’s, and v.v.

Communities can bridge silo’s. Bring cross-functional people with common value systems to go back and support teams. Example – mentoring and first-year retention. Why doesn’t it occur – because the other structures aren’t functional. What is a committee?? GOOD Q!. Committees aren’t effective because they have never defined what they stand for. Therefore no common passion.

Shared Definition of “Communities of Practice.”

Audience: Typical Faculty Member

Elements:

Group of people who share passion for a common topic

Interest in self and team improvement

Core values and practices because of collaboration

Continuous thinking and activity outside formal gatherings

Shared responsibility to help one another grow

Intersection of two sets: community practice (Venn Diagram)

…………….

Note: Many faculty desire “community” in university settings.

Note: Spirit of community that attracts people. We have a tendency to isolate. One of the major reasons that churches are effective.

Brainstorming benefits (and voting – 3 per person)

Links across campus

4 votes - Improves quality of life (professional, and more)

Defines core competencies – validates what we say is what we do

Propagates ‘best practices’

Affirming that others hold similar ideas

3 votes - Environment to support growth (evaluation free, not judged)

1 vote - Helping each other improve

Conduct and publish research on communities of practice

Cost savings – improved efficiency

Filling in cracks between departments

2 votes - Energy to revitalize, renew, motivate passion

Enjoyable/fun

2 votes - Promotes institutional-wide meaning

Improved outputs (performers) and new products

Low cost for amount of bennefit

Discussion:

List above picks benefits of community, not focused around specific practices. The benefits are/can be practice independent.

(3 components of change – from breakfast)

System to form around

Problem solving

Education so people take ownership

Key element of community

Core membership – community will dissipate if core members leave

How to design communities of practice

Give assessment of handout from Don “Designing a Community of Practice”

New label – designing, implementing, and making sustainable

Helpful to define and input and output – then fill in steps between

Assumes there’s already a need for community to form

Administrative support – need to be involved, changes evaluation criteria

Sustaining Community: Time together, coaching/support, relevancy

Start with core group who learns/defines practices and has buy-in. This core group helps support new members and elevates their own performance

Community doesn’t create results. Results are created in the application of community practices in your own area.

Real question – what are the barriers to maintaining communities?

Not: What are barriers to creating community?

Proposed first step:

Perform needs analysis to see if culture is conducive to supporting a community

If not, will have to tackle this along with community formation.

Need powerful people to ‘bless’ an idea, but also need champions to take that blessing and do something with it.

Support to put community in place depends on your position. Requires authority.

Must be careful not to confuse organization and community.

Dan A. proposed methodology modifications:

1) Needs analysis

2) Culture Analysis

3) Align support

4) ID Leadership

5) Identify key practices

6) Scope current cycle

7) Refine practices

8) Measure value added

9) Continue to reinvest in activities (sustainability)

Bill comments:

‘Bottom line’ is question that will be asked – not likely to go away until we’ve moved through current budget crisis (~5+ years)

If community will be taking time….this takes away from other tasks (proposal writing, etc.) For community to form/sustain, will have to illustrate/articulate value to the system.

10% of time should be devoted to professional growth/development. Being part of a community of practice is a highly productive use of this time.

Don’s Comments:

Covey – ‘sharpen the saw’ Universities don’t to this because they don’t see the benefit of this.

There is an incorrect perception about growth. Some see growth as an end point, not a process.

Also, need to sell the business case for creating communities.

Don wants to continue discussing the business case – Dan A. working this alredy

Workshop Assessment:

(Bringing issues to the community – use community to improve thinking on the issues)

How much clarity did we walk away with aout our definition of community?

Strengths:

Fuzzy idea of definition entering, but now have better understanding about how it’s different from other entities on campus. Understand how it helps create value to University

Amount of clarification of characterization of factors of community

Tapping in to individual expertise

Difficult to create new model in short time. Having an existing model to modify/feedback was better for group activity.

Challenging – community challenging each other.

Different levels community knowledge in the group. Don’t want to leave others behind, but still need to make progress towards initial outcomes.

Would have benefited from having more people in attendance. Could have multiple groups working on same tasks, then discuss differences. Why one group create different models from other groups?

Action plan of work that still needs to be done. Will help pull things together in next two days. Communicating to rest of world….”why communities of practice?”

Improvements:

Shared understanding of what community is before going in to communities of practice. Define practice, then define ‘community of practice‘

Give greater tasks to Dan A., not just more tasks. Give re-directs to improve communication within core group.

Insights:

Most communities have inherit practice within.

Hard to isolate ‘community of practice’ from ‘communities.’

Communities of practice can be at different states of development. What is this continuum? And where are we at?

Essential importance of discussing the business case and 7th habit as one picture.

Importance of reifying things – giving it a name.

“Professional community of practice” – This helps define/justify value to the professional community.

What are similarities/contrasts with Toyota Kaizen projects and our group?

Why have communities formed/evolved in industry, and not in university?

Other experience – Industry not far different from University

University evaluation is done on individual basis….not conducive to team collaboration.

Few examples of success exist in industry, but the average between university and industry are probably similar.

Communities *aren’t* accountable for anything.

How effective were we in thinking about/communicating communities of practice?

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