Team-based CoPs compared to cross-functional CoPs
The aim of this post is to illustrate the dynamics between a Community of Practice (CoPs) and a Team.
Without getting too deep into theory here’s an establishing paragraph on what is a Community of Practice.
Communities of Practice typically are a group of people coming together to share and learn about a common interest; as well as building a voluntary output of materials. These are usually not driven by management, instead participation is voluntary, and traditionally the goal is about learning and building capabilities rather than performing tasks.
CoPs enable workers to be more effective and capable in their team tasks, by being able to discover people and form cross-functional groups to build their know-how on a topic. What is learnt in a CoP can be applied to tasks.
IMAGE SOURCE: Anecdote - The relationship between projects and communities of practice—redux
I won’t go into anymore CoP theory here, but if you are interested, see Components of a community of practice, and Nancy White’s great series, at the moment she is up to post 6.
What I’m often finding is that we have lots of requests by teams to use the CoP online tools as team spaces, in order to get work and tasks done. For more on this please refer to my past posts Team-based communities, Team-based communities are about change, commitment and tasks, Team-based communities : Transparency and Crowdsourcing for a more cohesive workplace
Team-based CoPs are not focused on learning, although this always occurs by default, but are more driven towards solving a problem, coordinating a task, etc…
A Team-based CoP may use the same tools, but will certainly have different dynamics to a cross-functional topic CoP.
For more on this see Anecdote’s paper, Building a collaborative workspace, and Francois Gossieaux’s post, Teams vs. Communities.
NOTE: If we wanted to get technical we could say we have:
Teams - use online social tools like Basecamp to get tasks done
CoPs - use online social tools like Clearspace to share, learn and build a practice on a cross-functional topic
Team-based CoPs - use online social tools like Clearspace to share, and learn about your team (more about communicating and learning in general as opposed to the actual tasks)
But I usually collapse a Team and a Team-based CoP into the same notion.
Anyway here is a comparison in dynamics between Teams and CoPs.
|
Team |
CoP |
|
| Purpose |
Achieve an outcome (task) or provide a service/product Explicit processes/standards
Explicit timelines, tasks and goals
|
Shared area of interest Learning and sharing No expected time limit |
| Members |
Defined roles |
Informal roles Core group Experienced members earn greater status
|
| Manage |
Explicit leader or manager
|
Community Coordinator (others on equal footing) |
| Participation |
Required participation Expected reciprocity High interdependency
|
Encourage participation and enthusiasm Power Law Distribution |
[ADDED 13/03/09: As per Nancy White’s comment below I was reminded of a seminal paper on CoPs, here are some excerpts:
“A community of practice may or may not have an explicit agenda on a given week, and even if it does, it may not follow the agenda closely. Inevitably, however, people in communities of practice share their experiences and knowledge in free-flowing, creative ways that foster new approaches to problems.”
“Communities of practice can drive strategy, generate new lines of business, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop people’s professional skills, and help companies recruit and retain talent.”
“The organic, spontaneous, and informal nature of communities of practice makes them resistant to supervision and interference.”
IMAGE SOURCE: Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier]
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Hiya John
Etienne Wenger has some great slides and comments about how teams and Cops differ. Right now here is the one I can find, but there was a different one I had in mind! http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/1317.html
I think it is slightly tricky to use what software a group uses as an indicator though, because people use software in very creative and often unexpected ways.
But for me, the clearest distinguishing indicator is the purpose: teams have a shared task with interrelated goals. CoPs have learning as their agenda.
Simplifications aside, the bottom line, the one really important thing I’ve learned from Etienne is not to get hung up on if a formation is a team or a CoP, but be able to examine the group’s practices from a perspective that helps either make sense of the group or aid in its design and functioning. So we can actually look at teams with a CoP perspective if we care about their learning, and CoPs from a team perspective when a CoP decides to do a project together (which is something CoPs often do - one of the 9 “orientation” we have laid out in the upcoming book, if we ever fricken finish it!
Does that make any sense?
Comment by Nancy White — March 12, 2009 @ 5:52 am
I hear what you say Nancy…
I guess my post is a general framework, I was attempting to explain the dynamics, but yes there is a blur
Actually I split this post into two, so tomorrow’s post will reveal my motivation I guess.
The issue I’m having is that teams need software that is designed more than for just sharing and learning, they need it to revolve around tasks eg. Basecamp vs Clearspace
In this case if a CoP needs to do tasks as well, then they may be better off using Basecamp over Clearspace as well.
Comment by John Tropea — March 12, 2009 @ 6:13 am
Absolutely - software must respond to the set of activities of a group. Nodding in total agreement! And further more, the software should be easy enough to use so that as their activities evolve, they can use the software in different ways. Not be prisoner to a specific path.
Comment by Nancy White — March 14, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
Actually Nancy, you put this in such a pithy way that it should have been the intro to my subsequent post “Conversations that revolve around task objects”
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/03/12/conversations-that-revolve-around-task-objects/
Comment by John Tropea — March 15, 2009 @ 12:30 am
This may be a bit of a dumb question, or one that is missing the totally obvious, but why do teams need software?
I have run lots of teams without software. I also don’t see why CoPs need software - Wenger’s book called Communities of Practice focused on insurance assessors who did not have special software, rather their CoP evolved from their work practices. In fact, you could argue that it only became a CoP when Wenger defined it as such.
Comment by Stephen Billing — July 8, 2009 @ 12:04 pm
Hi Stephen,
I tell new facilitators that I’m not creating them a CoP, but instead an online space where they can communicate, coordinate and share. Their community already exists, I’m just helping them with an online space to carry on.
They are sick of email chain discussions and want more than a telecon, they want something where you can perpetually be aware of what everyone is up to.
Our software is called “CoPs”, which is a drag since they are not only being used by cross-functional interest groups. These same tools are being used for support, ideas, team tasks, etc…
Anyway, when teams and cross-functional groups are located all over the world, and online space makes it feel local.
Of course software is not defining the group, but software helps to overcome the limitation, or instead complement, synchronous communications.
All communications, coordination can be public by default (compared to email being private by default). When you think of it knowledge work (conversations) will be in the open…now managers can understand what people really do.
Also an online space, makes people visible, an engaging place to hang out, to sensemake, to build a reputation.
In this post I mentioned our online CoPs are empowering http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2009/05/11/enabling-communities/
Comment by John Tropea — July 10, 2009 @ 6:56 am
Hi, I think that you are talking about CoP as a category of software. This reminds me of the CRM debate - CRM can be seen as software or as a philosophy.
In this case CoP has become a term to mean a certain kind of software, to enable people, presumably remote from each other, to do certain things together.
Comment by Stephen Billing — July 12, 2009 @ 10:49 am