User:Tonygrimaud/seven

Seven principles for cultivating communities of practice

by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder

(this article is a work in progress)

These design principles are not hard and fast rules. They are an understanding of how elements of design work together, revealing the thinking behind a design. Having clear design principles makes it possible to be more flexible and improvisational.

1. Design for evolution.

Because communities of practice are organic, designing them is more a matter of shepherding their evolution rather than creating them from scratch. Design elements should be catalysts for a community's natural evolution. As they develop, communities usually build on preexisting personal networks. The dynamic nature of communities is key to their evolution. As the community grows, new members bring new interests and may pull the focus of the community in different directions. Changes in the organization influence the relative importance of the community and place new demands on it. Community design is much more like life-long learning than traditional organization design. The key to designing for evolution is to combine design elements in a way that catalyzes community development.

2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.

Good community design requires an insider's perspective to lead the discovery of what the community is about. However, effective community design is built on the collective experience of community members. Only an insider can appreciate the issues at the heart of the domain, the knowledge that is important to share, the challenges their field faces, and the latent potential in emerging ideas and techniques. Only an insider can know who the real players are and their relationships. This requires more than community "input." It requires a deep understanding of community issues. Good community design requires an understanding of the community's potential to develop and steward knowledge, but it often takes an outside perspective to help members see the possibilities. Because intentional communities are new for most organizations, members often have a hard time imagining how a more developed community could improve upon their current personal networks or help them leverage dormant capabilities. Good community design brings information from outside the community into the dialogue about what the community could achieve. Sometimes this involves educating community members about the role of communities in other organizations. It might mean bringing an "outsider" into a dialogue with the community leader and core members as they design the community. As a result of this dialogue, the people who understand the issues inside the community and have legitimacy within it are also able to see new possibilities and can effectively act as agents of change. 7 The well-connected leader of a new community on emerging technology was concerned about how to develop the community when many of the "prima donnas" of the industry were outside his company. When he saw how a similar community in another organization was structured to involve outside experts in multiple ways, he started rethinking the potential structure of his own community. He realized that the key issues in his community were less about technology and more about the business issues involved in developing the technology. This understanding of the business perspective of the other community gave him a sharper sense of the strategic potential of his own.

3. Invite different levels of participation.

4. Develop both public and private community spaces.

5. Focus on value.

6. Combine familiarity and excitement.

7. Create a rhythm for the community.