Communities of practice: Co-learning to transform models

By Joël Nadeau // Co-Executive Director of Collective Project

Illustrations: Projet Collectif, Isadora Lima

The importance of lifelong learning is well recognized. Faced with the transformations of the professional world and the complexity of social issues, acquiring new knowledge, refining one's critical mind and developing the capacity for individual and collective action are becoming essential. While formal training is integrated into organizations' skills development plans and budgets, other forms of learning have proven successful, such as professional co-development, mentoring and coaching.

The community of practice (CoP) is also a potentially rich approach. It is based on peer learning and is rooted in practice. It allows for the sharing of both explicit and tacit knowledge, the co-construction of new knowledge and the development of a group's creative potential, based on spaces for collaboration and mutual support. As soon as we collaborate, we learn from each other. However, making these processes visible and better understood makes them more accessible and functional, argued Etienne Wenger when he theorized about CoPs in the early 1990s1. The most common way to define a CoP is the one proposed by Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, in 20022: "a group of people with a common area of expertise or professional practice who meet to exchange, share, and learn from each other, either face-to-face or virtually".

1 Wenger, E. (2005). La théorie des communautés de pratique. Apprentissage, sens et identité. Presses de l'Université Laval. 2 Wenger, E., McDermott, R. et Snyder, W. M. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge - Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

SUCCESS FACTORS

While research on CoPs confirms their great learning potential, it also highlights the difficulty of implementing them. Designing, deploying, activating and evolving CoPs takes time and energy. A review of the literature on the subject identified 17 factors for success3, including: • quality of design; • mutual commitment; • relevance of the mandate; • favourable context; • autonomy of the group; • time available; • adequate support; • appropriate digital tools; • common language; • appropriate pace; • diversity of levels of participation; • climate of trust; • open-mindedness; • cooperation among the CoPs; • ability to evolve the process; • concrete results and recognition.

Although there is no infallible recipe or unanimity on the factors for success, one factor is systematically mentioned: the importance of sustained facilitation.

The people responsible for the facilitation can plan activities, offer support, stimulate participation, increase trust between members, work on the group's identity or contribute to the organization of content. All of these actions are necessary for the community to function well.

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES AND CONTEXTS: BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES

CoPs have mostly been studied in an organizational context, especially within private companies, when the group is relatively homogeneous. They are part of a strategy for developing skills, but also for managing knowledge and internal expertise, seen here as a competitive advantage that must be systematized and maintained. A CoP is also a strategy for collaboration and knowledge transfer used in a variety of contexts, such as health, education and community settings. This means that members are more likely to come from a variety of organizations and occupy different positions. This variety of backgrounds and perspectives is likely to enrich processes, stimulate innovation, and increase opportunities for intersections between CoPs, but it also poses additional challenges for mobilization and facilitation.

LEARNING FROM PASSERELLES

The experience of Passerelles, which has been taking place in Quebec since 2018, has made it possible to study the operations of 120 CoPs in the field of social innovation. Passerelles is both a collaborative digital platform and a support approach to animation, initially supported by Territoires innovants en économie sociale et solidaire. Many of these CoPs have experienced difficulties in deployment or maintenance over time. An analysis conducted as part of the Passerelles evaluation and a Master's thesis validated the importance of the success factors listed above and identified some findings, three of which are presented in this article.

USE ADAPTED DIGITAL TOOLS

First, the process confirms the importance of using digital tools adapted to the needs of CoPs. Many groups tend to use social networks or commercial software that are accessible and already integrated into members' habits. However, these tools raise ethical concerns, they sometimes blur the boundary between private and professional life, and they do not allow for the creation of a collective memory for the group, which is essential for its progress. Some tools are expensive and developing a custom platform represents many challenges, in addition to limiting the possibilities of collaboration between CoPs.

SET ASIDE TIME FOR THE COP

While the digital environment is important, it is not a determining factor in the success of the CoP. The most frequently mentioned barrier is the lack of time, either for participation or for facilitation. However, we have found that the lack of time is usually the result of a lack of recognition of the role of CoPs in learning. In order for people to be involved and for resources to be available, these approaches must be visible and seen as strategic by organizations and funders, which is rarely the case. First, the process confirms the importance of using digital tools adapted to the needs of CoPs. Many groups tend to use social networks or commercial software that are accessible and already integrated into members' habits. The diverse composition of the CoPs brings additional challenges, as it requires coordination between organizations with mandates and timing that are not always compatible. Silos, inter-organizational tensions, competition for funding, and the culture of social impact, which can influence organizational priorities, are also issues.

PLAN A STRATEGY FOR HARNESSING KNOWLEDGE

Finally, we identified a new requirement for success: the presence of a strategy to harness knowledge. In order for community members to learn from each other and build a common repertoire, they must be able to capture their own learning, make it accessible to others, and make it evolve. We realize that this requires skills, that these processes must be recognized and valued, and that the design of CoPs must take this into account. Moreover, this knowledge should not be considered as strategic resources to give a competitive advantage, but as common resources to be shared freely and maintained continuously. The flow of knowledge between CoPs in an open ecosystem can be beneficial to everyone's learning. Most importantly, open access to theoretical and practical knowledge is crucial to transforming models and addressing the social and ecological challenges we face today.

Building an ethical and shared digital infrastructure, developing a culture of collaboration and facilitating access to knowledge appear as priority factors for creating a more equitable and ecological society. This is at least the premise of Projet collectif, which is working on this in Quebec, in collaboration with several networks. The CoP approach is a relevant frame of reference for this, placing collaboration, experimentation and knowledge sharing on a broad continuum to stimulate learning as well as individual and collective action.

VARIABLE GEOMETRIES

CoPs come in many shapes and sizes. They range from a professional grouping of territorial development agents who share tips and tricks, to a variety of organizations that co-construct models and resources for transforming churches, to stakeholders who pool their efforts to increase the food autonomy of a region, to an informal network of advocates who want to connect isolated local struggles.