Kimbal Wheatley
on
14 Feb 2010 05:02 AM
The CoP must attract the right people. CoP is distinguished from other organizational structures because its members join and retire as a result of the value they see in the CoP rather than because of their position on an organization chart. This means the membership boundaries of the CoP need to be fluid because members will join when they think they will receive value and leave when they don’t. Members can and should be self selecting and will be self exiting; the idea is to keep the Community dynamic and fresh.
Members may elect to attend various CoP sessions depending on their interest in the theme or topic. For example, a CEO (of an SME), or business unit manager (of an MNC) may elect to participate in a topic related to policy or strategy.
We also know that CoP is not for everyone.
People range in their appetite for socialisation. Some are eager for it, most engage in it and some are averse to it. Socially averse professionals will probably never feel comfortable with CoP and will be unlikely to continue in it, except perhaps through the Practice Library. On the other hand, we are relying on people on other side of this distribution to push for and engineer continuation of their CoP.
People range in their aspirations for increasing professional competency. Some are driven by it, most accept it, and some think they are finished. There is little reason for those who have “retired in place” to engage in CoP and self selection will probably keep them away. The professional learning, contribution to profession, and networking should appeal to the rest.
People rlso ange in their comfort with structure. Some are happy with fairly loose, unstructured social-educational situations without tests, specific goals, boss, etc, most are probably fairly skeptical, and some can’t stand it. CoP definitely appeals more to people who like less formal structure.
And finally, people will range in their interest in a particular practice domain. That is, the CoP will inevitably choose practice areas to investigate that are more interesting to some than to others. Some think learning about everything is good. Most will be social and contribute even if the topic doesn’t particularly interest them. And some will define anything that doesn’t interest them as a waste of time. Over time, CoP will cover a wide range of practice areas and will not appeal to people who are completely “interest centric.”
The challenge in recruiting initial members is to find people to the left of the above distributions and avoid people at the far right. We must accept that CoP is not for everyone and some will be disappointed if they show up.
One implication of all this is that CoPs will always be losing members and need to replace them. Clearly, the best source of new members is old members…they probably won’t invite friends who wouldn’t see value in it, plus they bring in an existing social-professional relationship with the member.
One job of the CoP facilitator is to encourage members to bring in new members and then to help new members integrate into the community.
last edited by CoP Admin Practice Library on 2/16/2010 1:32:20 AM