Kimbal Wheatley
on
8 Mar 2010 06:43 AM
Communities of Practice (called CoPs) represent a practical extension of the fairly recent learning theories of Etienne Wenger (Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, 1999). Wenger’s background is in the world of computer science (his Ph.D. is in artificial intelligence, Cal Irvine, 1990) and ten years as a research scientist at the Institute for Research on Learning in Palo Alto (1987-1997). Today he is the chief thought leader for the Communities of Practice learning movement. He is one of those rare people shifting the way we see the world.
Wenger has taken a close look at some very old and very common ideas of how humans learn and forwarded them to the modern enterprise context. He describes a kind of learning that is so ubiquitous that we have failed to comprehend it, let alone exploit its power. The ideas are simple and their validity seems self evident; that is, few fail to have an Ah ha! experience when they “get it”.
Wenger posits two very different kinds of learning mechanisms. We know a lot about the first type. It is the kind of learning we all received from our formal education systems. It works well (as evidenced by the advance of knowledge) and we spend trillions of dollars annually to deliver it. This type of learning provides us with the fundamental knowledge that prepares us to enter our chosen profession as a novice.
Wenger has directed our attention to a second type of learning that exists all around us. He asks “How do people learn so much outside of the formal educational system,” and especially, “how do they learn to practice their craft, vocation, or profession?” He concludes simply that people who practice the same profession can learn a phenomenal amount from each other, and further concludes that when they practice at their profession together, an optimal learning environment exists for learning about the profession and how to practice it. His big idea is to invest in creating organizational environments where people who practice a profession can learn from each other as well as refine and advance the practice of the profession itself. Wenger believes that work-related CoPs sprout up spontaneously in any group of people dealing with the same job requirements, but that our organizations either ignore them or even work to defeat them (e.g., “no chatting during work hours”).
It turns out that when humans align to pursue the same enterprise outcomes, they develop a “practice” of ideas, methods, and technologies that generally align in pursuit of the goals. This is what is meant by “practice medicine” or “practice the law” and our formal education systems do an outstanding job of defining and teaching “medicine” or “law”. But every professional will tell you their “real education” began their first day on the job and from then on they have refined their practice with real-world experience.
Not only do we not invest much in this second type of learning, but our modern societies and organizations often tend to isolate practitioners from each other during the phase of their career where they acquire all this knowledge and know how. Of course, professional isolation inhibits a Community of Practice from forming and the opportunity for this second type of learning is lost.
Unlike professions like engineering, claims processing and customer service, there are relatively few Human Resources professionals in any single enterprise. This means there is little opportunity for an HR Community of Practice to form naturally, except at the level of how they go about practicing it in their own enterprise (e.g., how to avoid payroll errors). The professionals probably attend conferences and training seminars but generally the content is a typical presentation on “how to do something” or on topics far removed from the realities of practicing HR day to day back at work.
The HR CoP project is designed to create circumstances that cultivate, seed and nurture Communities of Practice in the HR profession. The harvest is (a) a relatively untapped mode of practical learning for HR professionals and (b) advancement of the HR profession.
Singapore is very familiar with the thinking and benefits of Communities of Practice, although not necessarily by that name. To read Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s 2000 Memoir is to read about a Community of Practice with the clear purpose of defining and refining the practice of governing Singapore. Over the years many community members retired from their posts, but the Community of Practice continued to refine the craft of governing Singapore even as it integrated new members into one of the best learning environments possible. Consider the philosophy expressed in this passage from the Memoir’s epilog, where he tells anyone who wants to know how his team came to be so successful:
“We learnt on the job and we learnt quickly. If there was one formula for our success, it was that we were constantly studying how to make things work, or how to make them work better.
I was never a prisoner of any theory. What guided me were reason and reality. The acid test I applied to every theory or scheme was, would it work? This was the golden thread that ran through my years in office. If it did not work, or the results were poor, I did not waste more time and resources on it. I almost never made the same mistake twice, and I tried to learn from the mistakes others had made. I discovered early in office that there were few problems confronting me in government which other governments had not met and solved.
So I made a practice of finding out who else had met the problem we face, how they had tackled it and how successful they had been. Whether it was to build a new airport or to change our teaching methods, I would send a team of officers to visit and study those countries that had done it well. I preferred to climb on the shoulders of others who had gone before us.”
Creating HR Communities of Practice will not be difficult, but ending up with successful CoPs a year later will require a good design, committed people and adequate resources. The evidence is compelling: A CoP requires some resources, but nothing on the scale of setting up a school. And great leaps forward can come from successful CoPs. The HR CoP project is a low dollar investment with a very high potential.