The Potential of Communities of Practice Post-Pandemic
The Government faces unprecedented challenges today that require an increased capacity for learning, innovating, and coordinating efforts in a peer-to-peer network of practitioners called “Communities of Practice.” Communities of Practice are groups of people that interact on an ongoing basis to expand their knowledge and expertise in a shared concern or set of problems and who have passion about a topic.
While they have been around awhile, Government organizations have recently become more interested in implementing Communities of Practice (CoP) as a model for knowledge sharing that develops innovative solutions. CoP’s around data analytics, customer experience, artificial intelligence, and design thinking are trending. With the pandemic, Arc Aspicio sees a dramatic increase in both the desire to learn and in the need to connect, so these communities have tremendous potential in 2020 and beyond.
To establish a CoP for your organization, you need to first define a clear purpose. First, what is the ‘problem’ you are trying to solve and the ‘discipline’ or capability you must develop in your organization? Decide on the community’s structure and the resources needed to support it, especially if you plan to establish more than one community. Key questions to consider and guide the process are —
What outcomes do you want to achieve?
Who should participate in the community?
What are the outcomes you looking to achieve?
How will the community be governed?
A CoP is an investment of time and resources, so it is important to understand the CoP’s scope and how it will operate within your organization.
Once you have decided that a CoP could be right for your agency, you must decide on the community’s structure and the resources needed to support it, especially if you establish more than one community. Questions an organization should answer are:
How will the community be governed?
How will you conduct outreach and promote the existence o the community and its assets?
Which executive in your organization will sponsor and fund the community?
What resources does the CoP need to achieve the outcomes?
The Government creates CoP’s in disciplines where cross-agency and cross-organizational collaborations can benefit the broader community. For example, the First Responder Communities of Practice (FRCoP) is a professional networking, collaboration, and communication platform for active and retired first responders, emergency response professionals, government employees, and others working in homeland security and preparedness. Created by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), this vetted community focuses on emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and other homeland security topics and issues.
The success of collaborations like this resulted from clearly identifying the issue these agencies needed to solve, obtaining executive buy-in, and facilitating stakeholder engagement throughout the process. Now is the time to create a community of practice within your organization – connecting your employees around topics that they are passionate about.
