Mopsos

From David Snowden through Lilia Efimova:

My own view is that communities can evolve, but cannot be designed top down. Of course you can stimulate and direct evolution. However a CoP "Roll out" plan always gets me worried.

I think I do not totally agree on this one. It is true that the most vibrant communities were self-started and self-organized groups of people, but you cannot infer from this that active communities cannot be rolled out as project teams, especially in large organizations where the behavior of employees by and large depends on their position in the org chart. I know places where employees with brilliant ideas will not move unless given the order to. Do not underestimate the need of human beings to obey.

Dave's statement is correct: fostering the development of communities of practice is really a question of stimulating their starting conditions "[which] can be as simple as making the tools available, or providing some initial stimulation or sponsorship". But in many cases, especially in large vertical organizations, people are just not ready to adopt a view of their organization as a complex adaptive system. They can be really frightened to start networking with their peers, because that's not what the boss wants. So providing a safer and more familiar environment that looks more like a project team, with templates and checklists, can prove handy for community development. Yes it is paternalistic in some way, but it is a form of education, in the etymological sense: teaching people to fly on their own, to paraphrase Chris Collison.

I view my job at Schneider as very similar to this guy's on the deck of an aircraft carrier - called the "yellow dog" in the French Navy- I provide guidance and tools for communities to take off. Once they have, they are on their own. But before that, they follow some basic rules that will at least provide a minimum level of safety for them and for the company. Luckily, I also "fly" too, otherwise I would get bored.

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