Scaling and Sustaining Social and Organisational Innovation - Communities of Practice
By Ria Baeck and George Pór
[Word version]
There's a forum topic of conversation dedicated to what is outlined in this report, here.
Seeds for a collaborative inquiry ^top
There are a few things we know
and many we don't.
We do know that to reach the scope of collective intelligence and wise
action that humankind needs to survive, we must discover/invent the practices that connect us across time and
geography. What needs to be co-created at any level (e.g. team,
organization or a whole culture) calls for us to keep our connections fresh,
current, receptive and capable of
acting together with precision, in an instant, when that's what is needed. It
calls for us to stay connected with
the ongoing processes of our co-creation, our mates, the spark of inspiration
in the eyes, and our collective knowing field. Not just for the time of a
meeting, training, or conference call, but as
a permanent condition of daily life.
What we don't know is: what are the best ways to "sustain action arising from collective meaning and purpose?"
This question - that came in an email from Tim Merry on 25 July 2008 - struck a
resonant chord in most who received it.
Following that, 10 of us said Yes
to a conference call on 1 September. There was a preliminary call on 1 August "to identify some constructs about scaling
and sustainability that could be put on the table as raw material for a broader
conversation with more folks drawn to these questions." The participants
were: George Pór, Phil Cass, Ria Baeck, Tim Merry, and Toke Møller. This report
is based on the transcript of that call. We (Ria and George) have attempted to
identify key patterns of meaning that emerged from the conversation. All the
quotes are from the transcript.
We asked ourselves what had the
most heart and meaning for each of us, as we listened to, then read and re-read
the transcript. Below is our joint effort to articulate it. We imagine that
somebody else reading the transcript could have come up with a different
report. The full record of 10 pages is also attached, in case you are tempted
to read it. There's much richness in the details that cannot be reflected in
this summary.
Scale of reach ^top
"The essence of personal transformation, the essence of collective transformation, and the
essence of structural innovation that
serves life, all have the same DNA.
It is probably our consciousness and our practice of consciousness that are the
seed stones or elements of that DNA."
"Each of these pieces is deeply
integrated but they are also essential distinct elements of how systems change
can happen."
The awareness of those different
scales was very present throughout our conversation. Here is another expression
of it:
"There is that step of commitment
to be a practitioner... Then there is
when a core group of people makes a
collective decision to be in practices that allow them to be a community of
practitioners as one thing... Then
there is the whole thing around assemblies,
stakeholder conversations also becoming ongoing."
Forms of training ^top
Those different scales of reach
that also represent different levels of complexity to work with, call for
different forms of training.
An Art of Hosting training event
provides individuals with the experience of hosting themselves, and introduces
hosting as a new leadership paradigm and competence. To deliver that value, the
trainers need to operate as a collective, a hosting team that acts as a core
group inviting others into the hosting experience.
If the objectives of a training
event include facilitating collective transformation in leadership teams as core groups, then "classic" AoH training
may not be enough. "The Art of
Participatory Leadership is a step beyond that, which means training in a
leadership paradigm over time, in an ongoing, specific context." To deliver
that value, the trainers need to operate from a broader scope, where the
community or the organization as whole is the system in focus.
Scaling up yet further, when the
need is to host the transformation of a whole organization (maybe with the yet-to-develop "Art of Evolutionary
Leadership"?), then the hosting team has to operate from the next higher-level
social field, the global one.
In short, the pattern here is
that the hosting team must host from the
next level up from the field they are hosting.
Distinguishing domains of community practice ^top
With each level of training,
there is a corresponding level of community of practitioners, distinguished by
whatever domain of practice is their focus. Subsequent levels build on
familiarity with the practices of the previous one. These communities, at each
level, support the shared practice even when the training is over, and help
practitioners apply the principles of their art to emerging situations.
The foundational community is the
AoH community of practice. Given the global spread of AoH practitioners, it is
not one community, more like a network of inter-linking local AoH communities.
Their distinguishing domain is hosting conversations
that matter.
Building and expanding on that,
there can be an Art of Participatory Leadership (APL) community. Its
distinguishing domain is hosting sustainable relationships within and across ongoing core groups that host
transformation.
Finally, when the domain is the
transformation of a whole organization or social system, the CoP focusing on
that domain can be called an "evolutionary leadership community."
Like any model or map, this is
only an approximation of the territory, and needs fleshing out and refining by
the practitioners themselves. The vibrant ecosystem of AoH is constantly
producing new communal life forms, such as reading circles, place-based
learning centers, and the fellowship of those who are dedicated to nurture the
AoH/APL field as whole.
The following diagram is an
at-a-glance overview of the patterns described so far.
|
Forms of training
|
Hosted by
|
Scale of reach
|
Sustaining through CoP domains of:
|
|
Art of Hosting: introducing
a new leadership paradigm; first experiences with being a hosting team
|
a
hosting team
|
Individuals,
and their impact on their organizations or communities
|
principles
and practices of AoH
|
|
Art of Participatory Leadership:
implementing a new leadership paradigm over time in a specific context
|
a
hosting community, including and bigger than the actual hosting team
|
core
groups or hosting teams, responsible for hosting change initiatives
|
organizational
transformation
|
|
Art of Evolutionary Leadership (?):
sustaining large-scale systemic change
|
a
hosting community, including "eagles:" wise advisors
|
organisations,
networks, social systems
|
world-centric,
multi-sectoral change work
|
The meaning of scale and the scale of meaning ^top
We started exploring what we mean
by "scaling," why scaling is important to us, and how it is already happening.
What follows needs more exploration and unpacking; it provides rich starting
points for the continuing inquiry.
"People are building
connections across previously fragmented pieces. That is how scale works:
pieces start being connected. People
enter into a relationship with each other that includes and transcends the
purpose of the individual pieces."
Everything is scaling up. "The problems
in the world are going to scale. The needs in the world are going to scale.
Trust is going to scale."
But "we are not talking about
large systems alone; we are talking about scale that is inside us!" The larger
the scale of action, the broader is its scope, the greater must be people's
commitment to their own personal evolutionary practices (see diagram below) if they are to be reliable and trustworthy
practitioners of hosting transformation in self, organizations and society.
Inner and outer work is not separable.
"Coming together around
specific content in these new ways is about commitment to a long term journey
together, this collective purpose that includes, transcends and sustains my
personal transformation and consciousness, that is the underpinning of the
collective change we are going through."
"You cannot take these practices
apart, you cannot choose one or the other. You have to choose all of them - in
your own way and whatever is possible in the context - but it is a deep essence
that taking it apart, it may not be possible to create sustainable change that
we can be proud of and has dignity for all."
What connects the inner and outer dimensions
of scaling up is its meaning as "expansion, wider space where more can happen
that is good."
Grounded in being the change that we want to cause, hosts of transformation
recognize the specific systemic interdependences that underly what needs to be
changed. At that point, they start seeking and finding allies for changing the
defining context. That's how the purpose, the meaning of their work is scaling
up.
"What are the operating
practices that will allow large scale change to happen?" That is a
question that begets the collective self-reflection of all those who are
engaged in scaling up organizational or social innovation. What we do know is
that large-scale change will not happen - cannot be be sustainable - if it is
not integral.
The evolution of individual
consciousness does not have an answer to all our crises; neither do improvements
in our health, culture or technologies, especially if we overemphasize any of
them at the expense of others. Large-scale change must be approached with an integral
lens, including all "four quadrants" (Ken Wilber), or it will collapse, causing
more problems than it tries to solve.
Sustaining with communities of practice ^top
"We know how to create
community and relationship that has meaning in very short periods of time now,
where we can sink into that quality of relationship. The challenge is now: How
to build long-term sustainability into these relationships so that they
continue creating magnificent things over time?"
Holding the "four quadrants" as a
lens to that question, we see:
1.
individual authenticity, commitment to evolve and host oneself (upper left)
2. evolving
practices in hosting conversations that matter (upper right)
3.
cultivating a culture of networked learning communities (lower left)
4. creating
the right mix of technological and economic enablers (lower right)
The "lower left" work is part of
the iceberg that Tim Merry referred to on the call: "I saw the tip of the
iceberg in terms of some new thinking about Communities of Practice and how it
relates to what is cooking in the Art of Hosting / Participatory Leadership
field."
"Communities
of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something that they
know how to do, and interact regularly to learn how to do it better." -- Etienne Wenger. Communities of practice (CoP) are central to the strategy of "Using
Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale."[1]
Many of us reading this report,
are members of one or more such communities, thus directly benefitting from and
contributing to them. Communities of practice[2],
like any other social life forms, grow through stages of development. We have found
both Etienne Wenger's 5-stage model[3]
and NASA's and David Sibbet's 7-stage[4]
model useful to illuminate that journey.
An important developmental shift
occurs when a community of learners becomes a community that learns. The purpose
of the first is to enable the members to benefit from the fruits of the group's
shared knowledge and experience. The purpose of the second is the same, plus to
advance the whole field of practice and knowledge and create social value.
Communities that learn develop a
shared memory and continually augment their collective intelligence, thus both
the capacity to respond to emergent challenges and opportunities, and
resilience. A key enabler of that is a well-tended
community knowledge garden that can be accessed anytime from anywhere.
We are already a community of practice - what are we
practicing? ^top
"Art of Hosting was born out
of people stepping into learning relationships to advance the field. That feels
to me as rooted in CoP."
"In this call we are in a
CoP, we are practicing what we are talking about!"
Yes to both, and CoPs, like any
other life forms, go through stages of development. In the coalescing phase, we
recognize the value of learning/training together and engage in it. In the
maturing stage, which the AoH community is now beginning to enter, we need to learn to pay shared and
sustained attention to our community knowledge garden. That includes the
AoH website, blogs that hosts write, the AoH lists, and the AoH community site
at Evolutionary Nexus. How can the wiser
uses of that garden increase its value to all members and their stakeholders?
This is a central question in the life of all maturing CoPs.
"CoP yes, but what are we
practicing?"
The first practice is the same as
"a core element for going to scale (and to become sustainable over the long
run): Hosting oneself within a hosting team that is committed to a
purpose."
Another practice connects us with
the social technology of Theory U. "The piece of AoH in the U-process is
part of the envisioning innovative structural change, and then the
requirements to be in that kind of relationship to oneself and to each other to
sustain the consciousness that lives below the structural innovation
that we bring into communities. " It is also a practice "to stay in this
chaordic space and to go there again and again."
Yet another practice is to " intentionally sow the
seeds for CoPs, with AoH and Art of Participatory Leadership trainings."
That also means to make transformation stick, to be sustainable, when supported
by communities of practice at any scale shown in the "Domains of CoP" table.
The practice includes increasing our individual and collective capacity to
assess the community-readiness of the situation and engage the process of
hosting the community when that is
called for.
Of course, these are only
examples. The question "what are we practicing?" is a precious question to
hold, not to give a definitive answer to. In fact, holding that question in the
community's shared attention and meaning-making processes is a way in which
CoPs evolve.
Invitation ^top
"I think what we are
inviting here - and being invited into through the work we are involved in -
deserves that we have a conversation, so something gets sharper that we invite
others into. I am sensing an ongoing circle spiraling into more and more
clarity. "
That conversation can take place
by combining recorded conference calls and in-person dialogues, when we are
lucky to in each other's company, in the AoH community blog and wiki at
Evolutionary Nexus. If you feel called to participate, you are invited.
Contact: Ria.Baeck(at)community-intelligence.com
[1]
By Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze,
http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/620/
[2]
An excellent introduction to the concept is here: http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm
[3] See diagram
at http://www.elearningeuropa.info/extras/img/think.gif,
from Wenger, E., R. McDermott, and W. Snyder, Cultivating Communities of
Practice. 2002: Harvard Business School Press.
[4]
See: http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/wiki/?id=2698
Patterns of moving into and out of community
I was working with a group yesterday that was making a number of
small decisions as they worked their way through an agenda. The
meeting was semi-formal and my role as facilitator was mostly to hold
space and draw attention to process where appropriate.
I let the group talk, asked questions from time to time and noted
the decisions that they had made. As I was observing this group
working, I noticed something interesting about their process.
Frequent readers will know that I use the diamond of participation
often as a map to organize and design meeting processes.
One feature
of the diamond is the three phases that groups go through, from
divergent thinking through emergent thinking to convergent thinking.
There are noticiable transitions between these three phases, with
groups becoming quiet when the hit the groan zone, and the energy
becoming lighter when concrete proposals and decisions begin to emerge.
Yesterday I was watching the pattern of the conversations in the
group and I noticed that the language changed. Participants began and
ended each journey through the groan zone using lots of “I” language
and while they were in the middle, there were lots of “we” statements.
A typical agenda item began with one partcipant introducing it with a
personal statement or a question. The group listened and then replied
with further I statements. These responses were a combination of
personal questions and personal responses to ideas. Typically I heard
things like “What I\m wondering about is…”, “I don’t like that idea
very much…” “I can see your point…”
As the conversation unfolded however, there was a shift to “we” and
group members began exploring ideas that were in the best interests of
the group. People seemed less preoccupied with their own ideas and
began working on the emerging ideas that were capturing energy. There
was the occasional drift back to “I” language but for the most part I
heard things like “We could do it like this…” “We don’t have the time
or resources for that…” or “How else could we do that?”
Finally, you could tell the conversation was coming to a close when
people started discussing the personal implications of the emergent
decision. “Okay, so I will make that change to the timetable…” “I
like this choice…” and so on.
Not just a flow from I -> WE -> I, but I also noticed that the
conversation went from curious to concrete, and that this map took the
form of quadrants, similar to the ones I have worked with before. This
observation is in line with Otto Scharmer’s Theory U,
and this diagram above shows the path the conversation took also shaped
like a U, with the group going from inquiry which opened up options to
concrete decisions and implementation plans.
The cool thing about this map of patterns is that it gave me enough
for to be able to hold very lightly the conversational space that the
group was in. I watched them go through this process something like 15
times over the course of the day and only a couple of times did they
get stuck. When they did, it was simply a matter of consulting the map
to see what to do. I intervened at least one in each of these four
quadrants, something like this:
- Asking for more clarity in personal introduction of agenda ites,
and alos inviting the person introducing the item what they are curious
about.
- Helping the group see emergent ideas as they were taking shape and
asking about the nature of the ideas rather than people’s personal
preferences or thoughts.
- Inviting people to concretize what they were hearing, and to explore the implications of one option over another.
- Inviting personal responsibility and ensuring that implementation plans were in place for each decision.
Simple, but this is value of having maps at your finger tips to help
find your way through the wilderness of emergent conversation.
Why does this matter?
As a basic pattern for individuals participating in groups, this pattern may be foundational to creating and sustaining communities of practice. As hosting practitioners we can attend to the conditions of the container that invite these stages of participation. They line up well with Scharmer\s work and with William ISaacs work on the four stages of dialogue as well.
These are useful maps for beginning the conversation on practices for foster the community part of CoPs.
Three essential domains for moving to communities of practice
Originally published at my weblog, Parking Lot...
I’m working a lot with communities of practice these days, or more precisely, teams and groups that aspire to becoming communities of practice. In seeking to be simple about the process of moving from a group to a deeper community, I’ve been designing meetings using this map, to ensure that we give equal weight to work, relationships and co-learning. In my experience, when we do that we set the conditions for a group to become more cohesive and to discover new learning and emergent solutions to the issues on which they are working. This is a design tool, a map to help us keep what’s important in mind. Within each of these three domains are a plethora of practices and tools, and all of these need to be applied wisely, but I am finding this 30,000 foot view useful.
Work
Of course the reason for meeting is to do work. Getting clear on this is important, and I use several different maps for helping groups come to clairty about the work they need to do. My favourite at the moment is what we call the chaordic stepping stones, which is a logical procession of moving from need to structure and practice by anchoring everything we are doing in what is needed at the moment. Gaining clarity on what our work is is important.
Tools for gaining clarity on work include design tools like the diamond of participation, the chaordic stepping stones and other project planning tools that invite clairty about questions and harvest insights back into the team’s work.
Relationships
For groups to be more than just collections of individuals, they need to focus on their relationships. Relationships are the glue that keeps work sustainable. When we pay attention to how we are together it creates the conditions for our work to excel over the long term. Teams or communities that have to focus on toxic, competitive or unhelpful relationships spend too much energy caught in conflict and difference and can’t get real work done. At the outset of working with a team or community of practice, it’s important to identify relationships as a key capacity leading to innovation, excellence or success. And when things go sideways, having solid relationships in place ensures that hte group can find a way out quickly and effectively.
Tools to support good relationships include using participatory and inclusive processes like World Cafe or Open Space Technology and spending time listening to one another’s stories and perspectives. A list of principles like these ones help groups focus on what is important in the container of their work. Good process matters..
Co-learning
If an individual or a group is wanting to become innovate or to think or practice its way to another level of work, learning is essential. At a personal level, cultivating curiosity is critical, so that individuals enter work, practice and conversations with questions that guide their participation in an endeavour. Conceiving of these as a learning journey is very helpful in this regard.
Beyond individual learning, collective learning or co-learning is the fastest way to breathroughs. Engaging in collaborative inquiry, co-presencing and co-realizing a la Otto Scharmer’s Theory U is important to keep a group on the edge of its own learning. Groups need to practice fearlessness to try to embrace new ideas and new ways of doing things.
Tools to support this work include learning journeys, appreciative inquiry, co-presencing and ongoing high level conversation about what a team is learning - a meta-level process.
Alive in the intersecations
The intersection of work and relationships results in one feeding other and leasd to sustainability in the kinds of endeavours one is undertaking, especially when the going gets tough. At the intersection of work and co-learning is innovative thinking that helps to drive work to new levels. At the intersection of co-learning and relationships is where a group comes to see itself as more than just a team, and learns new ways of being together and new forms of connection that serve the greater purpose.
And of course at the centre of it all is the possibility of community, arising out of a balanced approach to all three domains.
To give this model a test run, think of a number of groups you are currently involved in and think about what you hunger for in them. It’s likely that you are paying attention to just one or two of these domains, and that the missing one contains the thing that you hunger for.
I realize some of these concepts may be unfamiliar, or couched in strange language, but the idea is pretty simple: do what you can to pay attention to an dbalance these three factors and you can set the groundwork for a group to meet in a way that helps it evolve into a community of practice.
I would love to hear reports of how this map describes your territory.
