Last month I wrote about doing nothing when you don’t know what to do. I hope you took that to heart, took some time to breathe and be. Sat with your feelings. Maybe you felt inspired — or conversely, perhaps you felt sheer panic. You did “nothing”… but now what? Here’s where a Community of Practice can come in. Wait, a community of what?
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I got a blog post one Saturday morning from Seth Godin , the tech world marketing guru (think: Yahoo.com) called “Communities of Practice.”
I blinked twice. Huh. Seth’s talking about Communities of Practice now, too? I must be onto something these last few years . . .
My first Community of Practice was bringing together local farmers and chefs to talk about the challenges and importance of local food sourcing in restaurants. It was the hardest group I’ve ever convened. I relied on my theater arts degree improv and teaching skills to facilitate the difficult conversations to get farmers to talk about the real cost of farming and what they need as a fair price to make any money. The chefs arrived with egos as big as their restaurants but slowly let themselves relax enough to listen to the farmers. At the end of the day someone told me that no one had ever brought them together in the same room to talk about these issues before. All they needed was someone to hold the space for them in order to get real about the issues they avoided to talk about for years at farmers market stalls.
I didn’t know back then that what I had created was a Community of Practice. It wasn’t until I was in my own fellowship program in 2011 that I was trained in facilitation and community of practice design and facilitation.
Since then, I’ve been consulting and facilitating with many groups on convening communities in conversations that matter and creating communities of practice in various sectors.
Why gather in these groups? Because Communities of Practice provide people with a space to talk to other people in their sector.
In the Native Entrepreneur in Residence Program, we bring together the graduates of the program to continue to share their business practices and stories. It’s a chance for them to network, bond, and find like-minded people to confide in when challenges or success come up.
The Emerging Leaders in the Social Sector program is going on five years now, bringing together leaders in the nonprofit sector to talk about how to transform the sector for meaningful change. These leaders take on bold ideas and implement them in their own organizations or nonprofit sectors with a cohort cheering them on, supporting their hard work.
Gathering this way brings your ideas forward in a safe learning opportunity where the people in the room probably have the wisdom within them to solve their greatest challenges. It works well for entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders because often these leaders are in their own bubbles, working hard at their work, networking when they can, and trying to implement new things when they have the time. A Community of Practice, on the other hand, is a dedicated time and space to get away from work, to go deep, give themselves the time and space to be in a community of leaders like them.
Communities of Practice can provide a powerful and valuable way to grow a sector, bring new ideas forward, and provide support to groups of leaders seeking meaningful connections. I’ve seen the value of these groups transform into long term relationships among business owners, or collaborations with real impact among nonprofits. Now more than ever, we are seeking ways to connect, to learn, to share in spaces that allow us to take bold steps with a support network behind us.
You can learn how to create or benefit from a community of practice at our next BIG (Bold Innovation for Good) event! We’ve designed the BIG = 2020 Nationwide Small Business Intensive: Evolving Your Business Past a Crisis for small business owners seeking support during this strange time and
