Our “Communities of Practice” Services

Our “Communities of Practice” Services2018-12-10T09:45:29+00:00
WHY: Some Needs that Communities of Practice Meet
  • To get a higher Return on Investment in training programmes, they need to be leveraged by communities of their graduates, which provide an opportunity for deeper, on-the-job learning.
  • A more collaborative culture, where employees feel more engaged and involved is a vital condition for improved business results.
  • Replicating past successes doesn’t assure the future; innovation is a must. Connecting people across the organisation and providing sustained forums for peer learning is essential to support and accelerate sustaining, disruptive, and transformative innovation.
  • Applying “best known methods” to address a challenge in a team, which have already been successfully used in another team, is a cost-saving, innovation-speeding measure that CoP serves brilliantly.
  • New recruits’ on-boarding needs to be accelerated by making the enterprise’s relevant collective expertise and competences, stewarded by the CoP, more readily accessible to them.
WHAT: This Is What We Offer to Business Leaders
Executive Seminar on “Creating Business Value with Communities of Practice”

In this structured exploration organisational decision makers will learn, among other things:

  • CoP-enabled organisational results in specific business functions e.g. Mergers & Acquisitions)
  • Assessing the organisation’s community-readiness
  • Selection criteria for CoP pilots
  • Strategies and resource requirements for the various stages in the community’s lifecycle
  • Highlights of CoP case studies

Our past CoP-focused Executive Seminars were delivered in collaboration with INSEAD and the London School of Economics. For the sake of doing more in-depth work, currently, we deliver them in interested companies.

Leadership Communities of Practice

Leadership Communities of Practice (L-CoP) are upgraded versions of the inter-organisational “CEO clubs” popular in many countries and industries. Imagine if supported by state-of-the-art technology, each member of the L-CoP could have an always-on access to the combined knowledge, expertise, and wisdom of all members. Imagine if they could explore such questions, for example, as:

  • What are the trends that will have the greatest impact on the future of my organisation in the next 5-10 years?
  • What do we know about “self-management,” “market-based management,” “deliberately developmental organisation” and other management practices, their pitfalls and promises?
  • What are the best practices in powering our global expansion with “exponential technologies,” which I should think about?

It is that kind of leadership communities, which our L-CoP design and facilitation service enable.

Depending on need, they can also be supported in their ongoing, collaborative knowledge development for enhancing performance in specific areas of management and leadership work.

No matter which territory is the focus of the community’s learning agenda, just by participating in this kind of members improve their collaborative learning skills, thus becoming more fit to promote a collaborative culture by example.

Enterprise-wide CoP strategy

This service helps organisations decide on strategic priorities related to enterprise-wide CoP work, and how to optimise a constellation of communities of practice for the greatest results of that work.

We also provide guidance to creating the necessary support and accountability structures, evaluation framework, and integration with your HR and knowledge strategy.

For an example of our “CoP strategy” work look up the case studies on:

Co-creation Network (in the National Health Services, UK)

WHAT: This Is What We Offer to HR and Knowledge Management
Introductory workshop to raise awareness of CoP benefits

This 1-day workshop for interested parties takes place in organisations wanting to investigate the efficacy of the CoP approach. It will cover the 3 pillars of CoP work, set-up conditions, roles, accountabilities, the CoP Value Matrix  (a tool for prioritising expected benefits from CoP), and CoP-enabling infrastructure.

The workshop will be preceded by a community-readiness survey, and concluding with an initial exploration of potential candidates for a CoP pilot and next steps.

CoP pilot design

This is a service to support an organisation to establish its first community of practice. It provides a framework and identifies the pilot selection criteria and key components of CoP design and cultivation. The overall process requires a 6-12 month engagement with periodic inputs from our CoP practitioners. Typical assignment concludes with a review workshop to consolidate learning and lay the foundations for the replication of the pilot.

CoP Lifecycle Management workshop for organisations with established communities

For organisations that already have a tradition of CoP we provide an analysis of where their communities are on their 5-stage life-cycle journey (Potential, Coalescing, Maturing, Stewarding, Legacy). This workshop addresses the specific community cultivation opportunities and challenges associated with each stage, methods ad competences to activate for addressing them.

Design, training and coaching for in-house CoP support

Our CoP approach, like all of our interventions, has as one of its key objectives to build sustainable capability within the client system. To that end we recommend the establishment of a CoP Support Team, where there are already more than 5 CoPs, or there are plans for creating them. This team can become a centre of excellence in CoP cultivation, letting the organisation draw upon it for realising the fuller potential of all CoPs. We will support their professional development though a combination of individual coaching and seminars / training sessions and a CoP-management handbook tailored to the unique working conditions of your enterprise.

Credentials – Why us
What do we bring that is of particular benefit to your organisation?
  • We are experienced in fostering the alignment of community priorities with the priorities of the organisation.
  • We are knowledgeable and adept at working in the intersection of the human, business and technology elements of a successful CoP and are experts at integrating them to foster this success

We benefitted greatly from George’s large know-how on creating and nurturing communities of practices. He helped us in the conception and development of the strategic planning Community of practice at the European Commission with competence, wisdom, and a smile. We learned a lot from him, including his unique way of being fully present in all circumstances, and we continue tapping on this knowledge in spreading a more participatory culture in the organization.”

Paolo Giusta, Senior Policy Analyst, EU Commission

I have appreciated George as a consultant for community development in the Commission. He helped us recognize not only our needs and opportunities but to help empower core group members and team leaders to create a collective way of working in a political environment respecting the given priorities.”

Ursula Hillbrand, Strategic Planning and Programming officer, EU Commission

“George brings humility, wisdom and mountains of knowledge and experience, which he generously shares. As a coach and mentor he challenges and provokes depth of thought and pursuit of the most important questions. He is a man of great energy and fun, a joy to work with. His commitment to the NHS Co-creation Network project has been absolute and he has generously given his time, care and energy in a way beyond anything that could be written into a contract. George is the perfect guide for inspirational journeys that achieve tangible destinations of great benefit.”

Jane Pightling, Leadership & OD Consultant, Innovation & Clinical Leadership

National Health Services, Yorkshire & Humber Leadership Academy

“My colleagues and I have recently had the enormous privilege of being supported, mentored, and coached by George to develop communities of practice for healthcare. George has a unique way of challenging, teaching and inspiring those around him in order to help others see and seek their highest potential as individuals and professionals. I particularly valued his ability to model and teach co-creation and co-evolution which are vital for our future systems to flourish.”

Angela Green, Improvement Programme Manager

National Health Services, Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Academy