Community methods vs common sense approaches

Setting up and running a Community of Practice (CoP) in an organisation, much beloved of KM as a strategy, is an interesting case of ‘not brain surgery / rocket science’.

I tend to say to people who want to do this that (a) it’s largely common sense, but (b) it isn’t all common sense. Turns out that (a) is loud and clear but it appears (b) is barely audible. I must try harder.

It isn’t all common sense because there are some situations in life where the instinctive approach just isn’t right – and setting up a CoP is just far enough outside most people’s experience to risk them imagining common sense answers that maybe even some of us in KM believed in at one time, but that just don’t fly.

Trouble is, it looks like something perfectly day-to-day: just people talking, basically, and doing other things they agree to do. And just as “respirated” is a true but not sufficient answer to the question “what did you do at work today?” then also “people talking and doing things” is also a true description of what’s going on in a CoP but not an adequate one nor one at the right level. You just might be missing some detail.

If it looked like brain surgery or even, for many, plumbing, for example, people would pretty soon know it was a bit more than “cutting stuff up and sticking it together again”. They’d understand there were processes and tools they didn’t know; they’d understand that maybe there were unforeseen problems that the specialist knows about and they don’t. Better call a plumber.

A lot of it is common sense – but to that I say think deeply and reflect on your real-world, real-life experience of similar situations instead of thinking about this idealistically. If you think it’s common sense then tap into that rather than getting all abstract.

On the other hand, whilst we’re unlikely to leave someone with brain damage or cause a major sewage spill if we get our CoP set up wrong, we could still fail to engage people’s minds, hearts and hands, and we could make a bad smell if we don’t equally tap into some CoP experience when we do this work.