Communities of Practice - what I've learned so far
Hi, I am Stacia Copple and over the last 2 and a bit years I have been co-hosting the public sector Buying Digital Community of Practice (CoP) with the team at the Crown Commercial Service (CCS). I wanted to reflect on what I have personally learnt after co-hosting some of the face-to-face and virtual meet-ups.
What is a Community of Practice?
The awesome Emily Webber, the global expert on Communities of Practice outlines:
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. They come together without hierarchy in order to learn about their area of focus. These groups of practice are non-hierarchical, voluntary, and long-term. They focus on how you accomplish your tasks, rather than what you deliver - Mind the product.
What I have learned?
The Buying Digital CoP was established by CCS's Enhancing Capability team (which I was part of) based on the needs of procurement specialists who bought and managed digital products and services contracts. The first session took place on 13th March 2018 in London with 17 members from the CCS, Home Office, HMRC, DWP, Highways England, GDS to name a few.
As a Civil Servant at CCS I helped deliver bespoke workshops for buyers and their category teams and they were invited to the first initial meet-up. Little did we know that within a few sessions time we would see memberships grow to over 600 people or be moving to a virtual setup.
Most exciting is the fact the members are a mix of buyers and digital people. This is a real show of a multi disciplinary team in action.
I left the civil service in May 2018 and with a wider perspective I am going to, over the course of a few blog posts, share my personal lessons. I hope this helps the wider procurement fraternity.
Learning about people - understanding personalities
One of the most important factors to ensure a community meet-up is successful is member participation. It is great that this community has now grown to 100s of members but if they don’t feel comfortable to share and feedback their experiences the group will be unable to learn from each other. This is the whole point of having a community.
When hosting the meet-ups face to face in the past we have made people move seats and sit with people they don’t know. But to be more inclusive as a community we need to recognise the differences in personality types. It is important to allow people to get to know each other. Richard Etienne kindly held a session on personality types (extrovertism/introvertism) and how these different types cope in the workplace.
It has since occured to me how daunting as an introvert being forced to involve in small talk and sit with people you don’t know can be. This is something members will no longer be asked to do. It is of great importance to me that all members of a community feel included, comfortable and a voice to be heard.
Ice breakers - this one panned
Everyone is different and everyone needs different things. We have used ice breakers, but sometimes these don't work for everyone. We have tried using software Mentimeter which is a live polling platform where members use their mobile phones to add their answers. We set-up a questionnaire with members answering on their phone. The outcome we had in mind was that these silly questions would lead to tables joking and laughing at the responses, a little light hearted fun. It actually totally panned with people concentrating on inputting answers in silence on their phones. You could almost hear the tumbleweed float across the room.
Want to break the ice - just chat
The best ice breakers are task based where tables are competing against each other and require the team on the table to talk and collaborate. It is after these types of icebreakers that throughout the day teams have then felt comfortable to feed back to the entire room, the more extroverted people on the team have been naturally identified and tend to be the spokesperson for the table.
Virtual meet-ups are the new thing
Holding a meet-up virtually has been a challenge. Yes more members are able to attend as they can join from anywhere but the dropout rate is higher virtually and people can just leave the “room”. When meeting face to face people are less inclined to pick up their coat and bag in the middle of a presentation and hop on the train home.
When hosting virtually the most integral part of any software you use is the chat function box. As I said using an ice breaker is just that: breaking the ice when meeting people you don’t know. But virtually an ice breaker is pretty impossible. We have all felt that awkwardness when joining a large group online and 2 people talking at the same time or being stuck on mute. You lose the natural cues when someone else is going to speak. This has meant that when it comes to feeding back and asking people to contribute their thoughts, for me as the host, it is the dreaded silence.
That chatroom is back
One way we have learnt to manage this is to promote the use of the chat function. When welcoming everyone to the video call also say hello on the chat box. Ask members to add their thoughts, comments and feedback via the chat function. Once you have spoken to all people who wish to participate by talking on the call, ensure you go through all comments in the chat box. We have noticed when doing this those less comfortable with coming off mute or being on camera will participate more and ensure every voice in the community is heard.
Contact me
Like the rest of my colleagues at CURSHAW I’m here to help you deliver your DDaT programmes.
My interests are:
Procurement of Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) products and services
How to build a digital-procurement hybrid team
Complex G Cloud or DDaT requirements
Procurement roadmapping and sourcing strategies
Creating a community of practice for procurement categories
Managing agile contracts
Please do contact me if you have any questions about how we can help your organisation buy and contract manage DDaT products and services. I'm also keen to hear from people who are interested in joining our strong group of Associates.