Six books about leading communities of practice
I love to read. Reading is my preferred means of learning, and if I won the lottery my dream job would be to set up a library of my own. As I was a bit short of ideas this week I thought it would be easy to go full Buzzfeed and write a list of my favourite books on community (you wont BELIEVE number 3!), but it turns out that it was actually pretty difficult. I’ve done my best, hope you enjoy!
I also asked Chat GPT the question ‘can you recommend me 5 books on communities of practice’ to see how close our answers were. I’ve added it’s response at the bottom 😊
Building Successful Communities of Practice – Emily Webber
As far as I’m concerned, This is THE book for anyone looking to start a community of practice. I remember being handed a copy of this on my first day by a former boss who told me ‘you might find this useful’, and I have read it dozens of times since. Every time I’ve started a role at a new company since I make sure to have my copy with me, and as soon as possible get them to buy a couple of copies for their tech library.
For those unfamiliar, Webber talks through all the basics and complexities of how communities form, how leaders can support them, and ideas from experience on how to get and maintain support for a community of practice. I find both the maturity model for communities of practice and the visualisation of community lifecycle vs leader visibility particularly useful, both of which of concepts that I find myself bringing up again and again
I work away from home quite a lot and when travelling, I tend to listen to audiobooks. I picked this up on the off chance, and it’s the first time that I’ve stopped halfway through and audiobook and gone out and bought a paperback copy so I can read it more slowly and meaningfully. Eastwood is a Performance Coach of Maori decent, and has worked with some of the biggest sports teams and organisations around the world. In it, he discusses the Maori concept of Whakapapa – the belief that each member of a tribe is part of a chain reaching back generations, a chain to which they are welcome and will always belong to and be remembered by. This incredibly powerful sense of belonging is used to elevate teams to unbelievable levels of achievement, and help individuals feel part of something much bigger than just themselves.
This was the last book I read that made me think ‘this is going to fundamentally change how I go about doing things’, and although that change is coming slowly, its impacting the way that I choose to lead communities. So far I’ve only been able to start encouraging belonging ceremonies and ways of welcoming new members to the group, but there is so much in here that I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Chief Joy Officer – Richard Sheridan
For those not aware of Menlo Innovations, they are an American tech company that does things differently – regularly voted as the best company to work for, this book’s predecessor Joy Inc details their journey of building a workplace that people love. Although both are written by CEO Richard Sheridan, Chief Joy Officer is arguably a more in depth and personal account as Sheridan talks in more detail about his own personal experiences of why he chose to look for an alternative to the traditional ways of running a business, and attempt to build somewhere that allowed teams to bring their whole selves to work every day. The book talks about the importance of relationships and their belief that relationships can only be built by spending time together – something that hits right to the heart of my own core values of community building activities. Pre-covid they were a proudly in-person business and, as the world has changed over the past couple of years, they have been remarkably (but not surprisingly) open and candid about their fears, the changes they have made and the successes they have found. If you’ve not heard of them, you’re in for a treat!
The Starfish and the Spider – Ori Brafman, Rod A. Beckstrom
A book that introduced me to the concept of decentralised organisations, and taught me to question (and then rethink) my beliefs on what a community leader is and should be responsible for. The premise is fairly simple – if you take a spider and chop it in half, you have a dead spider. Its brain is in the middle and centrally controls its legs. If however you took a starfish and chopped it in half – as it has multiple brains in each leg – what you end up with is two starfish. By decentralising control, ownership and responsibility, communities and organisations can thrive in incredibly resilient ways. Throughout the book Brafman cites numerous examples of where this has been demonstrated – from Alcoholics Anonymous to Napster – and goes through the structure that helps them succeed. The learnings I took from this help remind me that I don’t need or want to be the very centre of a community, or to try and position myself as the command and control leader.
A reasonably new edition to the list, I’ve been reading and referring to this over and over again during the past month or so. Essentially a guidebook on building communities of practice, hewn from the collective experience of Beverly and Etienne Wenger-Trayner. Its proving very useful to me at the moment as a particular challenge I’m working on is articulating specific definitions (at some point there will be a post here answering ‘what exactly makes a community a community of practice?’), and this book provides an excellent level of detail. Alongside this guidance, the book tells the stories of two different organisations (JP Morgan-Chase and CCHN) and the different but equally effective ways that they have effectively built communities of practice.
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull – Richard Bach
Ok stick with me here – for those who haven’t heard of it, this book is about a seagull called Jonathan (keeping sticking with me), who loves to fly. Like, he REALLY loves to fly. He spends every waking moment in the pursuit of mastery, forsaking sleep and food and ultimately being shunned and cast out by the flock for not behaving as an upstanding gull should. He goes on to meet others who like him understand the perfect joy of flight, and learns more than he could ever have dreamed possible. And then one day he finds followers of his own that he helps on their journey to mastery. Whilst I don’t think the message of the story is particularly focussed on community it does inspire me towards the pursuit of mastery, and it gives me hope when I’m alone in my passion for a particular subject that somewhere I will find others who care about it too.
As this turned out to be much harder to write than I was expecting, I probably wont do another one of these again. Instead, I will share a link to my Recommended Reading list on Goodreads, which as the name suggests is a list of books I’ve recommended to people in the past.
Also - as promised, here’s the answer from Chat-GPT when asked to recommend me five books on communities of practice. Can’t say I’ve read them all but there’s some good choices in there!
Here are some books about communities of practice that you might find interesting:
Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wenger12
Building Successful Communities of Practice: Discover How Connecting People Makes Better Organisations by Emily Webber3
The Road Less Travelled: A Conversation Between Four Communities of Practice Facilitators About Their Experiences, Learning and Professional Outcomes from the Role by Kristin Warr Pedersen, Davina Boyd, Millie Rooney, Sarah Terkes4
Community of Practice Start-Up Kit by The Distance Consulting Company1
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink1
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)