Stage Seven - All Things Must Pass
So here we are – the end.
This is the part of the story that many of us struggle with the most….the part where we realise/can no longer deny that our community is no longer needed, and its time to bring it to a close. In many cases – such as with Dave in the previous edition – we insist on keeping a community running long beyond the point where the demand for it has dried up, and the real danger is an unpreparedness from either the members or (more commonly) the leaders to let it go.
Generally, the point in time when a Community of Practice has run its course is when demand for belonging and being part of it has dissipated. There are many reasons this can happen…
A change in culture and dynamic – making a meet mandatory, paid, or changing/forsaking the community’s ‘rules’ without consent
A change in focus – deciding to change the topics, frequency or session structure without agreement
A change in personnel – removing/adding a leader to the group where there was/wasn’t one before
Sometimes though, the reason to end a Community of Practice is none of those things. Sometimes it is just the right thing to do when the community has served its purpose to its members and no one depends on it any more.
Emily Webber has shared a really great diagram that maps out the stages of a Community of Practice which was adapted from Stages of Community Development by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder. I’ve talked about this dozens of times in various meetup talks, passing conversations and job interviews, but for the life of me I can’t find a decent image of it by googling it – apologies then, we’ll just have to use a picture of the copy I have in my book of important notes…
Essentially it works like this. Webber lays out five stages of CoP maturity – Potential, Forming, Maturing, Self-Sustaining and Transformation. She also adds in a tracking line for the role of a leader, showing how the need for a leader’s energy and visibility is the opposite of that of the community itself – the more mature the community becomes the less dependency on the leader to provide the energy necessary for it to succeed. I love this chart and could spend hours talking about it (and probably will at some point in the future), but the bit that often gets forgotten about is the final stage – Transformation.
We can see two things here – after a prolonged period of being self-sustaining, the energy and visibility of a community will begin to drop off. In a similar way, the dependency on the leader’s input increases and will continue to increase exponentially without ay other form of change. Why? The obvious answer is that the community members are no longer willing to invest their own time and energy in it, but why is that? We need look no further than the name Webber places on this stage for the answer – Transformation. Whatever it is that the community intended to achieve, it has reached the stage where transformation has occurred and its goals have been achieved. If the members came together because they were seeking a sense of community, the transformation will have been completed when the group has built the structures required to meet that need. If the group came together because they are passionate about a particular domain, transformation will have been achieved when full adoption and optimisation has been reached. These don’t sound like bad things because they aren’t bad things – this is success! The Community of Practice has achieved what it set out to do, this should be a time of celebration!
When I work with Community Leaders who are struggling, I make an effort to look at this with them. The last thing that anyone wants is for their time and efforts to go to waste, and its important to work out whether a community needs ‘saving’ or not. Together, we look at the goals of the Community of Practice – have they been achieved? If they have, is there desire to pivot to something new? If not, are they still achievable or do the membership no longer believe that they are achievable? Together, we look at the community itself – why has the group stopped coming together? Have the members needs been met beyond the CoP so that they no longer depend on it? If so, we ask ourselves whether there is any other need we can meet together or whether the efforts of the leader would be more impactful working towards a new challenge? I know that last sentence contains some fairly loaded language, but think of it like this – if an artist sells a finished painting, they don’t turn up at the purchaser’s house to keep adding the odd touch here and there. They go and paint another masterpiece. If a chef finishes a beautiful plate of food, diner’s will be fairly put out if they’re there sprinkling parsley on each forkful they try to put in their mouth? They start on the next dish. A Community Leader who has helped guide a community to the transformation stage has succeeded – to keep fiddling or forcing the issue benefits no one, so they should be proud of their track record of success and be prepared to move on to a new challenge. Easier said than done I know, but there is ALWAYS a new Community of Practice out there waiting to be discovered and formed. As leaders we shouldn’t be afraid to go look for them.
So there we are then – seven stages of Communities of Practice. I’m not sure what I’ll write about next week, but I imagine it will probably be books. I don’t pretend to be an expert but I hope by sharing my experiences there are others out there who find solace, inspiration, or confidence to keep going if they are at a difficult point with their community. I’d always love to hear what others think or to get some inspiration on what to write about, so please feel free to leave a comment asking a question and I’ll try and give a sensible answer 😊