Communities of Practices (CoPs) are essential to the growth of any organization or industry. And like every community, CoPs take time and effort to mature. 

Without a proper plan for your CoP, you might hit various roadblocks along the way. In this piece, we cover the best practices for facilitating your Community of Practice. 

1. Create Goals 

You must have clear goals for your community. 

•         What is your vision for the group? 
•         What do you plan to achieve? 
•         What are the steps to achieve your vision? 

After you understand the vision, you will need an articulate mission statement that encompasses it. With a clear mission statement defined, you can create outlined goals that will help your CoP realize its objectives. 

Pro Tip: A visual board or mind map is an excellent way to do this. Visual thinking will drive your creative processes. 

2. Build Your Core Team and Community Members 

To achieve a self-sustaining community, you must have an effective core team. There are usually four roles within a CoP:

•         Program manager
•         Manager 
•         Core team members 
•         Members 

All community members must be engaged, included and dedicated. Be aware of the knowledge and experience each member brings to the table. 

Pro Tip: Create a system that allows every member to showcase their strength. Ideally, you want a diverse group; everyone should bring something unique and valuable to the table. 

3. Create an Effective Knowledge Management System

Communities of Practices are all about peer group learning and knowledge exchange. Each member must be able to access and share useful information at all times. 

You must create a way to store all information in an efficient and intuitive manner. Your community will generate a lot of content. So, you must have a way to categorize data and filter the useful from the outdated information. 

Pro Tip: Carry out periodic ROT analysis to validate relevant content. You can do that every three to six months. 

4. Plan Regular Meetings 

Consistent, planned meetings are necessary for continuous communication and collaboration. And that is the secret to maintaining your community. 

Schedule regular meetings, meet-ups, educational workshops to ensure members’ engagement. It is recommended to meet up at least once every month to maintain the conversation and forward progress. Send surveys to get a sense of days/time that work best for your community.

If in-person meetings are not possible, video or messaging apps, like Slack and Zoom, are a great way to guarantee regular communication. Organize virtual meetings – either visually using video or in message thread format using a chat app. 

Pro Tip: If your community is large, create smaller groups of members to ensure easy communication, such as breakout sessions. 

5. Your Lead Facilitator & Co-Facilitator are key to the Success of Your CoP

Your lead facilitator is vital to the success of every meeting. They will guide discussions during each session and keep everyone on task.

Make sure you appoint an aide knowledgeable about facilitating meetings. The co-facilitator must be able to handle the technology platform, resolve tech issues, keep a clear and consistent meeting schedule, and keep everyone involved and engaged. 

Pro Tip: If you don’t have a qualified facilitator within your CoP, you should employ a professional to help. 

Do you need help creating and facilitating your Community of Practice? Reach out to us at See in Colors for meeting design & facilitation. 

Are you struggling with a lack of professional development or problem-solving skills within your organization? Or maybe there is little to no cohesiveness and interaction among key professionals within your industry? 

If so, a community of Practice (CoP) just might be what you need to consider as an effective solution for these challenges. 

What is a Community of Practice? 

A Community of Practice is best defined as a group of people who share common interests or concerns, i.e., they take part in ongoing interactions with objectives focusing on a set of problems, a specific industry, or a discipline. 

Why create a Community of Practice?

Although CoPs were first developed to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge, they have evolved to be more than that. A CoP provides an environment where professionals can share best practices and generate new answers, theories and learning. 

CoPs are now used as an effective tool to improve clinical and public health practices. But they are not only useful in the health industry. They are also helpful in several industries, including business, child welfare, and education. 

So, what are the purposes of a Community of Practice? 

1. To promote the standardization of practices for professionals. 
2. To initiate and manage a body of knowledge for members to draw on. 
3. To innovate and create new ideas, knowledge and practices. 

The Benefits of a Community of Practice

Increased Collaboration 

A Community of Practice (CoP) connects people and creates an avenue for people to interact, pool resources, and work in partnership. By organizing collaboration, a variety of people get to work and interact with each other. Without a CoP, these relationships may not have occurred otherwise. 

Exchange of Information and Knowledge

A CoP provides the context for people to communicate, share information and knowledge. It does this by creating an avenue for people to interact and share insights and stories improving awareness and comprehension around a body of thought.

Innovate and create new ideas/knowledge 

A Community of Practice (CoP) allows people to share experiences and create new ideas/knowledge. These valuable interactions generate learning pathways and develop new concepts and innovations.

Professional Development

CoPs encourage peer learning groups, educational workshops, and learning communities which helps professional development. This also helps to increase productivity and performance. 

Rapid Problem-Solving 

Communities of Practices provide a centralized place for communication and valuable information for solving organizational problems. CoPs foster expertise and rapid problem-solving skills within people. 

Conclusion 

A Community of Practices can be an excellent strategy for building a more open organization. It is also an effective way to get advanced solutions to complex problems. 

Communities of practice foster learning by connecting people and encouraging collaboration. This, in turn, creates a platform for creative problem-solving and innovation. 

Do you need help creating and facilitating your Community of Practice? Reach out to us at See in Colors for meeting design & facilitation. 

When planning a staff retreat for your team there are so many options to consider, but all exciting things for sure! You may want to keep things more relaxed or keep things structured – either way being strategic about your agenda is key.

Use your staff retreat as a chance to show your team how much you appreciate all of their hard work. Recognize some key players, but acknowledge the team as a whole during your time together. Present certificates, awards, or gift cards to recognize behaviors and performance. Let them know how important they are to your company’s success. They will love the gesture, and it will increase team morale as well!

Another item to add to your agenda is a period of reflection of the past year. Create a safe space for each team member to be heard and allow your group to connect at a deeper level. Give each person time to share their thoughts.

To compile the discussion together – hire a graphic recorder to visualize and capture the input, ideas, and key points. Visual summaries tell a story and bring emotion to your meeting by incorporating colorful images to the activities. One of our clients recently held a staff retreat and shared with their team, “Your ideas are important to us, we want to hear you, that’s why we hired See In Colors to draw out what’s being said.” Let your team know you want to understand their point of view and allow each opinion to be valued.

Want to add graphic recording to your staff retreat? Learn more about our services here!

Click on the image below to watch the quick video of visual notes.

Creative Introduction with Holly Bass and local artist playing the drums.

Panel discussion on funding sources

Our closing for the day was a community poem created by all participants.  As the poem was read aloud, I listened and captured some of the highlights in this graphic recording.  I loved seeing the creativity throughout the day, because “out of the box” thinking is how we move toward new ideas and solutions.

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Are you planning a meeting or conference?  Keep your attendees engaged, they need to SEE the big picture.  Just contact me for a free consultation.  I’m happy to help.

Lots and lots of drawing!

Attendees took a poll on 1 word that summarizes the future. When the results came on the screen, I drew this picture for the word INNOVATIVE.

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Are you or maybe someone you know planning a conference?  Keep the attendees engaged, they need to SEE the big picture.  Just contact me for a free consultation.  I’m happy to help (smile).

What an awesome experience to see speakers like the legendary Nikki Giovanni, Kwame Alexander and so many others. The Master of Ceremonies for the event was Aron Teo Lee, who is also a TedxHerndon veteran speaker.

For this event, I listened to 18 different talks and prepared the charts ahead of time.  I created the 18 hand drawn charts in my studio.  The last step was to construct tower displays in the lobby for attendees.

Here are some of the pictures from the event!

TedXHerndon Entrance

Yep, this tower I made is taller than me!

9 different talks displayed in a tower.

Attendees stop to reflect and take in the content

Thanks for reading! I appreciate all the comments and feedback that you send me (smile).  I love referrals too, please continue to spread the word about my business.  I’m thankful to God for wonderful readers like you and for the doors of opportunities that are opening up.

If you want to use visual images for your next project, conference, or strategy session, contact me for ideas

This week I joined a webinar that showed libraries how to use several facilitation approaches to foster conversation and lead change in communities.  The webinar was hosted by the American Library Association and the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation.

Here are just a few key points that I sketched while listening.  There are several more webinars coming up, so if you are interested, find out more here.

For as long as I can remember… I’ve always had a library card.  I’m really excited to see how the #LibrariesTransform initiative will play a role across our country.  The timing in our country right now is perfect for having meaningful dialogue.

Question, comments or ideas?  I’d love to hear them. Hit reply or contact me.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jwau58kbiir8fhc/Sketchnotes%20for%20Beginners%20-%20SURN%20-%202018.pdf?dl=0

Graphic recording by Lisa Nelson for #1uMLK. The Hamilton, Washington, DC

I enjoyed working on this project for so many reasons.  One reason is because I come from a family of union workers. When award recipient, Carmen Perez, mentioned the 1199 union it made me smile.

Another reason I enjoyed this project was because of the program itself.  It was so rich with stories of ordinary people doing amazing things.

I love this quote that was printed on the program.  It speaks to the labor movement and matched the occasion perfectly.

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I used pieces from the music selection, video segments, and stories from the honorees to make the chart a collage.

Click here to see a 15 second video of the complete chart.

I got a chance to meet neighbors and we collectively worked on being “One Greenbelt”.  Residents shared their experiences and suggestions for improving relations with the police department.  Thomas Kemp, Acting Police Chief said “We are here to LISTEN”.

Take a look at my sketchnotes below, with the takeaways I heard during this session.

I’m curious.  Is your community having these kinds of conversations?

Please leave a comment below and share.

Over 700 attendees at the Community Summit #cincytakesonpoverty

Each team member worked on a different portion of the 3-D display to capture the harvest.

Working on my portion of the 3-D chart that represents “What’s missing” from the solution to childhood poverty.

The final visual summary, our Gigantic 3-D display was a hit!

Checkout WLWT to see my drawing in action during the news segment.

This was a day of listening, learning, sharing and community.  I am so glad that I was able to be a part of this important work.  Please leave a comment below.