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From Apprenticeship to "Communities
of Practice"
Shortly after our founding in 1987 by a generous multiyear grant from
the Xerox Foundation, IRL began to examine various models of apprenticeship,
upclose and personal. We discovered that apprenticeship is actually quite
widespread, is usually deemed to be successful, and Ð very important Ð
usually works because it requires becoming a member of a cohesive, informal
community that goes beyond one master or mentor. Wanting to become "one
of them," to be accepted into a community, is a powerful dynamic of apprenticeship.
Further, we came to understand that newcomers learn best as they become
members of these communities. Moreover, they continue to learn as they,
in turn, teach, mentor, and participate "in the practice." Continuing
to learn, we discovered, is an equally powerful prerequisite for continuing
membership in those communities.
Out of that early work, IRL researchers developed a term, "Communities
of Practice," that has now gained recognition and encouraging acceptance
in the business literature. The Institute is proud to have coined the
term, to see it spread, and to work with our partners on practical applications
of the concept.
"Communities of Practice" are simply those highly informal groups of
people that develop a shared way of working together to accomplish some
activity. Usually, such communities include people with varying roles
and experience. Every organization has them. Though they don't appear
on "orgcharts," they are the largely invisible network of people who get
the real work done. They are also the place where people tend to learn
the essentials of their job — just as apprentices do — by participating
in them. One might even say that a community of practice is like a super
apprenticeship system that continually feeds even the most knowledgeable
members the new ideas and feedback critical to continuous lifelong learning.
Much of what individuals know depends on their local environment. What
an organization knows, however, is what's embedded in and among its communities
of practice. Recently much has been made in business literature of statements
like "if company X only knew what it knows," referring to the difficulty
of capturing what many individuals know. That does not surprise us, since
we have come to understand that much of what any of us know is "tacit
knowledge" embedded in the practices we share with others. So, if we want
to know what our organization knows, we should start by identifying our
communities of practice and see them as the well spring of what the organization
really knows.
That is one reason why preserving the integrity of these informal communities
is so important. The worst effects of downsizing and reengineering come
from their complete disregard for communities of practice. The fact that
training deals only with explicit knowledge while the value is often in
tacit knowledge is another reason training can get at only part of what
is understood to be effective.
There is another dimension to the community idea that is seldom discussed
but critically important: Learning is powerfully linked not just to motivation
but also identity. What we choose to learn is often a function of who
we are and who we wish to become. Not wanting to be like "them" can be
enough to keep someone from learning. That fact seems to hold whether
we are talking about company apprentices, high school gangs, or seasoned
software engineers
If those social dimensions of learning are as powerful and enduring
as they appear to be Ð and our work strongly supports such a contention
Ð then this is important news for organizations. Most organizations implicitly
know they need to be continuously innovative through continuous learning.
However, again, training alone does not even come close to addressing
the challenge.
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