Let’s get to the core - the heart of a learning community beats because of a few members
This post was written by Jacob McNulty
Of all of the various groups in which you’re involved, be they social, professional, religious or otherwise, have you noticed that there is typically a core group of people that keep the momentum of the group?
That’s precisely what Tony Burgess of Company Command noticed was happening in his learning community. In this community of practice (CoP) with thousands of members Tony noticed a very small group (i.e. 20) were generating most of the activity and sustaining the momentum. So he decided to dedicate his doctoral thesis to taking a closer look at the inner workings of this core group.
Tony was generous enough to share his findings with some member of CPSquare in an online discussion that lasted about a week and also via a conference call where he talked about his findings.
In his research Tony discovered that the members of a community’s core group have similar characteristics. He boiled them down into four areas:
- Who are they? What are their values?
- Driven to learn
- People person
- Service and ‘giving back’ ethic
- Hard wired to develop others
- What do they do as core group members?
- Contributor
- Connector
- Facilitator
- Social Catalyst
- Steward
- How do they become core group members?
- Find and use the community of practice
- Initial interaction in the community
- Assuming a role
- Participating
- What is meaningful to them
- To contribute
- To connect
- To develop
Tony’s findings resonated with me professionally - we typically focus our initial efforts just on building a strong core when setting up CoPs with organizations and that foundation provides solid footing for the rest of the community to morph.
A big thank you to Tony for the insights and generosity of time and knowledge for sharing with us.
Tags: business training, collective intelligence, Communities of Practice, CoP, corporate training, crowdsourcing, development, informal learning, Knowledge Management, knowledge worker, learning, learning strategies, organizational learning, professional development, social networking, workforce development