Community of Practice
Use when asked to build or run a Community of Practice (CoP) — an informal, cross-team knowledge-sharing group organized around a shared discipline — as the "internal community" sense of practice-management's dual meaning, distinct from a formal reporting structure.
A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of individuals sharing a common interest, a set of problems or challenges, and a desire to deepen their knowledge and expertise in a particular area — a term coined by Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave in Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991). See Practice Management for this concept placed alongside its client-facing "professional practice" counterpart meaning.
What makes it a CoP, specifically
CoPs are informal networks — found in corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions — bringing together people who share a passion for a specific field or practice, typically from different backgrounds, roles, and experience levels, and crucially cutting across formal reporting lines rather than following them.
What members do
Learn from each other, share best practices, and collaborate on projects — members take an active role in both their own learning and in supporting others' development, through activities like sharing knowledge, giving feedback, solving problems together, and conducting research.
Benefits
Increased knowledge sharing, improved problem-solving, enhanced innovation, and increased collaboration — plus a less tangible but real benefit: building a genuine sense of community and a culture of continuous learning that a purely formal org structure often doesn't provide on its own.
Building a successful CoP
- Clear purpose and scope — a CoP with no defined focus tends to dissolve into a generic social group rather than sustaining genuine knowledge-sharing value.
- A diverse membership — bringing in people from different backgrounds and experience levels, not just one team or seniority band.
- Real opportunities for engagement — active participation mechanisms, not just a passive mailing list or channel nobody actually posts in.
- Ongoing communication and knowledge-sharing support — sustained effort, not a one-time kickoff event.
- Facilitation — a leader or coordinator organizing activities, moderating discussion, and providing resources; a CoP with no one actively tending it tends to fade over time (see Practice Management's discussion of a practice lead role for the closely related internal-organization version of this responsibility).
Common pitfalls
- No clear purpose — a vague or overly broad scope makes it hard for potential members to know whether the CoP is relevant to them.
- No active facilitation — a CoP left to run itself with no one organizing activities or moderating discussion tends to go quiet.
- Treating it as a formal reporting structure — a CoP's value comes specifically from being informal and cutting across formal lines; imposing hierarchy or mandatory attendance undermines the voluntary, passion-driven participation that makes it work.
- No mechanism for members to actually contribute, not just consume — a CoP where only the facilitator ever shares content isn't really functioning as a community.
Learn more
- Etienne Wenger, Jean Lave, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation — the originating text.
- Practice Management for this concept alongside the client-facing "professional practice" meaning of the same word.
- Continuing Professional Development for the individual-development discipline a CoP often supports.