Communities of practice

Peter ten Hove
28 februari 2020

This month

Communities of practice

  • Added value
  • Functions
  • The underlying secret

Gather4Humanity is about to enrole its first members in its online community. But what is a community and why should one enrole?

Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are composed of groups of knowledgeable people that dedicate themselves to a common interest, passion, or mission. They interact in order to further their understandig, knowledge, skills, practices or common goals. They aim to enable cross-sector cooperation and collaboration and play an important role in linking various relevant networks.

Added value

The added value can be divided in both personal and organisational benefits and in short term and long term benefits.

Personal benefits lay in aspects like:

  • short term: access to resources, expertise, help, motivation, confidence, trust, senses of meaning, sense of connection, offering a meaningful contribution
  • long term: personal development, reputation, professional advantages, succesful cooperation

Organisational benefits are:

  • short term: problem solving, time and resource efficient, re-use of existing materials, synergies and knowledge sharing
  • long term: innovation, news strategies, keeping and enhancing knowledge and skills, efficiency, effectiveness, strategic advantages, access to a relevant network

Main functions

  • asking for, learning about and sharing of information, best-practices and resources
  • providing training and guidance
  • gather, filter and curate and disseminate informtion worth paying attention to
  • providing help to members
  • amplify the power of initiatives, developments, voices in the industry
  • collective investments enabling the Community of Practice, its members and organisation to thrive
  • enable cross-sector approaches (government, civil society, academic and research institutions etc), connecting for multidisciplinary approaches
  • using the wisdom of the crowd and offering a platform for co-creation and support
  • building a sustainable business based on shared values, standards and goals

The underlying secret

Communities provide a win-win-win situation. Don’t like management terminology? In other words:

  • you as an individual member benefit
  • partners benefit from each other
  • the common cause, field of expertise, passion or mission benefits

Get ready

Interested, convinced, want to learn more? Read more on the Gather4Humanity initiative: https://gather4humanity.com/our-community/