Groups, not communities

Communities of Practice Not.

This is the opening of a long paper that addresses getting the most out of workers who identify with one another professionally, groups some people call communities of practice.

I don’t use the word community because it has a dozen definitions. When I hear community, I first think of a small town. What’s intended is a group of people with a common background or shared interests, such as the medical community.

Practice suffers from the same ambiguity. Practice makes perfect. Tennis practice. A practicing Catholic. But what’s intended here is the exercise of a profession, for example a law practice. Yet some communities of practice, think of Alcoholics Anonymous or a bowling league, don’t involve professions at all. That’s why I write about groups, not communities. The groups I generally have in mind are workers who identify with one another because they do similar work.