In a message dated 95-06-17 08:52:07 EDT, Kent Myers wrote:
> how are learning communities best split, and when do they need to be split?
IMHO, learning communities should not be splti/created by some 'outside
force'. Many times management creates 'teams', totally ignoring the
natural work teams that have already emerged in response to their
environment [Xerox Parc and IRL call these Communities of Practice(CoP)].
As to 'when' they should be split -- again we should not create any
artificial limits. These teams self-organize -- come into being by
frequent interaction amongst a set of (self-selecting)people. If the
environment is not changing much, then these CoPs will settle into a
definite pattern (although the borders are still sometimes fuzzy). If the
environment is very fluid, with rapid change, then these CoPs are are very
transient, and much more fuzzy -- forming, changing and disbanding in
quick succession.
IF there is wide-spread interest, there are some methods we can use to
find the emergent clusters in our learning-org community. It would
involve gathering some(very little) data from everyone. We have experience
in this area -- one of the services our consulting firm provides is
finding the emergent structures in our client organizations. Anyone else
have experience with Communities of Practice or other emergent
organization structures?
IMHO, we shoud not split the list up in any way, let us keep
self-selecting and self-organizing. Why are searching for more formal
structures or prescribed borders? Is it our lengthy experience in
hierarchical/functional organizations?
Valdis Krebs
Krebs & Associates
Los Angeles, CA
-- valdisk@aol.com