Link #41 🌱🌿🌳 Learning and Community / part 1
The start of the exploration about how learning intertwines with community
Learning flywheel
One of the learning flywheels that I’ve stumbled upon and that I’ve written about back in 2020 on Medium goes like this:
From the conversations, challenges and progress in practice, new questions emerge. Questions that are beyond my current experience and expertise.
By bringing these questions to social spaces like communities, I discover new trails thanks to the conversations and resources shared in there.
By following these trails through study and curation, I uncover new insights thanks to inner conversations, critical thinking and synthesis.
I bring these new insights into my practice and the flywheel keeps spinning.
Anti-patterns that go against the flywheel:
Practicing without new insights → 5 years of experience = 5 times the same 1yr of experience;
Being active in communities without having a constant practice → questions, inquiries and interactions that are not grounded in actual practice;
Studying without interacting in communities → disconnection from the current realities of the people around you.
Let’s deep dive into Communities. For the sake of simplicity, I won’t get into specificities like community of practice, community of interest, community of inquiry etc.
Sense & Change Communities Model
The model that I’ve simplified thanks to numerous experiences in professional, sports and nonformal communities looks like this:
In a nutshell:
Core people are the ones who take care that the community exists, is active and has a future.
Connected people are the ones who join the community’s activities when they can and constantly contribute to the initiatives in the community.
Occasionals are people who join certain activities in the community based on their own interest, like being interested in a specific topic or wanting to meet a specific person.
Spectators are people who know about the community’s existence but haven’t made yet any step to participate to the activities in the community.
Boundaries
There are boundaries (fine lines) between layers:
When people become aware of the community, they become spectators (they pass the awareness boundary);
When they decide to become active in the community, they become occasionals (they pass the activation boundary);
When they decide that the community is the place they belong to, they become connected (they pass the belonging boundary);
When they commit to take care of the present and the future of the community, they join the core (they pass the commitment boundary).
Movement between layers can go both ways:
A spectator can forget about the existence of a community (cross back the awareness boundary);
An occasional can become inactive due to other interests and priorities in their life (cross back the activation boundary);
A connected person can feel that they don’t belong to the community anymore, but maybe just participate now and then (cross back the belonging boundary);
A core person can feel they can’t commit going forward, so they step back but maybe remain connected (cross back the commitment boundary).
Leaps of movement across 2+ layers can also happen, like:
A person who discovers a community and instantly connects to it (leaping spectator and occasional to become connected);
A core person who disconnects completely from the community (leaping connected and occasional to remain a spectator).
Typical activities
People who play the community roles mentioned above usually do things like:
Core people
Macro: caring for the future of the community, keeping the rhythm of the community, constantly asking “what are the next steps for the community?”;
People: onboarding new people, connecting people in the community;
Gatherings: proposing activities, hosting community gatherings, inviting speakers (from inside or outside the community);
Initiatives: initiating new projects, contributing to projects;
Enablement: enabling other people to host gatherings, enabling other people to implement initiatives.
Connected people
Gatherings: proposing activities, hosting gatherings;
Initiatives: initiating new projects, contributing to projects.
Occasionals
Some participation: occasionally participating to community activities, occasionally contributing to projects, following updates & shared resources.
Spectators
Curated information flows: following updates & shared resources.
Next time, I’ll share why the model is called Sense & Change, dynamic patterns in the life of communities and how people active at each layer in a community learn from the interaction with others.
Stay tuned,
Bülent
As a strategic adviser and lifelong learner, Bülent Duagi works with Managing Directors / General Managers in 🇷🇴 Tech companies to help them make more impact with better strategic thinking - which usually translates to:
🧭 having a clear strategy that enables better and faster decision making;
🤝 organizing better to both run operations and implement strategy with the available bandwidth and budgets;
🚀 implementing strategic initiatives and programs in an efficient and effective manner, paying attention to the people side of change;
⚡️ intentionally developing proper internal capabilities that are sustainable in the long run.
Explore the whole Linked Learning collection.
