Forming COPs

From Dar

These are ideas posted by Rosanna to com-prac which I've been meaning to get ack to. In particular, the analogy with the process of crystalisation is saturated solutions is familar to me and understood in some branches of social science as well as the natural sciences, but perhaps not fashionable branches. Also the role of the subjective factor, which is something praticioners need to appreciate.

There are two ways of forming a CoP (I say two cause I don't believe in the third, the "built" one):

1) "spontaneously":

I don't believe it is *really* spontaneous, it's more like somebody doing the work but not doing what s/he is doing... according to the Johari window, it's the state of "unconscious competence". It's is more or like the case in which an "unconscious" nucleator starts aggregating a CoP not knowing what s/he is doing:

2) "nucleated":

you follow me on this, my background is in medicine. Stones get formed in a liquid that is supersaturated with a given solute. However, supersaturation is necessary but not sufficient. It takes a little "piece of something", like a cluster of some 5-10 cells, a kidney cylinder, few bacteria. That "piece" in a supersaturated solution starts what is known as stone "nucleation". So, what I do in my practice is to search for the supersaturated solution (aka: a 10-20 member network among 3 or 4 departments, like Verna Allee would say) and then I search for the "piece" to shove into it. The piece can be my "formal/informal" leadership, but most often it is my detection of a subgroup of people that could be autochthones leaders, a topic that can create debate (and therefore emergence of a leader), sometimes shifting focus/technology attracts the "right" leader. It depends.

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