If U Seek continues with a thoughtful and engaging conversation featuring John Cleere, founder of Unmake. From building communities of practice to shaping strategy through conversation, John shares how influence in design often starts with small, intentional actions. We talk about the difference between busy work and real work, why structure can be freeing, and how teams can create space for clarity, momentum, and even a little “serendipity”.
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Preview
In This Episode:
- Why John prefers “movement” over “momentum”
- How communities of practice can spark meaningful change
- The role of design in shaping strategy and culture
- Why collaboration often starts with talking about the problem
- What good leadership looks like (and what it isn’t)
Transcript
[00:00:00] So rather than trying to avoid fear, he’s presenting fear as something meaningful and it’s a signal. There’s something behind it and it’s something there to understand. So in kind of making that even simpler, fear I think is often the canary in the coal mine. It’s really telling us something important about what’s actually happening in the company.
[00:00:21] What we seek shapes, what we build, this is If U Seek by Useberry.
[00:00:28] Nikol: Hello everybody. This is Nicole Fotaki. Welcome back to If U Seek today. We’re here with John Cleere, whose path into communities of practice began in design. After starting design communications and founding Red Lemonade Creative, he moved from traditional agency work into running design sprints and alignment workshops across industries like FinTech and broadcasting.
Now through a make, John explores how teams work better together, designing communities of practice that strengthen collaboration and connect strategy to everyday work. In this conversation, we’ll talk about what makes these communities different from traditional workshops, how they support business strategy and why space for reflection matters more than ever.
John, welcome. It’s great to have you here.
[00:01:17] John: Yeah. Nikol. Really delighted to be here, and thanks for letting me part of this Useberry podcast. Delighted to be here.
[00:01:27] Nikol: So let’s start right at the heart of your current work. You’ve been building communities of practice inside companies, small peer led group.
[00:01:37] Can you explain what these are and how they work? What makes them different from a team meeting or a training course?
[00:01:45] John: Okay, great. So first of all, I started looking at Communities of Practice about two or three years ago, and I realized it’s not really a new concept, because I remember at the time seeing a painting by Raphael, the School of Athens.
[00:02:01] John: So if, if anyone’s listening to the podcast, if you wanna bring up a picture of the School of Athens, so it was painted like in the 1500, so it’s a long time ago. And what Raphael was doing, he was a Renaissance painter, and he was kind of moving from the dark ages into a new time of technology and science.
[00:02:19] John: And in the painting he had this building. And inside the building in the middle, he had people like Plato and Aristotle. So he had like Plato, he would kind of slightly more lofty ideas. And you can see his hand is held high. And you have Aristotle, which is hand is held low, which is slightly more grounded person.
[00:02:36] John: But within that painting as well, there was lots of other Polymaths designers, mathematicians, astronomers, all from different era like protagonists and who else is there? Socrates, loads of others. Okay. So the whole idea that Raphael was trying to get across is that you can take all of these different people, all very different.
[00:02:55] John: All different views, but when you put them under one roof and you can see them all sharing ideas with different people, new ideas can come. And that’s what the Renaissance was about. And I think in some ways, I know in your last podcast you talked about AI and we’ll probably end up talking about AI here too, that, you know, it is a new era.
[00:03:13] John: I think what’s happening now, and it is in Renaissance, so communities of practice, of bringing people under one roof. Which, you know, Raphael did with, you know, people from different eras. I think we’re now in this unique position to bring. People together from all different areas of walks of life within our work and working together and working on different ideas.
[00:03:32] John: So if we were to define a community of practice, really you could say that it’s a group of people that connect around a shared area of expertise. And what they’re doing really is they’re building this shared knowledge and approaches to advance their field of work. So, it’s about making these people, let’s say in an organization feel more connected, more celebrated and productive, and the result really is about retaining and nurturing talent in what is an everchanging landscape.
[00:04:01] John: So you could think of communities of practice, like learning labs embedded within the workflow of companies. So how are they made up? Um, kind of three things to point out really here is that they’re voluntary groups. So it’s about bringing people together who want to do it. So it’s not about making people do it, it’s peer led.
[00:04:21] John: So there’s less a hierarchical structure within it. So it’s peer to peer and you’re looking for diverse people across the departments. That’s really important. And then what comes from it is actually more organic than structured objectives as such. So it can go on tangents and you have to be comfortable with that because that’s okay.
[00:04:41] John: And so from my own background, I know you’d mentioned in an introduction that I came from a workshop background, and I’ve been in workshops for years and short cycle workshops and I facilitate them. But the whole idea, even with communities of Practice, that it’s about the content and the direction really that comes from the participants themselves.
[00:04:59] John: It’s not from me as such. I’m just guiding people along the way. And then we can talk near the end, I suppose, a little bit about the platforms, et cetera, that you can use for communities, practice, ’cause you’re in person, but they’re also, you know, online. And we’ll talk about them later, but basically what you’re trying to do with a community of practice, it’s like hosting a dinner party.
[00:05:18] John: You’re a supper or something like that. So what you’re trying to do is you, you’re preparing the table for people to eat or to talk, you’re taking their coats and you’re making them feel more relaxed or you’re introducing ’em to the room. And what you’re doing then is you’re allowing. conversations flow, and you are introducing people to each other as well.
[00:05:35] John: And it’s about making people more comfortable and safe. And then that’s where when you sit at the table, the conversation starts. It goes off in tangents, new stories, some insights. And God forbid, you might actually have a bit of fun as well. So what I’d like to say as well is that they can start casual and small.
[00:05:52] John: They’re not like I said, they’re not structured, but you don’t have to put a lot of energy into them. You can just, between two people, you can start, but the idea is that as they grow, they’re incredibly and easily scalable. And one really interesting thing about communities of practice as well is that they’re almost impossible to copy ’cause they’re uniquely yours.
[00:06:11] John: So you’re not gonna get fast followers with this. This is uniquely yours. And then this in terms of the kind of communities of practice that are out there. If I was to generalize and say that there’s kind of macro view is that there’s three types. There’s internal communities of practice. So within an organization like Useberry, you could have a community of practice.
[00:06:30] John: Um, they’re external and that’s where you can be part of a community practice, let’s say on user testing or something. And you could have loads of people from different companies come together, create a community practice so they can learn more from each other about, you know, user testing, et cetera. And then there’s an interesting one as well, which I’m just starting to look at, and that’s product led.
[00:06:49] John: So if you could imagine you have a product in the company and you have people in the community of practice for that product, but you also introduce the customers and they’re part of that community of practice as well. But the whole idea here, you have to make sure and create value for people at both sides.
[00:07:06] John: But it’s a great way to develop a product beyond just let’s say user testing, et cetera. And so your question then around what makes them different from team meetings or training courses is that, well, in team meetings you’re solving for today’s problems and you know, you’re putting out fires.
[00:07:21] John: You’re working on the initial objectives that the company is working on but in training you’re, sometimes, just learning from someone else’s solutions. So it’s the kind of the stage on the stage, the stage on the stage. It’s that one way conversation and some of the solutions that people are presenting to you.
[00:07:38] John: They’re post rationalize based on their own experiences and let’s say not yours, so, you know, some of these ideas are tied up in a fancy ribbon and they look really exciting. And when you’re watching them or learning from, they all make sense. But after a while, when you leave that training or leave that particular event, you might feel a little bit empty afterwards because it just doesn’t really connect with what you’re doing.
[00:08:00] John: So in the community of practice, what you’re really trying to do is you’re trying to empower the talent. To build tomorrow’s capabilities together, both personally, the in what you’re trying to learn, but also for the company as well. So I tried to design for emerging rather than these kind of predetermined outcomes.
[00:08:17] John: So instead of, here’s what you need to know, it’s kind of you’re more talking about what are we trying to figure out together.
[00:08:27] Nikol: Yeah. It sounds like people start showing up not just as their role but as themselves. Yes. And I think that really shifts everything. And I really love the analogy you gave in the beginning.
[00:08:41] Nikol: Great example. Alright.
[00:08:42] John: Cool.
[00:08:44] Nikol: So, these communities aren’t just social though. They also connect to business strategy. Can you walk us through how they help companies move forward?
[00:08:56] John: Yeah, so like management can be part of a community of practice as well, and they do have the power to say, engage with the community of practice around, you know, company strategy.
[00:09:06] John: And very simply talking about that in terms of company strategy, you could say, where are we trying to play and how are we trying to win? And if people understand that, that gives them a sense of purpose in the community as well. If you want to look at it kind of in a structure or this kind of knowledge management way of a community of practice.
[00:09:23] John: And there is a guy called Harold Jar. It is G-A-R-C-H-E. And if you type in Harold Jar, into the browser and chart or something, you should bring up a chart. And what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to explain how that works. And it’s a really good way to look at how a community of practice works.
[00:09:44] John: So if you imagine at the top you have the kind of tacit knowledge, and that’s the diverse unstructured conversations that we have when we’re, you know, you’re curious and you’re seeking to understand something within your industry, or you’ve read an article or something’s not working, et cetera.
[00:10:00] John: So basically you’re at that point where it’s some structured conversation, it’s a lot of dots and they’re not really connected. And then if you could imagine you’re taking that kind of tacit knowledge that we all do. If you’re working in user experience, you’re looking at articles and things like that all the time, and you know, you’re maybe not quite sure how to connect the dot, but what a community practice does that brings you down to that middle section, and that’s the community of practice is the leverage because it allows all that soup in your head and all those unconnected dots and allows you to start learning out loud and trying to make sense of it all together.
[00:10:33] John: So that’s what the community of practice is. But then what’s important, and you were talking about strategy, is that the bottom part. And it’s about transferring all that knowledge into explicit knowledge that can be utilized in for projects and for jobs and boosting your career as well. So you’re basically helping to create value for yourselves and for the company.
[00:10:50] John: And it’s an opportunity to introduce quick workshops as well. So what I find is that it’s not an online experience, it has to be personal, you know, in person as well. So when you’re working in a community of practice, you might come across a challenge, et cetera, and you might decide, well, could we do a quick workshop to try and work that out?
[00:11:09] John: So that’s a great area that the community practice add is that it’s in person. It can be online, but it’s testing ideas and having that comfort and the security of a space to do that. And then if you could imagine, with that kind of top, middle and bottom, that actually works the other way back up as well.
[00:11:27] John: So now if you can imagine that a line, the line going from the bottom to the top. So first of all, you take that explicit knowledge and learnings in projects and you move that then into the community of practice where you can talk about it and learn from it. And then that feeds into the individual’s tacit knowledge, interest.
[00:11:44] John: So then when they’re looking at articles or things that they’re interested in, it starts to influence what they’re looking for too, as well. And then that loop begins, and it’s almost like a flywheel of know-how that begins to develop in the company. So I think communities of practice thrive.
[00:12:00] John: They don’t drive through rigid goal setting, but they they really work through kind of these shared explorations and these kinda serendipitous learnings we’ll talk about. And these are organic exchanges of ideas and if you’re kind of unsure about that saying, you know, this sounds a bit kind of flighty.
[00:12:19] John: That’s okay. Um, there’s actually a good book to look at as well about this. Now, I was only reading it a couple of months ago, and I think it’s a few years old now. It’s by Kenneth Stanley and it’s called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. And the most interesting part of the headline or the name of the book is Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned.
[00:12:37] John: The Myth of the Objective. And I think that’s really, really interesting because in the book, what Kenneth is saying is that all in our work, we are objective, I should say obsessed, and that’s a bit of a problem. So basically objectives work really well for these kind of day-to-day tasks.
[00:12:56] John: And just looking a little bit down the line, but you’re not really on surfacing something new or great or exciting. So what communities of practice do is they kind of foster that greatness by valuing connection, the curiosity and, you know, the emergence of not mechanical stuff, but more objective led stuff.
[00:13:19] John: It just a little bit lighter. And when you’re not focused on the objective, it gives the breeding room for new things to come out. So I suppose when you’re talking to the user audience that it’s kind of like an iteration cycle. So, you know, user testing isn’t a one time thing. So as you know, you learn, you test, you iterate, you test again and again.
[00:13:39] John: So communities of practice works some way similar. Each conversation really is an iteration of how to solve problems together.
[00:13:48] Nikol: Yeah, thanks for the book recommendation. And, yeah, it’s so powerful how something that starts, let’s say in a small room, can ripple out into the bigger organization.
[00:14:02] John: Yeah. And it is, like I said, it is organic and it takes time as well. So, you know, it’s worth noting that if you do start a community of practice, that it usually takes about six months, to bear fruit, and you have to stick with it really, you know, and then later on we can talk about some of those things as well, you know, that you will notice or the steps or the kind of individual, natural progressions of a workshop, or not a workshop I should say, but a community.
[00:14:29] Nikol: Yeah. Let’s talk about the context. These conversations are happening in because a lot of it is shifting. So a lot of designers are feeling pressure to keep up with change with AI, as you mentioned before, organizational shifts, tool fatigue. Do you work in spaces where people are allowed to admit fear?
[00:14:55] Nikol: What does that matter? Why does that matter now?
[00:14:58] John: Well, yeah, it’s a good question. Fear, and I think let’s focus on the word fear. Okay. There’s a song by Ian Brown from The Stone Roses. And he uses in the song the word fear and he uses it as an acronym and FEAR or For Everything A Reason, you know, and what he’s trying to do there, he’s trying to flip that negative connotation of fear into something more reflective or more empowering for people.
[00:15:24] John: So rather than trying to avoid fear, he’s presenting fear as something meaningful, and it’s a signal. It’s a signal, there’s something behind it and it’s something there to understand. So in kind of making that even simpler, fear I think is often the canary in the coal mine. It’s really telling us something important about what’s actually happening in the company.
[00:15:47] John: So, when people say, I’m worried about AI, will it make my role obsolete? These are the questions you will hear, or you’ll hear things like, I don’t really understand this organizational change or this change management coming upon us, and how does that affect my work, et cetera. And that’s when real adaption can begin.
[00:16:05] John: I think so basically fear is information. If it’s allowed to be, I think so. People can name their concerns in a positive way and in a community practice. And a community practice is about keeping things positive. So what they’re doing is really, they’re identifying real risk that the organization possibly needs to address.
[00:16:28] John: So take note, hedge, or it’s really good source for initiating a community of practice as well. And then going back to like the Useberry audience that the community practice is like user testing. You learn more from watching people struggle rather than hear them say things like, oh, everything’s fine. Or not really saying anything or not saying what’s really on their mind.
[00:16:48] John: So it’s actually seeing things happen viscerally real, you know, and communities of practice they’re what would you say, it’s about really watching ourselves struggle. Then sourcing solutions and learning from it. And one of the things I’ve noticed in the last while personally just talking to different people in different organizations, that these, I’ve had these kind of, shall we say, unofficial conversations.
[00:17:13] John: And I’ve heard management say to me that we’re now creating systems within the organization that are designed internally by people that it could possibly make them obsolete. So you know that’s a concern. And then on the other side of the conversation, I’ve heard UX people working in organizations seeing that they’re working on projects now that they believe are making them obsolete.
[00:17:36] John: And I think that a lot of people are saying that at the moment, but I don’t think it’s exactly true. And I think people don’t really know what’s ahead. And I think that’s just the beauty of life really. We just don’t know everything. It’s going to be unexpected, but it’s currently not a conversation really that’s been had openly and honestly within companies.
[00:17:53] John: And I think a community of practice could add value to this as a subject within it, you know? And then in terms of like, I think you were saying, well, what happens when that’s missing? The problem is I think that in the operations of the company, you just get these kind of surface level solutions because people solve for looking competent rather than just being effective as such.
[00:18:14] John: And then everyone is duplicating their same struggles in work, in their head, or in isolation, you know, and the best people and your best talent could tend to leave. And I think that’s happening rather than admit that they’re struggling or they lack trust within the organization. And then what happens then is there’s no real innovation because even experimentation sounds like a little bit risky, the way everything’s hanging on a tread at the moment.
[00:18:39] John: So it’s like trying to design the problem here, it’s like trying design without user research. So you end up solving for the wrong problems because you’re not really hearing what actual people need, you know? So we spend so much time user testing everything else, but we’re not really focusing on ourselves within that as well.
[00:18:59] John: And then you think that if people, or think, well, if companies give people permission to not know everything and permission to ask those questions, and voice their ideas, they’re the ones, or they are the companies that will actually know the best or will know the most going forward. So feeling seen and heard, I think is a key product of high performing teams that everyone could relate to that.
[00:19:25] John: But going back to fear, then really it can then, in that context become like a powerful leverage in the community of practice. And for people, it’s almost an anti-fragile mechanism. It’s where a crisis can make the people actually stronger. And I think that there will be a lot more crisis down the line.
[00:19:43] John: It just seems to be a lot more happening in succession. So a community of practice really, you could say then starts to build culture. So what is culture? It’s a difficult one to work out. What I do know that it’s not pizzas and beach cleans, it’s very difficult to describe what culture is, but I think all of us know how it feels.
[00:20:05] John: And for me, that feeling is in your tummy on a Sunday night. And I think everyone can relate to that. So without a culture and the community, teams tend to drift. If you could say that in calm waters and, pretty much sink in storms, and with culture, I suppose there’s this enormous sense of wellbeing and purpose where people are empowered to be, like I said, anti-fragile in these times of crisis.
[00:20:30] John: And I think it’s really the ultimate growth mindset for a company. And a community of practice really is implementing that kind of growth mindset for the people and for the company.
[00:20:43] Nikol: Yeah, it’s not so often that you hear organizations making space for fear, but, I think when they do it, it tends to surface things that, as you mentioned, matter most.
[00:20:56] John: Yeah, I think so. And it’s not necessarily, you know, you don’t set up a community practice going, okay, let’s have a big bitching session. You know what I mean? I’m not happy about this. What it does is if you get together around a shared interest, then these issues will come up and they can be addressed.
[00:21:11] John: Because there is usually solutions for them. And I always find that the solutions are actually within the company, not outside of the company.
[00:21:18] Nikol: Okay. This ties into something, I know you feel strongly about, making space for the unexpected. You’ve said that efficiency is boring and that part of the value in these communities is the chance for serendipity. What do you mean by that? Why is unpredictability sometimes the best part of the process?
[00:21:42] John: True. I’ll go back to your earlier point of efficiency is boring there because I’m slightly taken outta context there, but not really, I do find it a little bit boring. When you have a successful product, you can make things more efficient.
[00:21:55] John: So that’s where you know it’s about increase in profit or your problem is definitively understood, then we can start working on efficiency. Okay. But, another book reference here is that this Jules Goddard had, a book called Uncommon Sense, common Nonsense, I think it’s called, and he said a really good line in the book and this quote has stuck with me forever.
[00:22:17] John: And he said that strategy is the rare and precious skill of staying one step ahead of the need to be efficient. So I think if we focus on just being efficient in this kind of economic sense, we don’t allow for new opportunities. We don’t allow to foster serendipity and serendipity are the things that allow us to increase our surface look area.
[00:22:41] John: ’cause a lot of things are random and it’s about increasing our surface look area, and that’s where really great ideas come from. I think it’s Christian Busch, I think is his name. He had a book called Connect the Dots. Do you remember earlier on I was mentioning Connect the Dots? And he said that there’s kind of three types of serendipity that you can foster.
[00:22:57] John: And he calls the first one, the Archimedes sense of serendipity. That’s where you have these chance intervention. So basically he’s just having this flash of an idea for measuring the mass of an object, et cetera. And then he calls the second one, the post-it note.
[00:23:15] John: So that’s where the problem has. Not being solved in the terms of post-it notes. In other words, they were trying to create a glue and then they realized the glue didn’t work, but it could be reapplied and was sticky, but reapplied lightly. And that’s where the idea came from.
[00:23:31] John: Post-it notes. So it’s putting different ideas together. And then the thunderbolt where ideas just come from nowhere. So what the community of practice is trying to do is provide these techniques that Christian is talking about and to raise the odds of this serendipity happening.
[00:23:47] John: Because if you keep doing what everyone else is doing that you can’t really expect to come up with anything really different. So that’s it really.
[00:23:57] Nikol: Yeah. It’s interesting, so many teams are trying to control everything. Yeah, but maybe if they loosened up a bit, they might have even moved faster.
[00:24:11] John: Oh yeah. I think it’s really about just being a little bit more human about everything, you know?
[00:24:16] John: And I think AI has given us the opportunity to take away some of those mundane tasks and things that should be maybe, you know, should be automated anyway. And it just maybe’s just going to allow us to be more human.
[00:24:26] Nikol: Yeah. I’m curious, have you seen a moment where a casual insight or shared a story led to something no one was planning, but turned out to be valuable for the business? What’s the role of spontaneity in a structured organization?
[00:24:43] John: Well, just in terms of user testing, the most valuable insight often comes from watching what people do when they go off script.
[00:24:51] John: We’ve all had those situations where you go, now we weren’t asking that, but that’s interesting. And some of, it’s the same really with communities of practice. The most valuable moments often happen, like you were saying, when you go off agenda. So I remember a group where they had uncovered a challenge about this product feature direction just in the community.
[00:25:12] John: And we decided to make a workshop out of that just to have a look at it and see what we could do. And you know, people were open and were all excited about it. And when we had the workshop, they asked, oh, there’s an intern. Can we bring the intern into the workshop for a bit of experience? We’re like, yeah, absolutely.
[00:25:29] John: Why not? And then what happens is we hit a real roadblock in the workshops. And I don’t know if you’re ever in those situations where it feels like a complete dead end and you’re like, oh God, what do we do next? But basically the intern saved me and saved the group. The intern basically just flicked the switch and bypass the challenge.
[00:25:46] John: So there’s lots of it. It’s not one little thing, you know, it’s not one thing. It’s loads of little things that come together and all these small little serendipitous moments. And many great inventions came from unpredictability really as well. Like even penicillin when the guy who was inventing that, I can’t think of his name now, but he basically went off to Paris, I think for the weekend, and he left some sort of cheese in a jar or something.
[00:26:13] John: And you know, mold grew from it over the weekend when he wasn’t there and then he came back. So those moments where, you know, unplanned as such, but there is an element of structure within them as well. And that’s where we got penicillin. And you were asking about whether the role of spontaneity in a structured organization.
[00:26:29] John: Um, yeah, most organizations are kind of built predictably around the objective that we were talking earlier on. But innovation requires a bit of chaos. So my role in designing containers for spontaneity. That’s what I’m trying to do. And just create enough, let’s say structure for people to feel safe, but a bit of openness for a bit of surprise as well.
[00:26:58] John: And you know, like improv comedy, it looks like it’s just all happening naturally, but there is, you know, a little structure behind it and that enables the creativity of the comedy. And like a few years ago, I actually worked for Edinburgh Fringe, the comedy festival doing design. So I got to hang out with comedians, but I also got to hang out with creative directors of comedy who hire comedians as well.
[00:27:20] John: And I remember I was sitting down with a creative director and he was basically there because you’re hiring comedians for comedians for the rest of the year. And I was like, oh, is this comedian good or this comedian bad? And he was like, no, don’t watch the comedian, watch the audience. So when he’s watching a gig, he’s watching the ebbs and flows within the audience.
[00:27:38] John: And like if you look at a comedian as well, they know their lines, they know what they have to say. I’ve been a host, like a community of practice. They know what they have to do. But what they’re really doing, they’re almost doing that on autopilot. They’re watching the crowd and they’re just getting the feeling of how the crowd is going, where to lift them, where to lower them, all of that kind of thing.
[00:27:54] John: So it’s just an interesting analogy there. But anyway, back to organizations, if they only optimize for efficiency. Wel, it is just kinda like maybe if they’re only optimizing for efficiency, they’re kinda like designers who really only iterate on existing solutions, so they get incrementally better at yesterday’s problems while missing maybe tomorrow’s opportunities.
[00:28:21] Nikol: As you mentioned before. Also, these moments can be replicated. But they do change how people show up in future conversations, so it’s really interesting.
[00:28:36] John: Yeah, they do.
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[00:29:00] Nikol: What you do is bring people from different functions into the same space, like UX operations, product engineering. What happens when you bring those perspectives together in a non-hierarchical setting? Does it reshape how people see the bigger picture?
[00:29:22] John: Yeah. So, like when you remove the reporting structure or these like set objectives or that general day-to-day stuff, kind of something magical begins to happen there, where people stop, and I think you said this earlier on, people stop representing their department.
[00:29:37] John: And they start representing their expertise. So like a UX researcher isn’t speaking for research anymore, they’re sharing what they’ve learned about users. And so from my background in workshops, I kind of understand how different disciplines, you know, think and communicate in communities of practice.
[00:29:56] John: Those language language barriers do dissolve, like you were saying. And what seems obvious in one function is a revelation in another. So it happens all the time. So, so many of the answers reside sleeping in the community itself, are sleeping in the company itself. We just haven’t really unearthed them.
[00:30:16] John: And this happens all the time. So sometimes, there might be a push to use consultants and, you know, bring them in and get them out again. But sometimes I find that with a community of practice, it tends to solve a lot of those problems internally.
[00:30:30] Nikol: So for someone listening, maybe inside a big company, who’s curious about this way of working, what’s one small step they could take to start or support communities like this? What should they look for?
[00:30:46] John: Yeah. Well, the first thing to do really is to make it easy. Find another person who’s wrestling with the same thing you are, and just grabbing a coffee and having a talk about it. And that’s pretty much it. It’s just a starting point. It doesn’t really need, shall we say, permission or budgets to begin.
[00:31:04] John: The need really is just that kind of shared curiosity and a shared challenge as so, as, such, so, and as well. And instead of, let’s say, you know, saying, how can we get leadership to support this? Don’t start like that. Just start with, well, what conversations do we need to have that would be valuable regardless of who’s listening, you know?
[00:31:26] John: And, what should you be looking for? Look for curiosity over certainty again. So it’s about, you know, not getting locked down into that. People who ask things like, how do you handle, rather than here’s how it should be, is the way to go. So what you’re looking for is kind of willingness to share struggles, not just successes I should say.
[00:31:48] John: Um, so look for those kind of reoccurring challenges that keep coming up across the different projects. That’s a good way to go. And it’s kind of like, again, you know, from Useberry’s audience that just like when you test with users before launching a product, you start testing these conversations, which are colleagues before setting them in stone as such.
[00:32:09] John: You could see it’s kinda user testing for internal processes. So start personal, what you’re genuinely curious about. Then find one ally working on some similar channel challenges. You could make it a regular 30 minute conversation weekly or monthly. Try and stay focused maybe on a specific area and document and share what you’re learning and some of the most, you know.
[00:32:37] John: The most impactful communities have all started out with just two people going, well, what are we trying to figure out here? You know? And the magic, like I said, is not in the structure. It’s in the willingness to learn. And like good facilitator or a host, if you wanna call it that for a community of practice, there’s kind of three guidelines that you’re trying to watch out for the cause.
[00:32:59] John: So you’re basically around what is the purpose and clearly explaining that to the community and making them aware of the path so that we are going in a certain direction. So they know is that there’s a mission here. And then you’re showing that constant progress to them as well.
[00:33:14] John: And that’s really important. And then what we spoke about earlier on is culture. So it’s about their beliefs, beliefs to the company, behaviors of the people as well inside setting guidelines, not boundaries, things like that. Communication is important as well. So when you are hosting or facilitating the community, it’s about keeping the conversation moving, asking questions, and expressing gratitude as well.
[00:33:37] John: Huge thing. Not enough of that happening. Expressing gratitude when we are looking at new things and that didn’t built that connection of safety, trust, and clarity. So I think earlier on I mentioned about the structure of how the communities develop, let’s say over six months really, you know, and I found a really good example of this, and it’s called forming, storming, norming, and performing.
[00:34:01] John: So, forming is that early stage of the community of practice where nothing really happens yet. It’s just that point where you’re taking their coats and seating them, like I said earlier on. And then storming is the next stage. But that brings a bit of conflict maybe where people are going, well, what am I doing here?
[00:34:17] John: Or you know, what exactly is happening? And that’s natural when you’re trying to build trust and forming people’s opinions as well. And then the host just shows the way of the culture, et cetera. So it’s just about keeping everything aligned. And then norming is a stage where the community begins to get it.
[00:34:34] John: Trust begins to grow. They start to serve and show up to the community and to see that common goal, they can see the path basically ahead. And then performing. That’s where the community brings to work, begins to work together on shared goals and to start turning this kind of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge that helps them with their careers, but also helps the company as well.
[00:34:54] John: And then let’s say if you are then thinking of setting up a community practice, the structure that I find quite good is that discovery stage. Do you remember we were talking about people, just two people getting together for coffee? So what you could do there is just have a chat with them, talk about what business impact they’re trying to make, what they’re trying to do for their own careers as well.
[00:35:13] John: And it’s all about that shared interest. And then if you can take that further and begin a short workshop, and that’s about aligning, maybe the initial team that you want to put together for this community of practice. So again, these people can’t be dragged into it. They have to have an interest in it.
[00:35:28] John: Try and get about eight people into the initial community of practice, and then you can sit down and have these workshops on these shared goals. That sense of ownership that they’re going to get from it and how it’s going to ignite interest. Then you can structure the community of practice, you can build it.
[00:35:43] John: Maybe we’ll talk about that actually the platforms in a few minutes. But that’s an important area as well. So you can build these platforms then to get people moving fast and just getting them involved in the community of practice. But what I mean by moving fast is that there’s a lot of platforms out there that are just ready to go.
[00:35:59] John: So it’s, you know, literally, white label. You can start going straight away and then you launch, and then when you launch, you get into that six month phase of nurturing correct connections, guiding, discussions, and trying to find those tangible actions as well for workshops. And what then gets brought into that explicit knowledge within the company.
[00:36:16] John: So I suppose what I’ve learned, a summary of all of this would be that, like this, we’re in a world like, you know, the movie set in a world fraught with danger. We’re in that era now with like AI, et cetera, as mentioned. But, AI is, I think it is gonna handle more of those routine work things, and it’s also going to handle some of the things that maybe should be automated anyway, even in elements of design, user research, whatever it might be.
[00:36:46] John: But it then allows us, I think, to express these more uniquely human skills and they then become more valuable. These things like that we all talk about in user research, et cetera, is like creativity, empathy, complex problem solving, et cetera. So communities of practice are where these skills can begin to develop even further.
[00:37:08] John: So I think we spend so much time. And development in different areas, building this kind of technical infrastructure where I think AI can now be our friend to do some of that. But I think like the most important infrastructure always is human. So communities of practice are kind of how you build learning infrastructure that actually scales with people.
[00:37:32] John: So it’s not really a nice to have as they say it. It really is a competitive advantage, I think, going forward. And like I said, it’s very difficult to replicate. It really sits in with your culture as well, and it helps the organizations not just to survive change, but to get stronger from it.
[00:37:49] John: That anti-fragility as such, and I think it brings a whole lot of happiness to people along the way as well, which is really important. So it’s the catalyst for a growth mindset, like I said earlier on in companies.
[00:38:02] Nikol: Yeah. Uh, John, you mentioned about the tools. Yeah.
[00:38:06] John: yeah, it’s good. I obviously, I kind of leave that to the end because what I find to do, and like a lot of people in our industry, when we start talking about the tools, we get lost in them.
[00:38:14] John: We get under the hood, you know? Yeah. Talking about the gears, et cetera.
[00:38:17] John: But, what I’ve been, what would you say experimenting with, um, are three different tools, which are interesting. That are ready to go. Okay. So if you’re in internally within an organization and you’re using Microsoft products, they have a product that at the moment called Viva Engage.
[00:38:35] John: And not many people know about it. Have you heard of it yourself, Nicol?
[00:38:39] Nikol: No, actually I haven’t.
[00:38:41] John: So Viva Engage is a really interesting one and they’re, you know, they’ve been doing updates to the product as well, so obviously it connects in with the whole Microsoft system.
[00:38:50] John: You know, it’s got AI built into the community of practice as well. It’s growing and I believe that it’ll might get opened up outside of the Microsoft packages as such. Um, but that’s a really good one to play around with if you are talking about internal teams. If you are talking about, do you remember earlier on I was talking about those kind of external teams?
[00:39:14] John: Um, people from different companies. Um, what I’ve been using there, and it works really well, is a product called school, S-K-O-O-L. Um, you’ve heard that?
[00:39:23] Nikol: Oh, I think I know that one. I think I heard.
[00:39:25] John: yeah, exactly. There’s loads of people using it for different things, but as a community practice and hit the ground running, I don’t think there’s anything faster.
[00:39:32] John: And it’s got loads of little features in there that really make it sticky. And I think that’s still a really exciting product. And then there is, let’s see, you know what, let’s say Microsoft Engaged, that’s the Microsoft product system and it’s content is within there, you know, and Skool, the contents within the Skool platform as well.
[00:39:54] John: But there’s another one called Campfire. You know, Basecamp, the product Basecamp? So they have, not many people talk about this one, but it’s called Campfire and you can buy it one time for like $300 and you just download it and you put it into your own servers, and it’s yours. You know, and it’s quite light.
[00:40:15] John: It’s very much just chat orientated. But, it’s a really good starting point, I think. But, like I said, they’re just three tools generally. There’s three tools that work well, people might think about using things like Teachable. And do you remember earlier on we were talking about that it’s not about courses.
[00:40:38] John: So, yeah, exactly. And, and I think Teachable, it’s, the focus is on courses. So community practice is not about courses, it’s about people talking to each other and creating that space. So it’s not a good, I wouldn’t call it a good app if you’re thinking about using something like that, you know? And what else?
[00:40:54] John: Yeah, I think they’re the three main ones to watch out for and you can play around with them. Literally just go online right now and start playing with them. But you can set them up in an afternoon, you know?
[00:41:03] Nikol: Great. Thanks so much for the tip. Sometimes the barrier is just not knowing how small it can be just to start.
[00:41:10] John: Yeah. So yeah. That’s the thing, just start small, get the conversation going and if you can get enough people interested, definitely get it started. So like, you know, in terms of books and stuff as well, you know, we mentioned some earlier on and there’s a book by David Spinks on community. I can’t remember the name of it now, but you’ll find it.
[00:41:31] John: Um, the Myth of the Objective, again, these are two books that are not about communities of practice and that’s what I love. To help you connect the dots of what you believe the community of practice should be for you. The myth of the Objective, I think that’s a really interesting book. I think people would enjoy that because it talks a lot about AI and the non-objective and it’s very pertinent for today.
[00:41:52] John: So that’s a really good book to read. And, um, Rory Sutherland, he’s a book called Alchemy, and it’s about, you know, if you do the same as everybody else. You won’t get anything different, and he gives really good examples that might help you get along the way in creating a community of practice as well and what the advantages and what you can get from it too.
[00:42:12] Nikol: John, thank you. This conversation really highlights how powerful it can be when people are given space to think, share, and listen without a tight agenda. Yeah. It’s a reminder that strategy doesn’t just happen in boardrooms. It starts with how people talk to each other.
[00:42:31] John: It’s time to be a little bit more human.
[00:42:34] Nikol: Yeah. Uh, thanks so much. We’ll link to your work, and make in the show notes. Thanks again, John.
[00:42:40] John: Thanks for having me.
[00:42:43] Nikol: To everyone listening to, If U Seek, see you next time. For more exciting content, follow us on our social channels. Your reviews mean the world to us, so don’t forget to leave one.
[00:42:54] Nikol: And of course, hit that subscribe button to stay updated on our latest episode.
Outro: If U Seek is a platform for discussions and personal insights. The opinions presented by guests are independent and do not represent the official position of the host, Useberry or our sponsors.
