CPsquare

Preamble / context: The world has become a lot more complex in the last couple of decades: we are more connected, there are more of us to connect and there is a lot more uncertainty — and potential. In the past it made sense to tackle problems alone and hand it off to the next person — that was the norm. These days we need to work together (intensely, sometimes over long periods) to get things done. And we need to be very good at learning together, accidentally,  purposely or on the fly. CPsquare can help us do that. We can learn together to be better at working and learning together to make things happen. We will have succeeded when communities of practice are common practice in all walks of life and people know how to nurture them effectively.

Our purpose:

• Finding the social in learning: We learn in ever more diverse ways as we connect for diverse purposes, across social divides, through technology, and in new circumstances. CPsquare experiments with and seeks to understand traditional as well as emerging social formations where people learn: whether labeled communities of practice or not.
• Helping CoP practitioners: We help each other become better in all the practices involved in supporting communities of practice. We cultivate a range of competencies which help communities of practice thrive in diverse settings. We serve both newcomers and leaders in the field.
• Helping CoP researchers: We support the scholarly activities of members by providing a forum where research on the subject of communities of practice can be shared, supporting their access to the growing body of research on communities of practice.
• Bridging the scholar-practitioner divide: We engage in and monitor both research and practice in and about communities, so that scholarly work can inform practice and practice can inform scholarship. We believe these collaborations can enable continuous learning and improvement over time.
• Making a difference in the world: By serving the needs of members, CPsquare is a vehicle making a difference in the world. We believe that the formation and support of communities of practice will help give energy to a broader social movement for positive world change.

Who we are: We are a diverse community of practitioners that has gathered to share knowledge and build a practice around our passion for and belief in the potential of communities of practice as a vehicle for positive organizational and world change.

• We are a community. We are in relationship. This relationships are rooted in shared values and nurtured by cohesiveness and trust. We give to the community as much as we get in return – it is a reciprocal relationship, value is given to and created by members of the community. We are committed to each other as members and together we are committed to the success of the community’s mission, goals, and objectives. We genuinely enjoy working and learning together, we celebrate our successes, learn from our mistakes, and have a whole lot of fun along the way.
• We share knowledge. We come together to share our thinking, best practices and first-hand experience with developing communities of practice. We do so openly and in the spirit of improving ourselves individually, as a community and as members of the broader global community.
• We are thoughtful practitioners. We put our skills and knowledge into action. We practice our craft in the world. We bring our learning and insights from our individual practice back to be shared with our community.
• We develop good practice. We are committed to packaging our insights and knowledge into practical tools and resources that can be used by the community and shared with the world. We are committed to developing the body of knowledge on communities of practice and further legitimizing it as a valid and successful approach to solving a variety of problems.
• We are diverse. We live in all corners of the world from foothills of California to the rivers of Laos. We work in and across sectors from Wall Street to Parliament, on farms and in villages, at universities and across the internet. We practice many crafts from law to medicine, facilitation to education, farming to parenthood.
• We are committed to exploring the potential of communities of practice. We are committed to our work, individually and collectively, in an effort to develop learning capacity in the world. In this exploration we discover new possibilities and set an example. We walk our talk.

You are invited to find out more and join us by completing a membership form.