Communities also connect in many different ways. Team Organizations Many companies today are moving to a new organizational model in which cross-functional teams are the key building block of the organization. While cross-functional teams are great vehicles for producing products and services, they have some key limitations. Cross-functional teams can become insulated from each other, focusing on team goals and reinventing ideas and analyses from other teams. The informal nature of communities is much more conducive to learning, continually increasing mastery and development of new knowledge.
Communities of practice are an integral part of our daily lives.
They are so informal and so pervasive that they rarely come into explicit focus, but for the same reasons, they are also quite familiar. While the term may be new, the experience is not. Most communities of practice do not have a name or issue membership cards. Treat Communities of practice as assets. Encouraging learning communities by supporting reflection processes and access to information as part of the practice itself.