Looking to build a problem-solving community? Don’t wait!

This is a guest post by Judy Rees of Rees McCann, and has also been published on the Rees McCann blog.

I’m a big fan of communities of practice, where people share learning and work together to tackle the big issues that face our world and/or their working world. After all, the best way to solve problems is to bring people together. But what about when you can’t bring people together physically? Can this stuff work online?

This post shares the story of a community of practice that’s being built at Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). It shows that people can be brought together, remotely, effectively, right now. It’s an encouraging story: we don’t have to wait!

Just a bit of background: NRC helps people forced to flee and it has experts spread across more than 30 countries (now that’s a geographically-distributed team!). It wanted to bring some of those experts together into a remote community of practice around its ‘Markets and Cash’ global programme.

But that community faced big challenges in getting going and making progress. There were tech problems such as poor internet in crisis-ridden locations, shaky computers, and a shortage of working webcams. More than that, there were the human-related issues that beset any global community of practice: time pressure on busy practitioners, multiple languages, scepticism over the value of the community, and yet more scepticism about a ‘remote’ community.

Despite all this, Roger Dean, one of NRC’s Global Programme Development Managers, was sure that a community of practice could get going, and that its existence could help to ensure that well-targeted help reached displaced communities quickly and effectively.

Towards the end of 2019, Roger discussed his hopes and frustrations with us at Rees McCann.

We developed a capacity-building package to deliver a kick-off remote global seminar. The package comprised consultancy and facilitation from ReesMcCann, as well as in-the-seminar graphic recording from our friends at Drawnalism.

Elements of the package included:

Understanding the situation - what did Roger and his organising team want to happen, both in the seminar and beyond it? What were the obstacles to developing an effective remote community of practice?

Consultancy on technology - what were the minimum requirements for a remote community to be viable? Some technical problems seemed trivial, others insurmountable. We analysed what could be done, and set to work together to tackle the issues;

Process design - what was the right sequence of events to get participants fully engaged with each other, confident with the technology and format, and ready to move forward together?

Preparing team and participants - we led training for Roger’s organising group, and a preparatory meeting for all seminar attendees that helped everyone input into the agenda while also letting them get used to how the main event was going to work. This all happened in the midst of the pandemic lockdown!

Delivering the seminar - more than 40 participants joined the event over three days in June 2020 (four hours per day, with lots of small-group activities and plenty of comfort breaks). We joined the internal organising group as part of the facilitation team, supporting the process throughout

Graphic recording - our friends at Drawnalism created a coherent and memorable graphic record that was used to synthesise themes, pull out key points and to share and solidify learning

Review - what worked well and what could work better? The review captured how some sceptics had turned into supporters; it also demonstrated the value of taking decisions on those issues that we had identified as critical.

And, after all that, then what happened?

Here’s what Roger has to say:

“It wouldn’t have worked without Rees McCann. Their involvement cut through us organisers’ lack of experience and confidence for NRC’s first remote global seminar. We know we can do it now.”

Roger is adamant that he won’t be “going back to the old normal”. That’s great news for the community of practice which we want to see grow and flourish. And it’s great news for refugees and displaced people affected by NRC’s ‘Markets and Cash’ global programme.

When you read about all this, does it make you think of a remote community that you’re planning to organise? Or that needs some new energy and confidence? Perhaps you’re in the early stages of planning a first remote global seminar?

If so, let us know if Rees McCann can help. Drawnalism, too, if you’re after powerful shareable imagery telling the stories of your remote seminar.

We want to see high-quality remote events that really engage participants and which lead to action. Not in some far-off future, but now!