The Practice of Community

Posted on February 23, 2008 by Lee White

In 1954 Peter Drucker published the Practice of Management. It is considered by many, myself included, to be the seminal work about the nature of organizations in the 20th century. I once read that he spent much effort in naming his book before settling on “Practice” as the key word in the title. My recollection is that he considered ” The Art of Management”, “The Science of Management”, and “The Theory of Management” among others. He decided that “Practice” best described the concept he was after. It is something that we are continually learning and trying to improve by trying it out, or practicing it. So with great homage to Mr. Drucker, I am introducing The Practice of Community.

My definition of community is “the integration of the many into the one”. I will expand on this theme and its broad implications, over time. For now I just want to frame up what this means for me and E Quint Consulting.

NOW I have the elevator speech I have been looking for:

Other person in the elevator: “So, what do you do?”

Me: “I facilitate the development of community as an organizational structure within organizations.”

Other person in the elevator: “Cool! Tell me more about that.”

…or something like that. 🙂

Basically what this means is that I can talk about what is happening all around us with regard to social media, enterprise 2.0, WOM, etc. within the single context of community, where all of these instances are simply examples of “the integration of the many into the one”.

From this basis I see many themes that I want to develop:

  • The cognitive dissonance that occurs when organizations attempt “community” marketing while operating internally as an authoritarian hierarchy.
  • The practice of community is about continually working to include the next the next layer “outside” into the whole.
  • The “tools” of community, both new and old.
  • Why is community a viable organizational model “now”?
  • Can community and hierarchy co-exist?
  • Examples of community that can serve as models for the enterprise.

If you see anything you like here, please take it and run with it and give me a link. Remember this is just one big community. 😉

My new job title: Community Practitioner.

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