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Community of Purpose?

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I’ve been sharing snippets from my forthcoming agile coaching book, entitled – Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching in my monthly newsletters. One of those was from the chapter on Coaching Communities of Practice. I received the following comment from John Voris on that 

I liked reading the chapter about CoP that you put out there. But I think you have another article or blog post in you about making your—

“Community of Practice”

         into a

“Community of Purpose”

I’ll bet you have some thoughts on that distinction as well.

To say that John’s comment resonated with me is an understatement. I nearly fell out of my chair. I was like…YES!

I ponder what adding “purpose” to my communities of practice might look like? It could be that I begin to add the following to my ideas, recommendations, and coaching of Communities of Practice:

  • Finding or rediscovering your individual purpose;

  • Creating (co-creating) a shared purpose within a group or organization;

  • Refining our purpose over time (validating it, wearing it, adjusting it);

  • Reestablishing or pivoting our purpose (as appropriate);

  • And ongoing, continuous sharing of our purpose so that it is well known and well understood.

And then this popped into my thoughts Purpose-driven Agile and the implications that the concept represents to me.

All right Bob, settle down…

Ok. I will.

The point in writing this article is to reignite your thinking on the words purpose-driven agility. And around rediscovering your purpose in your agile journeys.

That might entail capturing and articulating it for the first time. Or it might be a bit of an exploration phase, where you walk around a bit with your current purpose. See if it truly fits you in your daily adventures. You might discover the need to trim it a bit. Extend it here. Nip it over here and tuck it in over there. All of that is a part of keeping your purpose clear and well cared for. 

From my perspective, there is no Unified Agile Purpose that applies to all individuals or organizations. And I hope we never declare such a thing. Instead, I think the essence of purpose is unique and personal to each of us and to each organization.

Wrapping Up

I guess my ask of you as a reader is to begin to focus more on your purpose.

And, if you’re involved in any Communities of Practice in your agile journeys, inquire and inspire them to consider (or reconsider) their purposes. I think that’s a worthy goal for all of us and I want to thank John for inspiring me to reexamine my own purpose.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.