Peer Groups inside companies take too much time. Not.

I have been a longtime advocate for organizing peer groups inside companies that serve as companions to company teams. It’s a simple and robust solution that provides myriad benefits to any organization. The response of all too many CEOs and HR executives has been tepid at best. Being true to my belief that receipt of the message as intended is up to the sender, I must accept responsibility for that. This article attempts to make the case and overcome one of the most significant objections I tend to hear.

Groups versus Teams   

Company leaders are confused by the idea of establishing internal groups. They believe that such an initiative would be redundant and that their team members attend too many meetings already. I get it.

To be clear, teams and groups exist for very different reasons. Teams are organized to create a shared work product or achieve a collective goal. Groups are designed to help individual team members be more productive contributors to their teams. For example, companies that invest in learning and development spend countless dollars on employees who, despite receiving great content, neither learn nor develop, mainly because there is no mechanism to help them do so.

Teams are not equipped for that. Groups are designed for it. Given that a company is already investing in its employees, why would these same companies not want to realize the same, or better, ROI they would expect from any other investment?

Why Groups Work 

In 1991, Etienne Wenger-Trayner and Jean Lave coined the term communities of practice, which was described a decade later as “Groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.” The structural characteristics of a community of practice include having a domain that involves a common knowledge base around a shared purpose, a community willing to collaborate, and a practice with a shared set of approaches, language, and tools. All these elements are present in a company internal peer group.

Communities of practice have been around since the dawn of human existence, but once they had a name and a common language, it became easier to talk about them and cultivate them intentionally. While studying historical cases of apprenticeship with anthropologist Jean Lave, Etienne recalled, “Initially, we were studying apprenticeship as a way to rethink learning. We found that an apprenticeship is often not just a relationship between a master and a student. We noticed this whole community around the master that acts as a learning curriculum for the apprentice. A lot of the learning interactions were not with the master; they were with one another. This is essentially where the term communities of practice comes from.”

In an article cowritten by Etienne and William Snyder for Harvard Business Review in 2000, they noted that communities of practice were common in classical Greece, where “corporations” of craftsmen had both a social purpose and a business function. The members trained one another and worked together to share innovations. During the Middle Ages, guilds offered a similar resource for artisans.

Communities of practice operating inside companies is not a new idea, but apparently, they’ve been forgotten. The good news is that they are proven and as relevant today as ever. In addition to helping companies operationalize learning, they also inspire greater alignment and engagement, create synergies by removing silos, and improve employee mental health.

“We don’t have time.” 

Peer group engagements don’t have to take up a full or half-day a month of your employees’ time. Though, I bet you can find 90 minutes a month for the benefits the group offers. You’d be surprised at what you can accomplish, whether your groups meet in person or virtually.

Last month, I wrote a piece for CEOWORLD Magazine about three groups I lead for a national company. Check out the article and discover the impact these groups can have. The monthly meetings for each group last 90 minutes and serve to maximize every minute of their interaction. Below, please find the following sample agenda:

• Group Meeting Ground Rules
• Check-in
• Inclusion Exercise or Content Block
• A Challenge Facing Everyone
• 5-Minute Break
• Challenges Facing Individuals
• Company Values
• Personal Takeaways
• Housekeeping and Close

Group Meeting Ground Rules – What happens in the meeting stays in the meeting. Employees need to feel a high level of psychological safety to be open and vulnerable with the group. The group prizes curiosity over jumping to conclusions, rushing to judgment, or making assumptions.

Check-in – We begin by asking HOW people are doing versus WHAT they are doing. We meet them where they are by having them describe what they are feeling in one word and share a significant event (business or personal) with the other members.

Inclusion Exercise or Content Block – We use this time to either bring the group together and open them up for candid conversation or zero in on an essential piece of content that the group believes should be reinforced and operationalized.

A Challenge Everyone is Facing – For example, the company may require each team leader to create a strategic plan. The group allows the members to leverage their respective expertise and help them develop more relevant and effective plans for the company.

5-minute Break – A quick break to check emails, etc.

Challenges Facing Individuals – This time allows employees to share individual challenges they are facing so they can access different perspectives on how to address them from employees who understand the culture and nuances of the organization.

Company Values – This block serves as a wonderful opportunity for employees to share how they model the way and inspire their colleagues to live the company values every day.

Personal Takeaways – Employees share their “aha” moments from the meeting.

Housekeeping and Close – The group agrees on action items and next steps to be implemented between now and the next meeting.

Summary

What’s the ROI for you? You decide. The idea is that the groups are created to realize whatever specific objective(s) you want to achieve – operationalizing learning, creating greater alignment toward a specific strategic objective, or breaking down silos to encourage more interdepartmental collaboration, among others. It’s your call. The beauty is that you can work to achieve your aim with the human assets you already employ. All your people need is the mechanism to make that possible. 90 minutes a month. Think about it.

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