Dunbar's Numbers and Communities of Practice - Q and A with Emily Webber

Blog

1 Jun

Emily Webber has a breadth of experience of delivery and agile transformation in both the private and public sectors. She was the Head of Agile Delivery at Government Digital Service (GDS), where she built, developed and led an amazing team of ~40 Agile delivery professionals. At GDS, she was also the Programme Delivery manager for Cabinet Office Technology transformation during the initiation, ensuring that the project was focused on user needs and set up in an agile way.

Emily is the author of the book Building Successful Communities of Practice and recently did extensive research (with anthropologist Professor Robin Dunbar) into the size and engagement dynamics of various communities of practice with a particular focus on how the group dynamics change as the group size crosses certain thresholds. The research was published in the academic publication PLOS ONE.

We spoke to Emily about her research and what the implications are for designing and evolving organizations.

Q1 - How did your research come about? What led you to investigate group dynamics based on group size?

I have been working in the area of communities of practice for a few years which means I am always interested in finding out more about how to help them. In 2019, I sent out a survey to people who are in communities of practice to see what, if any new insights would appear.

The survey itself had very open questions around communities, which included how big they were, how they were managed, how often they meet and what they do. When I started looking at the results and codifying the answers, what stood out to me was community sizes and the impact that they had on the communities. Not only that, the number groups seemed to correlate to Dunbar’s number, which supports the theory that communities of practice are social groups and follow the same patterns as other social groups.

I shared the results with Robin Dunbar, who was equally excited about the research and together we were able to interpret the data using recognised statistical methods and draw some interesting conclusions. Mainly that community size affects leadership needs, meeting frequency and camaraderie.

Q2 - It seems like Dunbar’s Numbers apply inside an organizational context as well as for social situations. What are the implications for organizations?

We are social beings, so it stands to reason that Dunbar’s number has an implication for organisations. If, like me, you have worked in an organization of 50 people, you will know how different that feels to one of hundreds. Dunbar’s number pops up all over the place from villages to military units and Dunbar has covered a lot of situations in his research. In the Tipping point, Malcom Gladwell tells the story of W.L.Gore (makers of Gore-Tex fabric) dividing it’s plants into 150 people, so that they can take advantage of the small company feel in a large organization.

Essentially what it means is you cannot create connections with everyone in an organisation that is over 150 people. That isn’t saying that there shouldn’t be large organisations, it just means that they have different needs and approaches to consider.

A Community of Practice can be a powerful way to build and evolve knowledge and practitioner skills

Q3 - How should managers inside organizations use your research? What changes would you recommend?

The research is specific to communities of practice; essentially, if an organisation has communities that are over 40 people, then they have to consider formally recognised leadership for them. This might be answered in a number of ways, which all translate into time dedicated to nurturing and growing communities.

Q4 - Are you doing more research? What’s next for Communities of Practice?

I help a lot of organisations with communities of practice and am currently working closely with one at the moment; This means I continue to uncover different experiences with them. I don’t have any specific ongoing research at the moment, but watch this space.