Consultancy, training, workshops and support to embed, introduce, review and supercharge Communities of Practice.
We have brought Communities of Practice into UK government departments, international corporations, private companies and charities, transforming how they connect people, build capability, and bridge knowledge silos.
Using our experience and research-backed frameworks, proven tools, and sustained engagement, we create communities that thrive independently for years.
“Tacit’s community maturity review was one of the most valuable things we’ve done. We didn’t know how much more effective we could be until this, and it’s now a bedrock of our community development plans.”
Tom Birch, Head of Delivery at the Department for Work and Pensions.
The Challenge
Organisations often face persistent challenges that traditional structures struggle to address:
Isolated specialists.
People working in similar roles across different teams lack opportunities to connect, leading to learning, knowledge and good practice sitting in silos.
Capability gaps.
Professional development remains fragmented, with no clear way to accelerate learning or raise collective skills across the organisation.
Scale without connection.
As organisations grow, maintaining shared standards and approaches becomes increasingly difficult.
Confidence and motivation.
Without peer support, people can feel uncertain about their practice and disconnected from their profession.
The Tacit Solution
We start by understanding your organisational context, culture, and where communities of practice will add genuine value. We then define a strategic approach that demonstrates value to leadership, establish clear measurement approaches, and work collaboratively to build communities of practice that work for your people.
We do this by
Defining strategic approaches that articulate how communities address specific organisational challenges and deliver measurable value, making the case for investment.
Building leadership buy-in by demonstrating value and helping leaders understand how to support communities that contribute to organisational sustainability.
Facilitating discovery and foundation, understanding who needs to connect, what they need from each other, and how communities fit within existing structures.
Running community of practice establishment workshops using proven tools like our Community of Practice Kick-off Canvas to help communities define their purpose, mission, and ways of working from day one.
Building maturity over time, supporting communities through different stages of the Tacit Community of Practice Maturity model, potential, forming, mature, and self-sustaining.
Creating measurement approaches to assess community of practice effectiveness and demonstrate impact based on what matters to both members and the organisation.
Transferring knowledge by training community leads and champions so organisations can sustain and grow communities independently long after we’ve finished working together.
Some examples of client work
Department for Work & Pensions: Supporting Communities of Practice over many years
Since 2016, we’ve supported DWP Digital through their communities of practice journey. Emily introduced the concept early on and ran workshops to establish initial communities. Later, she returned to conduct two comprehensive reviews across professional job families, leaving clear and actionable recommendations, and most recently, to support the creation of a new strategy for matrix working, supported by practices and communities, during which time she created a bespoke maturity framework and defined measurement approaches that DWP Digital continues to use to support its activities.
The Impact
The sustained engagement over nine years demonstrates the ongoing value communities bring to DWP. As one leader reflected:
“Emily’s deep understanding of the field and having worked in and with various government departments really came through in her ability to immediately pinpoint the good and bad. Rock solid coaching, consultancy and recommendations to help us unlock greater value from our communities of practice.”
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: From Establishment to Evolution
Tacit worked with Defra as part of a team to enable effective digital transformation. Emily led the introduction and establishment of Communities of Practice to join up its 30+ agencies and arm’s-length bodies nationwide. During this work, we introduced the concept, built a strategy and created repeatable workshops built on the Tacit Community of Practice maturity framework to initiate them.
The Impact
These communities of practice brought together people practising the same role and served as the primary mechanism for specialists to connect, learn, collaborate, and maintain standards across a highly distributed organisation, helping members feel part of “One Defra team” rather than isolated in their individual organisations.
As one Community member reflected: “The community has broken down barriers between the numerous delivery bodies across Defra,” while another noted: “Everything is in change, and the community means knowing others have these challenges and that there are people to discuss them with.”
Co-op Digital: Creating Safe Spaces
Working with Co-op Digital, Tacit facilitated off-site community of practice kick-off workshops using the Tacit Community of Practice Maturity and Kick-off Canvas. The workshops enabled the members to create a safe space for connection and learning, and the tools helped Communities of Practice establish their purpose, mission, and values and set them off in the right way for success.
The Impact
The communities gave members peer support they couldn’t get elsewhere, directly improving their confidence and practice.
Reflecting on one community’s growth six months later, delivery manager Kim Morley shared: “Sharing how you feel in a safe environment is invaluable. Especially when you’re with the people who are best-placed to support you with the tricky parts of your job.”
BBC: Realigning Communities of Practice
We helped the BBC realign and redefine their communities of practice through strategic workshops, receiving “reams of positive feedback.” The consultation “enabled us to relaunch communities across the organisation,” reviewing the existing model and workshop with existing communities to give them renewed purpose and direction. We left them with a more effective approach, new language and renewed engagement.
“[I’ve] worked with Emily multiple times at the BBC. She received reams of positive feedback from teams who attended the training. Furthermore, the consultation we conducted together on communities at the BBC was invaluable and enabled us to relaunch them across the organisation.“
The Impact Across All Clients
For People: Safe spaces for peer learning and support, accelerated professional development, stronger networks, increased confidence and motivation, and a clearer sense of professional belonging.
For Managers: Practical tools for supporting development, shared language across the organisation, visible capability across teams.
For Organisations: Reduced silos of ideas, knowledge and learning; improved collaboration; better retention of tacit knowledge; faster onboarding and capability growth; more consistent and better practices; happier and more engaged staff and stronger collective intelligence.
Community of Practice Thought Leadership and Innovation
Our work is grounded in both extensive practice and research:
Published Book (2016): “Building Successful Communities of Practice” became the go-to practical guide for organisations implementing communities of practice, praised for its accessibility and focus on both explicit and tacit knowledge.
Scientific Research (2020): Co-authored a peer-reviewed paper with Professor Robin Dunbar, “The fractal structure of communities of practice: Implications for business organisation.”, exploring the correlation between communities of practice and natural human communities, published in PLOS ONE.
Launch of communitiesofpractice.work website, a dedicated space to collect blog posts, publications, tools and talks about Communities of practice.
Widely-Used Tools: Such as the Tacit Community of Practice Kick-off Canvas, Maturity Model, and Effectiveness Review used by organisations globally.
International Public Speaking: Sharing knowledge about Communities of Practice at conferences including Mind the Product, YOW Australia, FastFlow, Agile Örebro, Goto Copenhagen, Craft Budapest, Agile Cambridge and podcasts including O’Reilly Infrastructure & Ops Hour, Making Tech Better and New Stack Makers.
Top-rated online training course (2025) The online course “Successful Communities of Practice” is rapidly growing a great reputation and 5-star reviews, available at tacit.pub/learnCoPs
Services Used
- Organisation Discovery research and analysis
- Communities of Practice Strategy and Implementation
- Training and Coaching
- Workshop Design and Facilitation
- Organisational Consulting
Ready to Connect Your People and Build Capability?
If your organisation is struggling with isolated specialists, capability gaps, or knowledge silos, let’s talk about how communities of practice could transform how your people learn, connect, and grow together.
