Most of the projects are well on their way and require less and less attention from the home office projects committee. In the meantime, communities of practice are about to burst on to the scene and will likely challenge existing ways of doing things. As a result, the projects committee should be wondering what comes next.

This is a new frontier, this project thing, and as such, managing it will not likely settle into a groove quickly. Furthermore, much is changing around it. Communities of practice are likely to resolve emerging issues. They are likely to diminish the role home office plays in the day-to-day operations of homes. They are likely to generate projects of their own – projects collaboratively undertaken by inter-home teams and without the involvement, and perhaps without the knowledge of home office.

If that doesn’t give the projects committee an identity crisis what would?

With the much-anticipated arrival of communities of practice, a clear role for the projects committee is taking form, and we don’t have to wait for the dust to settle to see it.

Communities of practice are defined by the common role each ‘practitioner’ plays in his or her respective home. Administrators will discuss what issues arise from administering the operation of their homes. Nutritional Care Managers will discuss nutritional care.

What formal forum is in place to leverage the fact that a DOC is also an educator and could lead an in-service at all OMNI homes? Where does a take-no-prisoners ambassador go if she feels she should be promoting OMNI as a whole, not just her local home. Does she even know that such a promotion is possible? What about a nurse who has been building a body of research and would like to extend that research for application in OMNI homes?

There will be heavy competition for attention to many issues in the communities- of-practice mill. Special projects like these, highly dependent on the talents and efforts of a single individual, or broader ones that cross the bounds of communities of practice will have a tough go there.

Such innovations have to be incubated in a place protected from day-to-day pressures. They demand a different kind of discipline, face different kinds of issues, and present different kinds of opportunities.

Casual discussions at the recent managers’ retreat suggest there are many who have contributions they would like to make beyond their current responsibilities. Chances are they would, if there was a way to channel their energy and enthusiasm. People like projects they can sink their teeth into.

A well-publicized incubator for such projects would enable OMNI to capture these kinds of energies and ensure they make a meaningful contribution. As a formal, stable forum it can select and support new ideas and efforts that do not find purchase in communities of practice. Project ideas can be both submitted to, and tendered by this group.

A central projects team of four or five decision makers and a projects support person can handle project administration, develop a body of knowledge around innovation, point project leads to resources and people that can help. Rigorous project selection, funding and design consultation, and implementation and evaluation support, are all roles for a formal, centralized projects group.

As clear and distinct functions, communities of practice and central projects, correctly channel two different kinds of strategy formation and ensure they don’t trip each other up.

Communities will develop social capital, identify emerging issues, and organically shape emergent strategies in natural response to the near future. Projects will incisively promote intellectual capital, and give an independent hand to determinant strategies led by individuals – those activities designed to shape the environment of the distant future, without interfering with the natural solutions communities will develop.

Together the two will weave the strands of democracy and direction, without confusing the two, but keeping the best of both. Then every current and potential member of the OMNI care team can find a groove that works for them. Who wouldn’t want to work in an environment like that? What environment out there in the long run will be capable of delivering better care?