For as long as I’m in the tech space, community work has shaped how I think about learning.
In communities, knowledge flows because people make it visible. By attending user groups and conferences, I learned just as much from the conversations before and after a session as from the talk itself. People share experiences, talk about their doubts and you start to realize that the challenges you’re facing aren’t unique. That realization alone has helped me more than once.
Over time, I started to notice that that same dynamic could work inside a consultancy firm.
Inside the company, a lot of learning happens in parallel. The consultants don’t work on the same projects, but they hit similar problems and challenges. What usually happens is that on each project, teams find solutions and make trade-offs. They gain valuable insights, and then that knowledge stays where it was created.
In that scenario, growth becomes a matter of luck. You need to be in the right conversations at the right time. If you’re not, you end up solving the same problem a colleague already wrestled with months earlier.
Taking on the role of Competence Center Lead gives me the opportunity to be more intentional about that, and to help make learning visible beyond the boundaries of a single project.
I don’t see this role as a destination. I see it as a commitment.
A commitment to make learning visible, to bring community thinking into the workspace and to help make growth something we design for, not something we leave to chance.
Because growth doesn’t happen by accident.