In reply to Filtered for Small Groups by Matt Webb
Came across this in Peter’s favourites. I think a useful perspective on the described small groups is community of practice, which opens up a range of aspects you can address to steward such a group.
Groups like that are imo key for some of the things Matt describes because they provide the right kind of instrument right at the organisational level where complexity resides, somewhere between the small scale/individual and the statistical. The level of interdependent factors where new ideas, momentum, innovation, and feedback emerge.
It’s also why in networked agency I see a small group as the unit of agency. A small group of people with mutual connections in a specific context and with a specific interest or issue, getting their hands on the tools and methods right for them. People, a shared context/domain and issues one cares about are the three pillars of community of practice again.