Your path to success

I’ve been reading a lot about “2.0 communities” from the perspective of employee communities (related to virtual teams and communities of practice) as well as customer communities (related to interactive marketing practices).  At times I find the word “community” is misapplied.  I’m not the first to notice this.  Rachel Happe, an expert on the subject, blogged about this a while ago.  In a somewhat lengthy post — but one well worth reading — Kristi Colvin discusses a similar insight challenging our assumptions that customers hunger for more engagement.  These posts jogged thoughts I wanted to share with you about communities and audiences.

I’m inspired when I observe community dynamics:

• Weight loss groups.  There’s something magical when you get together every week for a meeting as part of a program such as Weight Watchers.  A skilled leader in the period of 26 weekly meetings can orchestrate a connection between people who don’t know each other, but who all commit to life-changes together.
• Neighborhood crime watch program.  Many communities, especially places with families, stay-at-home moms, kids who play ball on the street, etc. have an arrangement where people keep an eye out for suspicious activities.
• Co-members of a religious group. Many people who affiliate with a religious movement and participate in regular (e.g. weekly) gatherings develop communal relationships with people across a diverse spectrum of society (such as race, education, profession, and age).
• Offering bug fixes in an open-source project. Developers donating time and effort to fix code without getting paid for it is one of the perplexing realities of the Internet economy.  But many opensource projects thrive on this behavior of communal bug fixing and online forum support.

These groups have common elements that frame the notion of community (as opposed to audience).  Rachel’s blog highlighted many of them.  I add that a community needs to have an identity.  Membership is rarely ambiguous when it comes to a community member.  In some cases you display your affiliation with a lapel pin or some other indicator that you are a member.

However many times these communities fail to establish the cohesion that makes them communal.  There are “support groups” that never get the members connected with each other.  Most neighbors just mind their own business. Many religious groups disappoint.  Tons of open source project lay inactive.  So starting  a community does not mean automatic success.

But if communities are so much a part of humanity, why do many fail? There are more communities available to us than we are able to join. We filter those we don’t have affinity to.  We are stretched too thin and cannot be at every party — and give each one our gifts.  We run out of time, energy, and willingness to participate.  So we choose our attachments. If only we understood how.

Communities require emotional attachments that makes them communities — they (usually via their leaders) must develop a sense of Shared Fate.  Shared fate means that if something happens to the community, then each member feels affected by it.  We develop this concept further into at least two sub-behaviors:

1. Communal shared fate.  That community members care that the community exists for their behalf and that they are willing to do something to help if needed to sustain the community.  For example, take over the leadership for a day if the leader needed it.  Or pitch in to help run a program.
2. Concern for the community members.  If a community member needs something that others could help with, they would do so — by virtue of the fact that the other is a community member (even one they don’t know well).

Shared Fate is an important developmental stage in building a community — but there’s more.  There’s Shared Faith.  Shared faith is when community members develop a common aspiration and support each other in attaining this aspiration.

The most successful opensource projects and Internet standards were created by teams (in many cases from competitive organizations) who joined together to create and support something they all believed in.  The Linux operating system, for example, thrives because the people who support it believe that there ought to exist an opensource operating system that worked like Unix.  The same is true for the Apache Web server and many of the Java standards.  Not only do the community members recognize their shared fate in the projects, they share in faith that having these makes the world a better place.

What about size?  Communities of 30 people operate differently from those with 300 people, which differ from those of 1000.  The dynamics of onboarding new members, answering common questions, and cross-clique participation differ.  So I find that numbers are an important factor to consider when managing and leading communities.  But I do not believe that you can draw a meaningful measure of a community by measuring size.

Why?

Because if all you see is size, then I suspect that you might be looking at an audience.  We measure audiences by size — and that’s perfectly OK.  But if you are talking about community — shared fate and faith — then you have to measure the willingness and execution of inter-community help.  Do members help each other?  If so — you are community building.

It takes steps.  Members have to identify as members and they have to be noticed. They have to feel that the community is “for them”.  They have to see common consequence and purpose.  And then they will offer their common courtesy — to help others.

What this means:  If you are building a community (internally with employees, externally with customers, etc.), orchestrate getting members to help other members.  Don’t answer every question.  But reward those who do.  Measure the strength of your community in the most tangible, visible way — how much service is performed by and for others.

Afterthought:  my favorite quote from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior (by memory)

Why should I listen to you?  You work in a gas station.

This isn’t a gas station, Dan, it’s a service station. The highest purpose in life is service to others.

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