Food for thought on how to make communities successful.
The conference given last week at the Boostzone Institute by Guillaume Soenen brought for me a number of clarification lights on several points, I would like to stress one in particular: the identification of appropriate conditions for ensuring quick wins when launching communities. Many members of the Boostzone Institute have regularly asked for these conditions. I would like to contribute to this request.
Please do not consider these as the views of Professor Soenen, I have been adding a strong personal point of view here and Guillaume Soenen is not responsible for it.
In very short, a community will maximize its chances of success if it starts with having to solve a problem. The definition of a problem can vary but my take would be:
· A problem suggested by the hierarchy (like in any SWAT team, problem solving team, project teams, etc.)
· A situation created by an act of God like the fire of a plant, a tsunami wiping out a plant (this case has been seen in reality at Caterpillar) where it is necessary to reinvent processes and to design out of the box solutions. Something similar to what happens in real life when catastrophic events suddenly create senses of mutual help in problem solving.
· The “lack of prescription” as Soenen puts it, or in simpler terms the insufficiency or the internal contradiction of existing procedures or processes. The IT architect community, in Soenen’s thesis, trying to create better processes in a fast changing and highly complex world is a good example. Many others are available. The need for a group of people to compensate what one could call “organizational adversity” enters into this category. This can be for instance the result of too high a bureaucracy that can be replaced by ad hoc defacto organizational processes. The resulting fact is that some groups of people can organize themselves for collectively reacting against it and create better conditions for their work or their lives. The example of the Xerox repair man gathering at a cafeteria for exchanging practical repair tricks, not figured out in the official manual, is a good example of it.
· The need for a group of people to seize part of the power. Although this one might be seen sometimes as a “perverse” effect (i.e. one may see as negative vs. the overall good) it has proven in many cases to be an important driver for community buildings. Examples include labor unions, friendly university alumni groups in large companies, some minorities groups suffering from glass ceilings, etc.
The interesting point in this approach is that the next elements of creating a lasting successful community then come as an output and as a maintenance engine for the community. They include emotional links created between members, the identification individuals can have with the community and therefore the will to build it further, the capacity to see the community as a major problem solving area rather than a simple add on, etc.
This leads me to another way to look at the factors of success. Those who work regularly with me know that I insist on the “balanced” notion between the various gives and takes within a community.
One could also state this balance in the following way. A community should provide to any party several of the following elements:
-Problem resolution
-Visibility
-Motivation and excitement
-fun
-Socialization.
I suppose these points can be expanded.
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