Communities and organizations: How to ensure a happy marriage?
Too often communities fail because organizations only found out afterwards what it takes to get a community off the ground. That’s a shame, because a fruitful symbiosis between organization and community is definitely possible.
You could say that communities are from Venus and organizations from Mars. They are completely different entities. What works well in an organization can be counterproductive in a community. And vice versa.
A good understanding of those differences, can prevent frustrations in the long run. That is why it is a good idea to include stakeholders from the organization in the characteristics of communities before there is a community.
Organic growth
At the outset, it must be clear that a community cannot be managed in the same way as any other project. Project leaders are used to working with deadlines and clearly defined results. Communities, on the other hand, develop organically and at the speed of the mutual trust of participants. That means that sometimes they get off the ground very quickly, if participants already know each other, for example. But sometimes it takes a long time. In that case, a lot has to be invested in building relationships first and the benefits of the community will not materialize until later. This requires patience and a long-term vision. You cannot force a community to grow faster. At best, you can create the optimal preconditions, ensure a good infrastructure, involve participants and facilitate interactions. If all goes well, the community will emerge from this at its own pace.
The results you ultimately achieve can differ from those you expected. Communities are emergent structures. In the interaction between groups of people, outcomes arise that cannot be predicted in advance. This is one of the great strengths of communities, but it can make people in the organization nervous. That does not mean that communities are rudderless. Only the way in which they are managed is different. Organizations must recognize that participants in a community have a personal interest in participating and do not do so for the sake of the organization. Good community managers continuously look for win-win situations that serve the interests of both the participant and the organization. In fact, you give participants maximum freedom within the boundaries that the organization determines after consultation with the participants. Influence can be exerted by taking the lead in initiatives, actively supporting certain ideas and being of value to the community. In short: by showing informal leadership.
The value that a community represents for an organization is not always unequivocal. For example, what is the value of an answered question? A question answered once on a digital platform continues to pay off. Every future participant who sits with the same question benefits from the answer given. This value is not time-bound and therefore difficult to determine definitively. In addition, there are outcomes that elude immediate view. What about, for example, an innovative project that arose after an initial encounter in the community? An organization will therefore have to look for new ways to capture the value of a community and translate it into criteria known to stakeholders.
Ownership
Companies are used to being in control. In a community this manifests itself, for example, in wanting to be the editor of personal contributions. But just the fact that you facilitate a platform and activities for the community does not mean that you can exercise far-reaching control over what someone does or says in a community. One of the biggest motivations for people to contribute on a voluntary basis is because of the sense of autonomy they experience. As soon as you start interfering with that autonomy, you risk participants protesting or leaving the community.
This desire for control also gets in the way of authenticity. And that is precisely what is essential in communities. To properly present yourself in a community, you sometimes have to let go of rigid organizational guidelines, or simply do something for someone else, without expecting anything in return. That is the reciprocal principle that is present in every community. Making a real effort, daring to be vulnerable and letting others do the talking are the building blocks of healthy relationships.
Once a community is successful, care must be taken that the organization does not exploit it. With thousands of participants involved, the temptation to place advertising messages in the community can be great. This may be accepted once in a while, but in the long run all the goodwill that has been built up will be lost. Another risk is an overly instrumental approach to participants. As soon as they get the feeling that they are being pandered to by the organization, the intrinsic motivation is quickly done away with. To prevent this, organizations must really listen to what participants say, even if it is not always what they want to hear. In addition, they must give them the feeling that they are appreciated for all the time and energy they put into the community.
Precisely because community participants are not paid for their participation, soft factors are much more important than in paid work. People seek out communities for fun, for understanding, for support, for status, to learn or for self-actualization. If, as an organization, you can help them with this, you will create participants who will go through fire and water for you.
Integration of the community in the organization
The above demands a lot from organizations. That is why there are plenty of organizations that do not make that effort. You will notice that community and organization operate completely isolated from each other. The community is more or less tolerated as long as the organization does not suffer from it. Within the organization, only a few people really care about the community, while the rest of the organization continues with what they have always done. A pity, because the potential of a good community is so great for organizations.
The organization as a community
To be able to deal well with communities, it is useful if the organization itself starts to operate as a community. An internal social platform can act as a catalyst to break through insularities in the organization and fixed habits. The way employees connect with each other in internal communities does not differ from the way customers or members do in external communities. It requires a new way of transparent collaboration and knowledge sharing that will come in handy when the organization starts working with external communities. Instead of explaining the power of communities to employees, you let them experience it at first hand. They will no longer be surprised by blogs, wikis, news feeds or chats on a new external community platform.
An additional benefit is that the organization also builds speed of action. In external communities, there will regularly be questions, wishes or complaints addressed to the organization. There is often an expectation that these will be dealt with quickly and appropriately. If questions in an organization still have to be checked by ten different people, it just takes too long. Posting these questions or complaints in a well-used social intranet provides faster and better answers and solutions. Also, familiarity with an internal community makes employees more likely to be open to participating in an external community. Customer questions can then even be answered directly by the appropriate employee, without a community manager serving as a conduit.
Find allies in the organization
The more departments that commit to the success of the community, the better. Often a community starts from a single department. A good approach then is to see where the community touches on interests of other departments and get them involved as well.
An obvious ally is customer contact or customer service. This department is already engaging with customers through social media channels or over the phone. Moreover, they are already trained in conversation and just need to be taken along in the philosophy of communities. When we (Bind) helped travel organization TUI with their customer community, we hooked up this department first. A number of people from the department were given the role of moderator in the community. We then introduced the entire department to the role of community, and gave the moderators a separate moderation training.
Ultimately, a lively customer community makes this department less and less busy. Customers answer each other’s questions and the organization builds up an archive of answered questions in the community. This is exactly why Ziggo, KPN or T-Mobile started their communities in the first place.
But the product development department is also interesting for the community. They are responsible for the further development of existing products and the development of new products. The more input they can gather from users for this, the better the product will meet the needs. In a customer community you will find the hardcore fans of the organization’s products. Often they are even bigger product experts than the people from the organization.
One way to involve them in product development is to:
- asking them to participate in customer panels or product testing,
- asking for their ideas for new products,
- asking for feedback on existing products,
- or allowing them to co-develop new products
For the marketing department, too, the opportunities in the community are there for the taking. In many communities a wealth of valuable user generated content is produced: Reviews of new products, manuals , and fan-made blogs, posters, stuff and videos. On Mugglenet, for example, you can see how Harry Potter fans share homemade clothing for Cosplay, their own recipes and homemade bags. Marketers can support these kinds of initiatives by making materials available from within the organization. A great example is how AirBnB made its logo open source available for remixing. Gaming communities offer players the opportunity to create their own mod of a game. Another example is how Notion shares its corporate identity and logos for the community to use.
Another way the marketing department can have influence in a community is by facilitating knowledge sharing in their target audience. Pipedrive’s community brings sales people together so they can share expertise. For the same reason, Stripe (a SAAS platform for online payments) bought the community Indiehackers. By helping their target audience with their challenges, they hope that positive brand association translates into more sales of their products.
Connect internal processes to the community
Clear work processes are needed to ensure that the community is well aligned with the organization. Employees need guidance on what they can do in the community and what that means for their daily work. Participants also want to know what they can expect from the organization. Therefore, write out procedures completely, and communicate them widely.
Lego Ideas has worked out in detail the process of new ideas being submitted by members of the community. As a participant, you know that the first rounds of voting (is your idea good enough?) are conducted by other participants. Only when you manage to gather ten thousand supporters for your idea will your idea be evaluated by Lego’s product development team. If Lego takes it into production, you are entitled to one percent of the net profit. If your idea is rejected, you will be compensated with 500 dollars worth of Lego products of your choice. For participants it is immediately clear what they can expect from the organization. But it is also very pleasant for employees. They can take this evaluation process and any new products from the community that need to be made into account in their planning.
The radio program Spraakmakers has also cleverly integrated its community of listeners into the broadcasts. Participants can respond to statements made by Stand.nl, submit questions for well-known guests of the program, or send editors on their way by submitting your idea for a topic. The best ones will be selected from the submissions and they will get a role in the broadcast. Participants from the community have become the ears and eyes of the editors.
In the book Communities of Innovation, the space between community and organization is called the middleground.
The community (Underground) and the organization (Uppergound) communicate with each other through places, spaces, events and projects:
- Places can be physical locations like cafes, fablabs or incubators or virtual places like forums, wikis or ideation platforms.
- Events can be festivals, workshops or conferences.
- Projects can be hackathons, test sessions or design thinking workshops.
- Spaces are the ‘places’ that can emerge and influence the outside world: new styles, new trends or new disciplines.
Want to know more about communities? Read our book Organizing Communities or schedule a consultation with our agency Bind.
