Creating the wayra locals culture at wayra Germany
What are the wayra locals? Why does culture really, really matter? This article is about my learnings in working in creating a community for wayra Germany in 6 months.
When I started to work for wayra Germany as a ecosystems relations manager I basically had never really worked in managing a community on a professional level. My big advantage was that I already was a part of the community for one year before accepting the task of managing the community. I already knew most of the community members and they knew me. Even if this sounds weird but I was considered as one of them. I knew the struggles / emotional rollercoasters a freelancer/startups can have. And I knew some things that could be optimized… But lets start with the basics and the frequently asked questions:
What is the resident program?
Wayra started in Munich as a accelerator for early stage startups. Entrepreneurs were able to develop their product/idea in a couple of months and wayra would support them. In November 2017 wayra Germany changed its model focusing now on more mature startups who would like to win Telefónica as a client and to grow both businesses.
As a result: the office space which was originally reserved for teams of early stage startups which were part of the accelerator program, was suddenly free. Therefore wayra Germany decided to open up the space to the community of unconventional businessmakers to o shape the future of corporate innovation.
Why is wayra doing the resident program?
One of the goals of wayra Germany is to become the hotspot of the local startup ecosystem. To quote the CEO of wayra Germany, Christian Lindener, here:
„The purpose of events and branding is to farm dealflow by bringing high potential entrepreneurs out of the shadows. Wayra should be a magnet for possible founders.“
Residents vs. Program startups
That is why people who can use the infrastructure are not limited to startups which are currently in the wayra program. It can also be used by people from the startup ecosystem who are officially residents of wayra Germany.
Who can become become a wayra resident?
Anyone. We aim to have the best mix of experienced entrepreneurs and people who are just getting started with their business.
Why can someone become a wayra resident?
We are not looking for people who are just using the space because they get a free coffee in a location that is in the city center. We are looking for people who believe in the idea of having a community of helping each other. And more importantly: being open for getting to know each other and of giving back. Now that you know the basics lets dig into community knowledge:
No communication = no community
Without communication there is no community. It sounds obvious but there is a lot attached to it. How is the community really doing? You can measure the health of a community by checking how members communicate with each other. Or if they communicate at all. There was a slack workspace with over 300 members. The workspace had been growing over the last years and the majority of the members were not active anymore because they had left the space/left the community. The accounts have never been deleted.
Sure the slack workspace was still being used as a communication platform but the majority of the community at that time was not using/reading slack. Why should they bother anyway? Most of the information shared on slack did not matter to them. It was too general and therefore not meaningful enough that they would invest time and energy to keep up with the messages.
Introducing: the community-member-only channel: wayra_locals
My approach was to create a dedicated channel for all people who are actually working at the office space in the heart of Munich. Today the wayra_locals channel has around 100 members and it is the actual community of the people working everyday together at wayra Germany. With that I chose the name wayra locals to bring every sub-group of the office together: wayra residents, wayra startups, wayra employees. They are all working at the office located in the Kaufingerstr. 15 in Munich. Therefore they are all considered to be part of the wayra locals.
Always keep the channel up-to-date
If people would leave the community, I generally remove them immediately from the channel. If people would join the community, I would ask them to introduce themselves and they would need to nominate someone from the channel to meet in the offline world to have a beer/coffee/quesadilla to build up the relations and to make the community stronger. By that everyone in the community would always be up-to-date about who is really a part of the community. People started to realize that everyone in the channel would matter. Every-single-person. So they became active and started contributing and reading more and luckily the channel became to live on its own.
Want to join the community? Profile picture is mandatory.
Another thing that would improve the exchange in the community was the (offline)wayra locals wall. Every member of the wayra_locals slack channel had to upload a profile picture. The picture then would be used as the face of its offline profile were member could describe how they could help other members of the community and sharing their stories.
The magic of the who-is-who of a community
The offline wayra locals wall is located in the kitchen area. During events it always attracts visitors. People are somehow always curious to check out who is a part of this bad ass community. ;)
By that time there were several “groups” working at the office space: the employees of wayra Germany, the startups that were part of the wayra program and their employees and residents.
Having face to face conversations are 10x more powerful than talking in front of a group and dictating new updates.
Although slack is super great to exchange information, updates and of course GIFs one take away from my time in the wayra team was the fact that there is nothing more effective of having face to face meeting with members of the community.
When I first introduced the wayra resident concept to the community we had a group meeting in our event space with around 50–100 people. I did present the new concept. The wayra team was having my back and the residents were quite nervous about the new rules and changes that were coming in.
After some weeks we improved the concept again but this time I communicated the changes via personal 1-to-1 conversations to talk about the expectations of each side and especially to listen to the feelings and wishes of the members of the community. Which produced the essential material of each strong community: trust. By that time we did not use any form of contract. It was just a simple handshake agreement that the resident would commit to the rules and expectations we had communicated to them. These conversations resulted into checkpoints which residents have to attend after a time-period of 3 months.
#givingback and avoid wasting time
Since wayra introduced the resident program it was always the goal that residents should give something back since they were able to use the infrastructure of a super awesome office in the heart of Munich. But: either residents did not understand the expectations of wayra or they had their daily business which already had their whole attention. I think you can relate to the emotional rollercoasters a founder can have. But after 1.5 years some residents deliver something. They gave something back. Can you imagine the quality of talks that some residents deliver just because they have to do it? Just because of the sake of doing so? Correct. It often felt like a waste of time: Your personal time, the time of the wayra community and the time of the person who was giving the talk — wasted.
In our first draft we changed the goal of the projects: find something to help wayra out. And as another variable: we changed the projects from mandatory to voluntary. The result: it did not work out. People did not understand how they could help wayra. And only a little group of people wanted to do projects on a voluntary basis.
In our next draft we changed the parameters again: residents need to do at least one project in their residentship-period of 3 months. So it became mandatory again. The current goal of projects ist that residents need to either help the internal or external startup ecosystem by providing some kind of value. Nice to have: connect people and build long lasting relationships! You could ask yourself: why do you want to help the ecosystem and not wayra? Legitimate question! If residents help the ecosystem it automatically helps wayra Germany because we then become one step closer in becoming the hot spot of the startup ecosystem.
In the beginning residents were skeptical about the new project rules. But after the first projects were delivered, people started to get to know each other in the community. Somehow it became really hard to avoid the community exchange. Resulting into strong relationships inside the community and finally having a community at wayra which somehow really became a community and a family.
Besides delivering a project to stay as a resident in wayra Germany, residents had to meet the expectations in the following areas:
Community exchange: How do residents exchange with the internal community or meeting external people at inhouse events.
Influence in startup ecosystem: The resident is considered to be a influencer in the ecosystem. Attends/organizes other startup events on a regular basis.
Proactivity: The resident commits to help out when asked.
Slackactivity: The resident commits to read the slack messages from the community on a regular basis.
Wayra ambassador: The resident knows what wayra is doing and spreads the message of wayra in the ecosystem.
Cleanliness: the resident cleans the space on a regular basis.
Wayrateam social friend: the resident knows each person from the wayra team and the wayra team knows the resident.
By communicating these expectations in the 1–to-1 discussions people started to adapt and to overdeliver to the expectations. From that moment things started to change.
Why clear rules and expectations are important in a community
First example: the desk system
At wayra a resident can choose between a flex and fixed desk. Both desks are marked accordingly with a sticker on the right bottom of the table. The stickers of fixed desks include the name of the current “owner” of the table. You could ask yourself: why is that important?
Before my time joining the wayra team there were no sticker. No markers showing you that it would be okay if you could use that table or not. As a natural behavior people started to mark their territory by leaving personal stuff on the tables or leaving their jackets/hoodies on the chairs to tell everyone:they are using this space. As a result: a lot of conflicts happened on a regular basis. People were discussing if it would be possible to sit here and there. And of course people who somehow were granted a fixed desk at that time had the chance to tell someone to move because the desk was granted to them. The feeling of being treated different than other residents lead to a lot of frustration and disconnect. That is why it is SO IMPORTANT to be clear on rules and structures. Since we introduced the simple sticker system people were more eager to connect and the bad vibes between the community members were gone.
Second example: the dishwasher
Dishwashers, are the final bosses of community managers -> before my time in the wayra team there was the rule that a group of residents were responsible for cleaning the kitchen for one day of the week. For example: Monday the following teams were responsible: Smokeless, Kwerqus, Cook and Code and EcoG. This resulted into two problems:
- If multiple teams are responsible and in each team there are multiple member -> no one feels responsible because somebody else will be doing it.
- If people were feeling somehow responsible they were only having this feeling for THAT SINGLE DAY. Every other day resulted in the fact that some other team had to clean for them. That is why they did not care about cleaning the dishwasher.
Our new approach for changing this status quo was simple: everyone is always* responsible for cleaning the kitchen. Everyone is responsible to empty and fill the dishwasher. * = unless they are in a hurry and have to leave fast.
And by everyone this means everyone. Even the CEO of wayra Germany. No special bonuses for single members of the community. Because: If the wayra team is not living by the rules why should anyone else?
The result: wayra locals culture or How to find a culture that fits?
These two basic examples showed how important it is to have rules to avoid conflicts and miscommunication. But it also led to something more important: it created a culture community members started to live by. Remember the seven expectations we communicated to them shown earlier? About the cleanliness, the proactivity and so on… ? We also communicated to them that they were about to get measured by them. Every category would get 1–3 points. 3 is the maximum, 1 is the minimum one resident could get for each category. Peoples first reaction often was: how are you going to measure this? This is not possible that you could measure it, unless you are recording our actions 24/7. Correct! That was never our intention. The result was, that the behavior changed dramatically. And once I did the checkpoint to talk about the last 2 months with the resident they had to give them their points by themselves and then we discussed our point of views together in how wayra perceives them and how the resident perceives its actions. In the second step they should define the points for each category if they could describe a “perfect” resident for the community. The minimum a member should bring into the wayra locals. Currently I am taking these points so in the end we have a wayra culture the residents build and chose themselves. Thanks for the mentoring and the first idea for this: Katrin Ostermeier · Marcus Rübbe from KAOS coaching.
Helping out each other only if there is trust between the startups and founders.
In the end you may ask: why do residents need to do projects to connect people in the internal or external community? One great outcome of having so many events happening in the community was that people started talking with each other. They started exchanging and building trust. Trust was hardly needed so that founders and the members of the community started sharing weaknesses, problems and in the end helping out each other.
Want to check out what it is really like to work at wayra Germany and being part of the most awesome startup community in Munich? Let me know! Or follow us on instagram to check out the stories of our daily office live. If you would like to chat about the community management happy to hear from you, too!
