Building and Nurturing On-Line Communities (Batteries Not Included)

Much has been written about best practice for developing and nurturing on-line communities , such as Communities of Practice (CoP), and the accepted wisdom is that technology by itself – no matter how good –  will NOT deliver vibrant and successful communities. “Build it and they won’t come” should be the mantra, as Google Wave so amply demonstrated (and I know this was not an on-line community in its purest sense before I get flamed!).

I’ve previously tried to illustrate this using the analogy of baking a cake, where the cake’s ingredients e.g. sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and  milk are the component parts of an on-line community. To bake a really good cake you need all of these ingredients, missing out any one of them can result in something which either looks or tastes nothing like a cake.

cake-ingredientsSimilarly missing out one of the ingredients in an on-line community will lead to potential failure of the community. Clearly some ingredients will be key, e.g. technology is going to be pretty important if it’s an on-line community! Members/users are important because they ARE the community. But let’s not forget the other ingredients, such as the community facilitator (also variously known as the community manager, steward or moderator) the business sponsor, the subject matter experts, the mentors, the librarians etc. Some of these roles may be combined, but the functions they perform are distinct. For now, I want concentrate on the role and function of the community facilitator, for I would argue that this role is the difference between the success and failure of an on-line community (and especially a CoP), and I have the empirical evidence to prove it!

For any prior readers of this blog you will know I had (and still have) a key role in the development of the local government on-line community platform. Currently over 65,000 registered users and 1,300 CoPs.  Using various metrics available on the platform, I can clearly see the correlation between a successful community and the capability of the facilitator. If this role is so important to the health of the community, what skills and attributes are needed to be a successful facilitator? I’m still not entirely sure, though I do know it’s not a case of just providing some training, though this does help. It’s more about personality; enthusiasm; willingness to share; being sensitive to the community environment; and energy! Lots and lots of energy. Not the sort of things you can learn or teach using a pedagogical approach. I recall co-hosting a community facilitator’s story-telling session using the excellent Anecdote story-telling guidelines. We got ten or so of the LG Improvement and Development (previously IDeA) exemplar community facilitators together to share their experience of what worked so that we could perhaps identify some key lessons that could be shared with all the other community facilitators. One recurrent theme was how hard they worked at making the community successful. There was nothing really unique or special that they were doing, other than putting energy and enthusiasm into their role. They believed in the goals for their community and worked at helping the community achieve them.

So, coming back to my original theme, what makes a successful on-line community? The community facilitator is the answer, and though it’s clear we need some useful technology to support an on-line environment, that alone will not deliver success. If you will excuse me for switching metaphors, an on-line community (CoP) without a good facilitator is like have having a battery-driven toy without the batteries, and hence the title of this blog. This concept is supported by the accompanying slides, developed for a recent IBM webinar hosted and arranged by my good friend and colleague Luis Suarez (@elsua) and available for download from Slideshare.

To conclude, a brief story about a recent response to a proposal I received from a large government body who wanted a cost effective solution to improving knowledge sharing for their dispersed staff. There was  a limited budget, and I identified a fairly low-cost collaborative technology solution that was well within the available budget. However, I also included a dependency on having a community facilitator/manager to ensure the success of this nascent community. Unfortunately the cost of the community facilitator/manager was more than twice the cost of the technology, and consequently the solution was starting to look expensive and unlikely to be accepted and implemented by the client. Yes, I could have just quoted the cost of the technology and then left them to get on with it, but then again, I’m not a technology vendor and I don’t believe in perpetuating the myth that technology delivers successful on-line communities. It would have been like leaving them with a battery-driven product but not telling them that the batteries were not included!

I hope the slides are useful for anyone involved in building and sustaining on-line communities – and if you happen to be a community facilitator, you have my utmost respect!

View more presentations from Collabor8now Ltd.

12 Comments

  1. Lauren Klein said:

    Excellent read, thank you, I agree that you have to have the community facilitators and other critical core team members to help with momentum building and cultivation. You may find some of the posts on ‘secret sauce’ and community archaelogists of interest at: http://communitycomposers.wordpress.com/

    August 27, 2010
    Reply
    • Steve Dale said:

      Thanks Lauren. I’ll check out the link you’ve provided.

      August 27, 2010
      Reply
  2. Stephen Dale said:

    Thanks Lauren. Have checked out the posts you’ve mentioned – and following you n Twitter. Seems we have a lot in common. Happy to have a chat sometime.

    Steve

    August 28, 2010
    Reply
  3. Stephen Dale said:

    Thanks Lauren. Have checked out the posts you’ve mentioned – and following you n Twitter. Seems we have a lot in common. Happy to have a chat sometime.

    Steve

    August 28, 2010
    Reply
  4. Scott Drummond said:

    I’m the Online Community Manager for a large Australian telco called Optus. I’m frequently asked by internal stakeholders what my role involves so I appreciate your post Stephen.

    Enthusiasm and energy are certainly key attributes but I think while those qualities are necessary for a successful community manager they aren’t sufficient. All the great CMs I’ve met are multi-skilled generalists.

    They are fantastic communicators, born networkers, and skilled people connectors. They can understand how the nuances of a single conversation fit into the wider frameworks of a company’s strategic objective

    Of course, truthfully a community manager must possess the range of skills needed to deal with the challenges posed by the community they work within. In that sense, there is no ideal skillset for a CM.

    September 3, 2010
    Reply
    • Steve Dale said:

      Scott,

      thanks for the comments. Absolutely agree your points. Not sure if you saw the comment from Lauren, referring to the online Community Manager as a ‘weaver’, which brings out some of the same points you make. I think one of they key points, which I mentioned in the post, is that the skills and attributes of a good facilitator/community manager can’t really be taught – e.g. how do you train someone to be a ‘born networker’, or a ‘skilled people connector’? This is as much a part of personality as knowledge or experience. I’m not sure how you explain your role to your internal stakeholders, but I’m betting that they still don’t fully grasp the extent (and importance) of what you do. Sadly, it’s often the case that only when the facilitator/community manager leaves that their role is fully appreciated. In the mean time, I hope they are paying you enough!

      September 3, 2010
      Reply
  5. Connie West said:

    As you pointed out, the Community facilitator and his/her enthusiasm and dedication is key to the sucess of the community. Another key ingredient is momentum driven by a large membership. Often organizations, especially those that are just embarking on developing communities, will create several communities that are segmented – based on product for example, rather than discipline. A larger community nets more cross-pollination of ideas that can spark new ideas and innovation.

    I often think of Gladwell’s statement (“The Tipping Point”) when I think of successful communities: “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” He describes three categories of people: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesman. Connectors are key in bringing together people and concepts in a wide variety of areas. Mavens love to accumulate knowledge. Salesmen charm and help convince. All key characteristics important to a successful “community”.

    And, when we talk about successful communities, we often think about tracking statistics to determine success. Many organizations tend to look at statistics regarding how many people post to the community. I think it’s important to note that a large contingent of community members don’t contribute anything to a community – they lurk. They soak in knowledge. They download materials. They also need to be counted as important to the success of the community.

    November 26, 2010
    Reply
    • Steve Dale said:

      Thanks for your comments Connie – and absolutely agree with you. I’ve long wondered what that tipping point was – i.e. can we put a number to it? From my experience, communities with less than 50 members tend to struggle to maintain momentum….but I’d hesitate to say that this was a ‘rule’. Larger communities (250 +) are more likely to cross-pollinate ideas as you decsribe. I also agree about the ‘lurkers’ (terrible name for them) and tend to think of the analogy of a football match. Would the players enjoy their game as much if there were no spectators (aka lurkers)? I think not!

      November 27, 2010
      Reply
  6. Lauren Klein said:

    Connie – great contributions to the conversation, thanks!
    Steve, I have in depth first hand experience with small communities that have high trust, are by invitation only and have member commitment.I have several value creation stories that I could share at http://www.executivenetworks.com on how this is working today in a private closed community.

    Thanks again, lauren@executivenetworks.com

    November 30, 2010
    Reply
    • Steve Dale said:

      Lauren – thanks for the comments. I would be most interested in the value creation stories you mention for your communities. I’ll be leaping across to http://www.executivenetworks.com to have a good look around. Thanks for sharing the link.

      December 1, 2010
      Reply

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