Why Do Community Development

July 5, 2007 · Comments

Loooook Into My Eyes At a business meeting this morning, a new friend asked me a few questions about all that I’m doing in the world of social networking and community development. He asked the reasonable question of HOW I can get so much production done in a given day (citing Jeff Pulver as another super-community type). He also asked what the purpose/point of my efforts was?

How I Get So Much Done

I don’t smoke. I don’t watch commercial TV. I don’t follow professional sports. I don’t sleep as much as most people. I don’t waste much time online. I type really really fast. I’ve got a great ability to compose my thoughts as I type them, the way sculptors say they see their artwork hidden in the marble. Only not as artsy.

This gives me hours of time that I can use more productively than most.

My Thoughts On Community Development

I think it’s an investment. I think that part of it is just general kissing-and-baby-hugging of the people you consider your community, and some of it is developing potential future business and personal relationships. We do business with friends. There’s a professional potential to some of this. I don’t apologize for that. We have to eat, right? But there’s also some personal aspects, and some element of favor-trading outside of traditional business.

Some of community development is just putting a face on business. I want people to see me and consider me their representation of my organization (something I think all employees should be, but it’s a focus for me). I want people to consider themselves important to me, and to truly feel it. We might not do business, but I’ll be just as grateful that you give me time and attention and allow me to represent your interests.

Ultimately, professional community development is a lot like business development, only with a lot more “human” in the mix and not as much need to close.

Many Touches

I think the best relationships with brands, products, services, companies (etc) come from repeated “touches” between the brand and the consumer/audience/customer. If I’m a podcaster, that means I solicit comments for my show. It means I leave comments on other people’s shows, on their blogs. It means I call people up and have 1:1 phone calls. If I’m a software company community guy, it means I check in with my users as often as I can. I cook up fun things to give them. I come to meetups (I HOST meetups).

Spending time to talk with people matters. Reaching out to your community and making sure they know you appreciate them matters. Sometimes, it’s this mindset that makes a world of difference when something goes awry. Other times, it’s another reason for someone to transact business with you instead of someone else. Oh, and it’s just plain nice and the right thing to do, as well.

When You’re Paid to Be Community Guy

My company spends money for me to have this opportunity. To that end, I work a little extra hard on realizing business value for what I do. But, if I were doing community for free and love and passion (like I do for PodCamp), I’d still feel the same way. I’d still feel there’s a great mix of just being friends with people as well as opportunities for business. Why? Because I think it’s cool to find people jobs. I think it’s cool to help find opportunities for two friends to work together. I think it’s neat when friends can collaborate on things (for money or otherwise).

Should YOUR Organization Have a Community Developer?

Or does it? What does a role like mine mean for your organization? Are you that person? Do you have a community person? Does this even seem like something worth doing in your eyes? Inquiring minds and all that.

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  • Chris, we discussed briefly, when we first connected, our different meanings of Community Development. Here's an extract from a new document we're circulating which hopefully tells you (and others) what we mean by Community Development within a local government authority in the UK - I think there is room for us both to learn from each others definitions - and then make our own.

    Community Development – “is about building active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual respect. It is about changing power structures to remove the barriers that prevent people from participating in the issues that affect their lives”.

    Community Engagement – “Community engagement is about the meaningful involvement of communities in influencing the issues that are important to them; it focuses on the relationship between the community and the organisations and agencies that are responsible for the services it receives and the policies that affect it. Community engagement is a two-way process that also requires the agencies and organisations engaging the community to respond positively to this engagement. This means a willingness to let the community have real influence over the things that are important to it within the context of a set of underlying principles”.

    Hope you - and others - find this useful
  • Community within the company is great, but not exactly what I wanted to stress. I meant that the customer should feel a part of the community and the employees should foster that feeling amongst the customers.

    I would agree with you that a single person trying to singlehandedly change a company's culture is a lot of work and could ultimately cause problems. We do often read, however, how each company has a different culture. Community happens within a business naturally. It may not, however, be a culture one desires. The only people capable of changing the culture are management. It has to come from the top to have direction. What comes from the bottom of the organization is more organic, it just happens whichever way it can.

    My experience working with T-Mobile customer care was amazing. The company is extremely demanding of its employees; but, at the end of the day, we were not in a hurry to go home. Many employees would stay after work and have a good time in the break room. That's the only place I've worked where employees are reluctant or slow to leave after their shift. This was a result of management cultivating company culture.

    Going back to the main point, an organization can function without actively creating community with its employees. It is vital, however, for companies to develop community with those who benefit from its products or services. Otherwise, how can you ensure repeat business?
  • @Shaine - what a lovely idea.

    I am a little concerned about it though. Most companies are run for the benefit of the company shareholders - not the employees. Thus, if the company head management try to create a community amongst the company has a whole, it duplicitous in intent. If the 'rank and file' employees attempt to create community, it will either be shallow or subversive (exclusive or).

    Employment rests upon a delusion of co-operation between the shareholders', executive and cannon fodder. The delusion works because optimum productivity from the cannon fodder comes at a point above starvation level wages and sewer level conditions. Co-operation between the executive and share holders is created by giving the executive shares.

    Once you build community in the rank and file, it becomes very hard indeed to maintain the delusion because people start to share observations with one another which are not congruent with it. This means that such a community actually makes people less happy - not more.

    I know this from personal experience. I have always fostered community within the organisations I work within. I tend to do this by email, telephone etc. The strain of doing so without making people sadder is extreme, and often wasted.

    So, building community between people in different organisations is very good. Building community within organisations might be to the mutual disadvantage of all concerned.

    Best wishes

    AJ
  • I really like how you are able to draw participation from the readers of your blogs. Developing community is the way to go; it definitely is worth doing, not only online. I've worked at businesses where customers are numbers and where customers are a part of the community. People definitely respond to being remembered and to having some influence in your service. I worked with a couple of small business owners who knew their regulars and not-so-regulars. They encouraged their employees to do the same. The result is that they kept coming back because they knew that they could request things to be done to their satisfaction. The sense of community existed.

    I've worked at other companies where the employees and the customers were just numbers. There was no sense of community. Consequently, there was a lot of customer dissatisfaction and employee turnover.

    For me, community should be one of the first things a business or organization tries to establish, online and offline. Once your community trusts that they can tell you what they are thinking, you have what you need to satisfy their needs or desires. If you can't meet a particular need, you have the rapport to be able to explain why you can't.

    I only hope that more and more businesses see the wisdom in creating communities for their clients.
  • Chris,

    Amazing as ever. I like reading your stuff 'cause you seem to think very clearly.

    One really surprising thing to me is how often your new media talk sounds like open source software talk did 5 or six years ago.

    Maybe blogging and twitter are doing for media what gpl and source-forge did for software back around the turn of the century.

    The message takes time to get through. But some companies pin vast parts of their strategy on open-source software (little tiddlers like Google and Oracle for example).

    I guess this means, that if the analogy continues to apply, some large organisations will be basing their strategies on 'open media' (hey - I MUCH prefer that to new media - I think I will pat my self on the back for that one) over the next 2 to 3 years.

    Good on you - as ever - keep it up!

    AJ
  • "there are a lot of cases where I want to do more than consume. I want to participate." That was one of your most recent tweets and honestly that doesn't really happen too much. I've found it really challenging to build a community that actually chooses to participate out of their own free will. We as a society, it seems to me, consume experience, instead of evoking experience. I have a couple of podcasts and I can count in 2 hands the people who have commented and chosen to participate more fully, not for me even, but simply as a way to grow themselves and PARTICIPATE in new ways. It's always the same people (I love them for it). This doesn't just happen on line either. I've taught free classes just for fun (to build community) and taught classes for a cause and generally about 20% of the people invited respond and about half of those actually show up. The ones that do show up are pretty incredible people, people who continue to grow and deepen the conversation in all aspects of life.

    I do believe someone that does what you do (as I see it) asks deeper questions, pokes to make us think about what we are doing, pushing us to move beyond our boundaries is absolutely necessary, the thing is, how to do it in a way that the community then begins to, on it's own take responsibility for all of us to step into it more fully, without the Community Developer.

    That's just what I've been thinking about lately, especially since recently re reading the Declaration of Independence. The document itself is rooted in community and empowerment "...with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

    thank you for your work Chris
  • UJ
    I had a similar job in Brooklyn working for a maid service, although it was community development from an internal point of view. I was in charge of keeping all 50+ maids in the field happy, make sure they're doing personally okay, make sure they always have a pleasant friend to call up when they have a bad day. That way, if they're always okay, they can always do good cleanings. The idea was that as long as they felt like they were part of a community, as opposed to an employee number doing a chore, they would be more productive. And it worked!

    You do that externally, making sure people are okay doing business with you, that way they can do more business. You're not fine print forcing them to give more, you're not a punishment waiting to come down on underachievers. You're a guy who wants to do some business. I think your community development is something every industry should be doing, not just internet types.

    Stop every industry from making us fork over money to machines and fall in love with logos when we'd much rather do business with people.

    Keep on bein' the good news, Chris!
  • jon
    My company spends money to do this. Actually, my company is supposed to BE community development. But we forget about touching. We forget about making relationship be the fabric our our existence. So thanks for the reminder. Wonderful.
  • Hi Chris,
    I'm composing this as I type. Ha ha. Isn't that how everyone does it? Now I'm not sure. I'd like to hear from your readers what another way of typing would be... I cant think of it.

    This was a great post.

    You know I've been doing community for the love of it for the past 3 1/2 years.

    Now I'm talking to friends about doing a new business in the video space and those people that I want to work with are the friends I've made over the years.

    It's going to be fun.
    --Steve
  • Chris, your ability and methods to produce provoke me and your insights in community development challenge me.

    Working models are always more inspirational than mere talking heads.

    Thanks for sharing!!
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