Community Archives - Page 12 of 143

7 Steps to a Vision that Grabs a Community by Its Soul

September 21, 2010 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: 1.2 Articulate the Vision

Why Have a Vision?

Last week, I wrote Why You Absolutely Must Share Your Vision Early and Often. Now, it’s about the how-to.

Imagine three corporations that build and sell computers for small business and entrepreneurs. Each corporation defines its business in a different way.

Brand A says: Our company is in the business of making products for consumers who need them. We do the work they can’t do and offer it at a fair price.

Brand B says: We’ve are the leader in quality, creative solutions to the complex technology problems that entrepreneurs and small business owners face today. We make it our business to know their problems and to find a way to solve them. We deliver on our promises and we’re committed to staying the best in the industry.

Brand C says: We are a network of deep and strategic partnerships with employees, vendors, partners, and small businesses leaders who work together to build products and work environments that inspire and generate creativity, competence, performance, and trust and to create jobs and solutions that build the economy now and for future generations.

Brand C is the description that connects the company to every person on the planet.

How Does Vision Attract Community?

The vision is more than the mission. It’s the destination drawn clearly so that every member of the new community can see it, understand it, speak about it with passion, and believe that it will happen. The vision is not a product devised and made by a crowd or a committee. It’s a leadership decision — the original strategy expanded with thought and design to elevate it to a higher calling.

The vision is the cause that attracts and unites the people of the community. It why they invest tireless hours and best efforts — because they are building …

something that makes an important difference;
something that no other company is building;
something that needs every individual’s unique contribution
something that no one individual could build alone.

The vision isn’t a dream. It’s a work in progress … a group aspiration in the true sense of it’s definition, breathing toward. The vision gives the community a why for why they are investing the time of their lives each day into this work. The vision is more than economic, more than profession, it is a commitment to accomplish something meaningful in the world.

7 Steps to Communicating a Vision that Grabs Folks by the Soul

If you’re looking to build a thriving business, start with a long-term, loyal internal community of employees. They will build and protect a healthy innovative culture, promote the values of the business, stay with the company, develop expertise with coworkers, and live to serve customers. What better way to build a brand than to agree upon the values that you stand for and create an environment that nurtures brand ambassadors?

It takes the right vision to attract the right people to that kind of community culture. When we meet the best people, we have to tell them about that vision, or how will they see it? Here are 7 steps to articulating a clear vision.

1. Think contribution. Think partnerships. Re-imagine your team or your business at this highest, most useful place in the world — financially, professionally, and philosophically. Talk through what you see with people you trust until you have a image, a vision, of what that business offers to employees, partners, vendors, and customers.
  We’re inviting the highest quality people who have a stake in teaching and learning technology to join together in building products, services, and opportunities that show other people how business can work better for customers.
2. Think ideal membership. Make the vision irresistible: smart, feelingful, and life-changing on a world-scale.
  We’re only interested in the best minds, best designs, and the best problem solvers with the highest values. We’re going to align our goals and build stable, successful, ethical business models that freely give support to fledgling business in depressed areas to create an economy that helps us all grow.
3. Think contributions and returns. Find the words to describe it simply in ways that others can see the value of what you’re going for.
  We’re building the business that listens, learns, contributes, and invests in the people who help it thrive — it will be the business that people want to work with and for — the sort where every person makes a difference.
4. Think recruitment. Be able to speak to the benefits of being a part.
  One benefit is that under-achievers and those who will sacrifice anything to raise the bottom line won’t want to work here.
5. Think champions and heroes. Invite the people who see the vision to be involved in highly visible ways. Talk about what they’re doing encourage them to talk too.

The communications team has started a newletter for partners and vendors working with inner city high school enterpreneurs. Let us know if you want to volunteer.

Think honest communication. Talk publicly to everyone in as many ways as you can — live your message.
I’ll be listening to the folks who have experience where I don’t. I’ll be looking to learn from you how to do this better. That includes everyone I know.
Think evangelism and growth. Invite people to pass on the vision and the invitation.
Who else belongs here? Tell us.

It’s not the how or what of work that builds community. It’s the why. The underlying vision that unites us toward building something that we can’t build alone. A community needs leadership to set and invest that vision and so that they can feel smart, safe, and powerful in investing too.

Once the community sees the vision and realizes that leadership commitment. People who share those values will pick up the message, the tools, and the passion to contribute to the cause. The culture will grow from their actions.

Humans are wired to be deeply inspired by causes greater than ourselves. To inspire a community to invest its soul, we have to show them why we’re willing to invest our own.

Have you really communicated your vision? Are there ways you might make it clearer to the people who can help it thrive?

Related
To follow the entire series: Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense

September 7, 2010 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: A Foundation of Solid Thinking

A Good Business Values Customers; A Great Business Values Every Person Who Helps the Business Thrive

I once had the best job of a life-time, working for the best boss I could have ordered up in my wildest dreams. Our relationship brought out the best in each of us and that ethic was true throughout the entire company. The operation of that business was smooth, reliable, and totally centered on customers and how to serve them. In an industry that was experiencing 2-3% growth, we were doing 10 to 20 times that. Conversations were honest and thinking was naturally strategic.

We were a community on a quest.
We loved what we did and we were outstanding at doing it.

Love. Not like, enjoy, or get kick out of, but have a passion for, live for, hold in highest esteem.

Every company that wants to grow should have some of that.

Here’s how to explain the value of internal community to leadership in ways that shout ROI and make business sense.

Why a Loyal Internal Community Is Crucial to Every 21st Century Business

People perform amazing feats when they’ve got a quest, a cause, and a purpose. We rise to our better selves when we become part of a community dedicated to building something that no one of us could possibly build alone.

Why?

It’s how we’re wired as humans. We’re better when we’re inspired by deep feeling. We bring our best to whatever challenge we face. Any less is inauthentic, second-best, didn’t try, plan b, ho-hum, phone it in, stand in right field and let that pop-fly pass us by instead of saving the game . . . we might as well be out!

There’s a reason that so many folks — online, in IT, in academia, in every career — say the same thing. . . . find your passion, do what you love.

The people who understand passion and work are not promoting self-indulgence. When people do what they love they perform better, faster, and with more skill. When a community gathers around a common quest, they raise the performance bar even higher by supporting each other.

What Makes an Internal Community So Important Now?

Big brands and small businesses have been talking about building customer communities for a few years. Yet, it’s been proven that the way we treat our employees is the way they treat our customers. So, it only follows that the strongest community starts inside the business.

The high touch and high concept of community draws a company together around a single goal. What could attract and support brand evangelists better than that?

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink points out that “high concept” and “high touch” values (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning) are as important to business success in the 21st Century as linear thinking, detailed analysis, and spreadsheets.

In this global economy, conversation and relationships matter as much as schedule and budget do.

In plain and simple words, thinking and doing what everyone always has thought and done no longer work.

It’s time align our goals and values and invest in what we do together. That’s the only way to attract the best people — employees, partners, vendors, and customers. That’s the only way to be the best.

Rather than checking our personalities at the door, why not check out what a loyal internal community can do for a business that wants to build a brand that wins the loyalty of life-long customers and fans.

7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense

A community challenges us to bring our best to a situation. We invest in the community and they invest in us. And in that manner, we share our goals to build something that becomes a common cause. When we bring all of who we are, full engagement of head and heart, 7 deeper values and higher outcomes show up in our work.

1. Complete presence — focus. We’re all there — the all thinking business is no longer sufficient. The business is more well-rounded and friendly to the people who help it thrive. Computers can’t smile. Computers can’t listen to the spaces between words. People conceive, design, build, buy and talk what we sell.

2. Peak performance — productivity. A computer might work every minute achieving great computation effort, but it will only be as good as the people who program it and it will never over-achieve its programming. People invest more, do more, go further for the work we love. People connect to other people who are doing that.

3. Tolerance — perseverance. We have more patience, time, and energy for problem solving when we directly reap the benefits. Peter Drucker proved that money is a disincentive … it has the most effect when it’s not there or too small. What leads folks to achieve greatness is the payoffs that a loyal community offers: support, feedback, acknowledgment, sense of purpose.

4. Value and Appeal — compelling story. To compete a product or service has to be useful and beautiful. Simple and elegant, for to the adult and the kid in each one of us. Bringing logic and emotion to a business outdistances the world view of logic alone. Competence and great execution are expected. A loyal community builds in added value in how they tell the story, how they treat the product and the customers who buy it, and how they talk about the company as a value in their lives. What’s more appealing than working with someone who’s not only good but also loves his or her job?

5. Total Differentiation — identity. An internal community develops it’s own culture and identity. The uniqueness of that common bound shines through in concept and execution. The respect of a loyal community shows in everything it does. It becomes it’s own barrier to entry. The competition can’t knock that off.

6. Fully Invested and Worth Investing In — market value. Rolling all of the above values into one, nothing beats the 360 degree investment of brains, money, and dreams all in the same direction. Any financial firm worth its salt looks for that combination when funding a small business.

7. Sense of Worth — authority. Community builds authority. We value what we earn and what we love. That value telegraphs itself. It’s contagious. Customers, vendors, and partners pick it up as well.

Can you see why it’s only sense that a strong business would move to build the most supported internal community on the planet? A fiercely loyal internal community is a secret weapon that stands on its own.

Have you ever worked for or interacted with a business that was a community of loyal fans? What was your experience of that?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

@StevePlunkett, Saying Thank You for ReTweets, and Signal v Noise

September 1, 2010 by Liz

Small Observations

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On Friday, @StevePlunkett and I started a small column on this blog called “Steve’s Shorts.” It grew out of my admiration for Steve’s view of the social web and an idea that small observations can be powerful and worth talking about.

That first post had an interesting result. Apparently a behavior on Twitter can go unnoticed, a statement said in 140 characters on Twitter can float by without response, but point out that behavior or that comment and put it on blog and suddenly it has a new importance. In this case, some of that response seems made without consideration to the bigger picture or the reputation and generosity of the person who offered the original comment.

Not a good situation. I am compelled to offer my own thoughts …

What @StevePlunkett said

It started with a short statement in which Steve explained why he doesn’t thank people for ReTweets …

When people say âThanks for the RT,â, I always shoot back, âThanks for the good infoâ.. I read it, I may have even blogged it. It was good info, so I passed it along, you donât need to thank me for sharing and trusting your credibility. Believing in you enough to click on a link? That you earned anyways via engagement and professionalism. But you are welcome, again, thanks for the info. When you retweet me, you are saying âThanks for the infoâ.

Apparently several people were upset by that statement. You’ll note the comment in which he notes that. In that same comment he puts forth an explanation that parallels my own thinking on the subject of saying thanks to every ReTweet.

I ReTweet and pass on links a lot. I like to feature other folks’s content. I see it as a win for everyone. The practice of finding great content to share keeps me reading and learning. The act of passing it on gives the writer one more reason to keep writing and gives those readers who value what I value more to think about and use in the businesses they’re building.

In my mind, ReTweeting great content serves much the same purpose as researching and writing great content for my blog – it offers value to the people I love … as in @SteveFarber ‘s famous mantra “Do what you love in service to the people who love what you do.”

… and that’s where the response to Steve Plunkett’s statement gets me confused.

Saying Thank You for ReTweets and Signal v Noise

When I pass on a link to someone else’s work, I don’t expect a thank you. When I refer a friend for work offline, I don’t expect a thank you then either. Getting that person’s attention wasn’t what motivates me, sharing great people and their great work is. The occasional thank you from someone I’ve not met is nice because it starts a new relationship, but in general I prefer not get a thank you from folks I already know. Here’s why.

I would hope my friends value me for more than my small ability to ReTweet their work.
I don’t want my ReTweets to become a kind of currency that becomes a trade of Tweet for a Thank You.
I am savvy enough to know that a small group of folks will say Thank you simply to get their name in another person’s Twitter stream.
I’m sensitive to the content that my Tweet stream carries and what value does a long list of thank yous offer to the folks who follow me? A long list of thanks yous that aren’t directed to you are really just noise not signal it seems to me.
I find other ways to show my appreciation for ReTweets. One is to visit that person’s Tweet stream to read what they’ve written lately in hopes of finding more great content to share.

I value reciprocity as much as anyone, but I don’t live for it. I don’t ever want to be the person who counts the times my actions and expects a 1:1 ratio in a return response … I see that as a time sink and something that has the potential to breed a certain sort of self-ish-ness. I can use the time I might have used to type multiple thank you to build things that say “thank you” in bigger ways and that philosophy allows me to manage my own behavior not chase or worry about whether folks are being reciprocal.

So don’t worry about thanking me for every ReTweet I make. Take that time to do more great things for all of us and know that I’m doing my best to live gratitude so that the word, “thank you” never become a currency or noise that we ignore.

I value and respect your opinion on this. It doesn’t have to be the same as my own. But if you understand my intend, then you’ll know that value for you is always strong.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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The 10 Point Plan to Build an Internal Community of Brand Loyal Fans

August 31, 2010 by Liz

(Updated in 2020)

Community Starts at Home

During my years in publishing, I was a serial community builder. It seems that every job I took included “rebuild the department, refocus the vision” in the role. I’m fairly certain that those two challenges are what attracted me.

Even as a teenager, explaining the quest, translating the context, and helping folks bring their best to what they’re doing has been my natural response. I’ve always done that. Not that I’ve always done it well. Still the failures and successes of the past have taught me what moves people to trust in a vision and to join in to build something they couldn’t build alone.

So I was the one they hired

to rebuild the company and the strategy for growth six months after the company had laid off 40% of the previous employees.
to re-establish the department identity when it had grown too quickly and lost its role within the organizational process.
to build a cross functional team that could function with professional ease and confidence from a crew of new hires when the start up started growing.
to establish a winning brand and a high performance product / marketing team from a single product offer and a squad of contract workers
to lead an ad hoc SWAT team of 60 professionals to reconceive and bring to market a product in crisis (in 1/6 the time originally budgeted for development.)

Every one of those jobs was the best job of my life while I was doing it, because we built teams that made outstanding things happen. Who doesn’t want to work with people who are “in with both feet,” working at their best level, and having fun?

The 10-Point Plan to Build an Internal Community of Brand Loyal Fans

Now I’m working with two new clients that very topic close to my heart and my business. Both are asking how they might get their teams to “raise a barn” rather than “build a coliseum.” Both companies want a to build an internal community of brand evangelists the expands from team to team, from department to department that will spread from inside to outside their company’s “walls.”

We’re going to use traditional interviews, a social tool called a “histogram,” and tested, collaborative instructional design to build an internal community of brand loyal fans. Here’s a 10-Point Plan to build an internal community of brand loyal fans. It’s exciting to offer a program and a process that grew out of the of the working model we use every year at SOBCon.

Articulate a clearly defined vision.
Negotiate a leadership commitment to live that vision.
Assess and benchmark the current status.
Identify and enlist a core team of champions to lead the quest.
Build a brand values baseline by gathering the values that drive the brand.
Challenge the brand teams to condense and clarify the brand values baseline by talking them through with stakeholder and bring back less than 7 words.
Align your brand values with your brand value proposition
Engage the brand teams in identifying and collecting cultural stories, signs, and rituals that exemplify the values of the brand values baseline.
Move the process outward training teams in — a leadership team that focuses on departmental quality and performance and communications through persuasion.
Exhibit leadership commitment by investing regular time and resources to ongoing collaborative brand values conversations to build decision models, communication models, and performance / hiring standards that align with the brand values baseline.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about each step in the process. We will explore what each step is; why it’s important; how to put it into action; and how to know whether it’s working in the way you intended. Then we’ll talk about how to connect that internal community to the community of customers, partners, and vendors who help your business grow from outside.

Any questions?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

How to Power Up Your Power Network and Bring It Closer to You

August 10, 2010 by Liz

It’s Always Been About Showing Up

It’s fun to connect with people who do the same things we do. It’s also great business. But a quick hello and a conversation about what we do doesn’t make a relationship. If we don’t let our new friends know where serious about a relationship things often stop at that point.

Suddenly we can find ourselves with idea, an adventure, or trip somewhere that would be a perfect fit for someone we’ve met but hardly know. We might have a product that would be a perfect fit for their network, but we’ve never gone past that first hello. We’d love to share the benefits with someone that we’ve met, but we’re not so comfortable that we’re not stepping over the line by even suggesting that.

Here are five highly effective ways to power up your power network and bring the people in your network closer to you.

Be a good surprise. Keep a list of people who have referred you, recommended you, tweeted or retweeted your work, or done something large or small to help you. Write an unexpected email, direct message, handwritten note to one person on that list to say you appreciate the contribution that person has made in your life.
Be a new encounter of the very best kind. As we travel Twitter and get introduced at meetings, we encounter more than a few people who have skills or interests that compliment are might add value to what we do. Once a week, make an appointment to talk on the phone with one or two people from that group. Ask about their goals for the next two quarters. Explore how you might align their goals with yours.
Be a sincere fan. Email someone you respect and admire, but don’t know well. Write the email solely for the purpose of explaining the way that person has added value to your life.
Be on a quest. Make it a quest to request help from someone you’ve never worked with. Every week, decide on one thing you probably would do better if you brought in some other brain, hands, or eyes. You’ll be surprised what you learn simply by deciding on what to request and then by listening to the answers.
Be an idea explorer. Use a search engine, Wikipedia, books, magazines, and a rare group of friends to seek out new ideas on a subject your network cares about. Then share them generously online, on the phone, and in person whenever you interact.

Make time for all five of these every week and your network will explode with true connection — people you know, people who know you, and who know what you do. Every burst of energy in that direction with be a reminder that the people you’ve connected with are more than contact information to you.

How do you keep the power in your power network?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Worse than Pick Your Brainers: Meet the Network Rustling Cowboy

August 6, 2010 by Liz

Recently two folks I admire — Jason Falls and Gini Dietrich — have written some great thoughts on people who over stress a professional relationship by asking if they might “pick your brain.” If you’re a service professional — doctor, lawyer, social media practitioner — and you’re having this problem, follow those links; read the posts and the comments that they carry.

It’s those two posts that inspired this one.

Have a seat by the campfire and I’ll tell you a story of the cowboys who make the “pick your brain” folks look almost harmless — as if they’re merely apprentices to the people who write the bad PR bitches that keep showing up in our email inboxes. After all, so many of those “pick your brain” folks don’t realize they’re looking to learn at the expense of another.

The cowboys I’m thinking of are practiced at what they do.

Whoa Cowboy! We See You Trying to Rustle Our Netwworks?

Early this year, a cowboy rode into town. he took out his LinkedIn account, his email lists, and his telephone. He contacted people he never met immediately asking … asking everyone the same set of questions in about the same way and causing the same uncomfortable feeling in the people he contacted.

Cowboy’s First Phone Call

So the cowboy was efficient. He would bother to show much interest in the people he called and in fact, never started by asking them to participate in the event he was planning. When he called me, I let him talk for quite, asking questions about his event and how it worked and what he was looking for …

This is what the cowboy wanted from me.

Connections to my network to get speakers for his event.
Information on how to market to this city.
Access to my list even though he’d never met me.
Promotional help even though he made no offer of value in return.

I listened for about a half hour to be sure that he didn’t know a thing about me … other than I had a network in Chicago that might be worth tapping into.

I listened long enough to be sure that he never offered anything in return for what he was asking. Then I told him that I thought it was curious that he would be asking for my advice on his event and for access my network, but not being the least interested in who we are or how to return the value.

I called of few of my friends around the city and their stories were even more blatant than my own. I figure that might be because my friends are much nicer in situations like this than I am.

This cowboy wanted to rustle my network and we weren’t supposed to notice?

To Network Rustlers Everywhere

So, to cowboys out there everywhere, I’d like to say something clearly.

Take this word from me …

The people in my network are people not cattle.
I value them. I trust them.
I hold their trust as priceless.
I don’t and won’t ever sell them or their time for your money or your promise of attention.
I might occasionally be stupid enough give away my expertise,
but don’t try stealing my friends’ time or expertise

I’ll call you on it.
If you’re using me to get to them, I know you’ll just use them too.

Compared to their trust, whatever you need is irrelevant.

So get along now little doggie. We don’t cotton to folks who rustle networks around here. Build your own network. Do your own homework. Make your own relationships in ways that build community.

I had such fun writing this.

Have you had experience with network rustling cowboys?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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