Originally published at OnCollabNet
Many a project has gone down in flames because they failed to take the time to really think through a communication plan that educated their stakeholders of the organizational value of their project. Communication is one of the most important factors to the success of your community. Without communicating your project or program’s benefits and successes, users and stakeholders alike won’t be aware of new offerings, program progress, or the goals and direction of your project.
“The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them.”
–Sam Walton
The first step in any Communication Plan is identifying your stakeholders. This is a key step that is often overlooked. Many projects and programs focus only on keeping users informed about community news, however its important to look outside your active community members and find the stakeholders that are most important to your continued success. This may include management, partners, or even other projects and programs only tangentially related to yours. Putting together this list comes first and will help you not only identify key players but also will help you discover the correct communication channel to reach them.
I recently stumbled across a great post called Communities Manifesto by Stan Garfield that I highly recommend. In his post Mr. Garfield lays out 10 principals that define community and also has suggestions for helping them grow and mature.
What communities are not …
Two of his principals in particular caught my attention because I’m wrestling with how to explain the basics of community to a company that draws a distinction between where they are now and where they want to go, so these two really jumped out at me.
- Communities are not teams
- Communities are not websites
These two principles nicely articulate what a community is not and sometimes that’s more helpful and descriptive than trying to state exactly what they are. Communities are NOT some nebulous team to manage or a website to maintain, communities are people.
Originally posted by me @ OnCollabNet as Hold On.
The amount of control a community has over process and direction within a project has recently come up in a situation I’ve been involved with and I think it’s a great topic for a post since it strikes at the heart of many company’s trials and tribulations in creating vibrant communities. The real question in these situations is not one of control but of trust. Can you just be along for the ride and let someone else influence your project even if you don’t agree with everything they do?
Many organizations and people find it difficult to let go and allow their communities to shape the overall direction and goals of their projects. They fear that by allowing users to get involved at a deeper level chaos will ensue and they’ll be mired in endless debate over what they perceive as insignificant issues. However, the opposite of control is not chaos, the opposite of control is trust. Trust that you’re not the only one who has good ideas. Trust that even if it doesn’t follow your established processes it might be okay. Trust that you don’t know everything!
I just read Joel Spolsky’s blog entitled “A Little Less Conversation” which discusses something I’ve blogged about in the past here and here, communication overload.
After reading that post I began to consider my own personal experience in meetings over the last dozen or so years and decided to add an addendum to the communication node problem that was so eloquently detailed in the Mythical Man Month by Brooks.
The problem with Brooks’ theory of intercommunication is that it doesn’t take into account the “Number of Managers” in any given meeting. He assumes in his calculation that all nodes in a communication network are equal. This is a mistake. All nodes are not equal, as anyone who has sat through a meeting with more than one manager participating can attest to.
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.”
–Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln may have understood trust and community better than anyone in the history of the United States. He knew that maintaining trust meant having the people’s confidence… and with confidence you can lead. I can’t imagine having to make the kind of decisions that he did, but I can imagine how important maintaining the people’s trust must have been to him through that period in history. Every leader must have his community’s trust to be effective.
Building and maintaining trust stems from two elements, transparency and action, one without the other will not work, but together they have proven to be a winning combination for instilling the necessary confidence to effectively lead.
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