What Can Destroy Your Community?
A thriving community is a living, breathing construct. Built by people, for other people — their people. Typically a team of caring individuals form it around an activity or purpose greater than themselves, then work to nurture it with help from its members. As a community builder, you know the work is hard and never-ending. When we get too distracted by the whirlwind (things that matter less), we can forget to inspect the community’s foundation. Neglecting it for too long might mean losing what you have built.
13 corrosive elements that can erode and eventually destroy your community.
1 — Neglecting succession planning.
As stewards of the community, you must embrace and model the community's values. Each community leader should contribute to the shared vision and be equipped to represent the membership well in any domain. The strongest community teams do not have members with the same giftings. Diversity of backgrounds is critical in leading empathetically; continuously working to maintain a deep understanding of those they serve. Leaders should also move around throughout the community to discover how to improve it. Most importantly, a healthy community requires leadership changes at all levels from time to time to avoid knowledge loss. Neglecting succession planning may contribute to the community’s eventual failure should tribal knowledge leave with a key contributor.
2 — Decreasing contributors.
Volunteers who orchestrate shared experiences and content that enable transformation provide the best fuel for the community. For many of our constituents, that is why they spend time in the community and promote it. Your people are looking for answers and your community has provided the mechanism to achieve their goals. If contributor levels are declining there will be a reason. A priority for the community leadership team is to continue to cultivate your contributor base. Make things easy for them to help. Model how to do it. Reward them. Appreciate them; for without them, the community energy will fade along with its overall value.
3 — A shallow community builder pipeline.
Similar to contributors, builders are individuals on your leadership team, committed to the cause, and actively contribute to or are leading an area of the community. You should expect attrition. If you do, you are continuously inviting current contributors into your leadership circle and giving them more responsibility to see how they perform. Some will excel and commit at a higher level. There is not such a thing as too many potential builders in your pipeline. Having more than you need to sustain the community allows people to develop at their own pace. Over time you will have established a robust pipeline leading to a more sustainable community. If you don’t, expect your work to increase each time a builder cycles off of your builder team.
4 — Ambiguous scope.
I hear too frequently we need to focus on picking low-hanging fruit. What happens when our constituents don’t want that kind? The answer is to pick the fruit they have been looking for and can’t find. That is how your community provides them value. Scope your work around the changing needs of your community members. Not future members, but those you have now that are contributors and participants. They know better than you do what will help them. Your job is to build strong feedback loops to evolve your scope based on the changing needs of your constituents.
The best community stewards resist picking low-hanging fruit.
Instead, they pick the right fruit.
5— Unengaged constituents.
Understanding our benchmark for the participation period over the period based on offerings delivered informs community builders of their reach. How the participant composition changes over time can also be important. Should the participant level materially decrease over time, there will be a reason. Immediately get to work to find out why. Without a strong, engaged consumer base, the community you have built will become worth less, fast.
6 — Less valuable content, services, and shared experiences.
Offerings of any kind must be validated by the community constituents before being activated. Avoid offering content your membership doesn’t value. Equally important, everything we produce should be uniquely better than what can be found elsewhere. Anything less makes the community more of a commodity and we will find ourselves in a race to the bottom.
We should avoid offering content and services our membership doesn’t value just because we think they are a good idea.
7 — Weak moderation.
When we leave our members alone they drift. They tend to get lost or discouraged. If you are not talking with them continuously, supporting and guiding them effectively they may search out another community that will. We all need and want help from time to time. As a community leader, be vigilant in this area.
8 — Unremarkable service.
The best communities are purpose-driven and enable member transformation. Community builders are there to serve their constituents period, full stop. You will want to monitor closely how your constituents feel about the service provided. If it is not outstanding, find out why and make changes. Do it fast.
9— Blurred vision.
When your team doesn’t understand the direction you are going, it creates more work for everyone. Spend time talking about the community vision and evolving it with help from your team. A shared vision is required to maintain alignment and commitment.
10 — Waning sponsorship.
If your community serves employees within an organization, weak or non-existent senior leader sponsorship won’t lead to good results. Without strong and active leadership support, we suggest not attempting to build a community at all. If you do pursue it anyway, expect extra work, little recognition, and eventual disappointment for your members. What is needed here is financial support, autonomy, and public support for the community activities and those that lead them.
11 — Weak execution.
Excellence in the execution of each activity and event has to be the standard. Don’t accept the oh-hum approach, it was ‘good enough. No. That is not excellence. What else can you do to ensure the highest standard? Can your team make the event an unforgettable moment? Lax execution practices will be seen and understood as sloppy, unprofessional, and uncaring. If your team can’t do it with excellence, perhaps it’s not worth doing.
A community event that cannot be executed with excellence is probably not worth doing.
12 — Undisciplined planning.
This follows and supports the vision. If your team is not planning, how can you execute well? Won’t each offering become a tactical exercise and feel like swimming upstream? I know it is difficult. Planning and thinking ahead (foresight) will reduce risk and make each offering more effective and give you a better opportunity to exceed the expectations of your constituents.
13 — Neglecting celebration.
Be diligent in recognizing all aspects of the community. The results, the members, the contributions, the leaders, and the organization where it lives. This should happen regularly and at special times. Capture the movements with images and video. If you don’t, people forget. Do it right, you will create a history of your story that can preserve how you have helped the organization and the employees' lives you touched.
Closing remarks
A community lives and breathes. People like you can create opportunities for individuals to connect and lead richer lives. Recognize that there are destroyers of a community positioned to resist you. Be on your guard, take action, and you can preserve your community and see your people thrive.