Launching Your Community in 6 Steps
Weaving diverse employee voices into a caring, vibrant, and productive community is highly sought after by organizational leaders today.
Once you have settled in your mind why you want to launch a community, building one that endures is attainable. Just as there is no community of one, you will need help, support, and a bigger vision. Becoming a community advocate is foundational to becoming a leader worth following. Community builders are certain to be in high demand in the future.
What is the trade-off?
Letting go of the desire to take credit, your people and cause become the focus, allowing the change you seek to make flow in. First in the hearts of the people being served, then outwardly into the surrounding environment. When all is said and done, the people will say they did it themselves. And they would be right. If you need more motivation on why to build a community read my article listing 35 reasons to build one.
Developing and nurturing a community aligned to company values strengthens its culture. We hear employees deeply desire to work for companies with a purpose that connects with their own values. Inspiring leadership messages, community outreach projects, and formal programs alone are not enough.
Formal leaders can’t do this work alone. They need the help of every employee, especially those with skills to connect people. Leaders should consider asking for help too. They just might receive it.
It may come in ways they don’t expect because volunteers know best how to connect with their friends and colleagues. Employees desire a greater say in how they make a difference and see their work contributing to a bigger plan.
Some may want to self-organize in ways formal channels are not meant for. Connection is strongest when employees choose for themselves how to engage. This is because employees trust who they trust, and trust is the foundation for connection.
Trust is the foundation for connection.
When we trust and empower employees to interact, collaborate, and solve problems we produce a stronger community. In addition, as relationships strengthen, a healthier work environment emerges. This is what the organization strives to achieve, but often fails to hit the mark.
How do we proceed?
The skill and commitment in furthering the organization’s principles while providing new opportunities for employees to use their unique giftings is both an art and a process. And both can be learned.
Seeing the change you seek to make come to life, may become one of the most worthwhile endeavors you ever undertake.
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Step 1: Announce a community formation exploration initiative
Begin by identifying a respected, tenured, community-minded senior leader. Tell them your ideas and vision of how a community can help solve an important problem for them and their peers. When you find the leader agreeing to take the risk, ask them to send a communication to employees. The communication will announce a potential launch of a volunteer-led and leader-sponsored community.
In the communication (offer to write the first draft), the leader will explicitly point interested employees to you. Doing so establishes your credibility early in the formal structure. It will also show your peers you have approval and responsibility for the success of the initiative.
Next Action: Once you have 10–20 individuals expressing interest, move to step 2.
Alternate Action: If you don’t receive enough interest from the message sent by the leader, don’t push it. There could be several factors working against the idea right now.
Step 2: Construct a community formation team
Send personal notes (e-mail or other) to each individual that indicated the desire to help. This is extremely important. So important that if possible, meet with each one personally before gathering the group together. Doing so will provide you with important insight into where to focus the formation team first. Each individual will come with a personal agenda. Expect it. Your job is to help see how each person can gain something as they contribute something.
What to expect?
If you have 40 people indicating interest, about half will show up, leaving 20. Half of those will commit to doing the work necessary to build the initial community structure.
Likely, this will be an eye-opening experience for you. Employees you had not known will become key contributors while organizational stars will take a pass or maybe stick with you for a little while. That is, at least until the real work begins and they wander off.
Seriously, this is what you want. Having the less-dedicated, select-out makes your work later easier and filled with less drama.
The discovery of your eventual core formation team members will be encouraging in the end because you will see you are no longer alone.
Next Action: Get to know each member of your potential formation team well. Learn what motivates them and the underlying reason why they want to help. If you are convinced you secured the group you need to start, proceed to step 3.
Alternative Action: If you don’t find the depth of commitment you’re looking for; stop. This work is difficult enough with a solid team you trust backing you. Proceeding without it could jeopardize your career. Instead, report back to your sponsor explaining the timing is not right for the initiative. Don’t blame anyone, just accept the current conditions, for now.
Step 3: Select the right leader partner
The senior leader may not have time to work with your formation team directly. If this occurs, use it to your advantage and select your own leader-partner.
You will need one for many reasons. The primary reason is the formation team requires formal authority to operate. Plus, an influential champion at the leadership level will bring additional support from their peers.
Are you seeing how this works?
As you build your team, the leader-partner builds their influence with their peers. They can support community initiatives in ways you cannot. They will know how to persuade at the leadership level.
Over time, the relationship with your leader-partner should feel natural. Each encounter becomes a continuation of a longer conversation. Until you find the right one, expect limited results.
Next Action: After securing a suitable leader-partner move to step 4.
Alternate Action: You can proceed without a leader-partner. Make this a temporary condition. It might be better to wait for the right one because you may only get one chance to advance your community concept. Choose one that is not aligned with your vision and you will likely fail to launch.
Step 4: Outline the community purpose and focus
Pay attention to ensure your community vision aligns with the organization's mission. While you and your formation team may outline it, your peers in the community must buy in. Once they do, have your leader-parter help make important revisions to align with the formal organization. In other words, your vision must ‘fit’ the institution. Then, you will be ready to present your vision to other former leaders and educate them on how you intend to proceed and how they can help.
Next Action: Explore what the community will be for and who you intend to serve. Document it, evangelize and gain buy-in from your peers and formal leadership.
Alternate Action: Without clarity and agreement on the vision, you will have nothing to launch. If you need inspiration and specific steps articulating a vision, I recommend Michael Hyatt’s book, The Vision Driven Leader. He provides a specific path to get your team across the finish line.
Step 5: Perform pre-launch activities
Time to build a plan. Your core team needs to lead most of this to ensure shared ownership and accountability. When they do, you can give them all the credit they deserve and feel great about it.
Your plan will include several parts depending on the size and scope of your community. I’ve listed several key areas and deliverables below.
Communication Plan: Document a sequential set of messages to be sent to your potential community members. You may need specific messages for various groups too. Consider those up, down, and across the organization. Leverage all informal and formal channels to get your message out. Probably a 4–6 week plan can work.
Merchandise and Promotions: Create a logo that is developed by your creative people and adopted by your core team. If your budget allows, put it on merchandise and add it to posters promoting your launch.
Leadership Involvement: Create greater awareness of the upcoming launch by integrating your communication plan into institutional leadership messages. Have them mention the community to their teams. You want them to approve and support without getting too involved and pushing out the organic nature of the group. Consider having your leader-partner and sponsor send formal messages announcing the launch that shows leadership support. It is a fine line because you don’t want the message to come across as a directive.
Volunteer Excitement: Your core team should use every opportunity to talk about the community being built and how they can’t do it alone. They should encourage their friends and peers to come and check it out and possibly help if they can. I promise you, if you aren’t excited about the launch, no one else will be.
Marketing: Marketing at its core is building relationships with those you want to serve. Be thoughtful and purposeful with each message leading up to the launch. Focus on the people and listen, learn, and adapt.
The Event: You decide what the event will be along with your core team. A speaker, interactive activities, and team competitions. Whatever it is, be sure to get the event logistics right. The time, the place, and the setup should fit the type of community you are building. If possible, have a person on the formation team in charge of this area or get help from an event coordinator. They can ensure everything is well organized and executed seamlessly. Recruit other welcoming employees to help ensure every person attending feels special. Food is always good too along with any merchandise giveaways or prizes.
Call To Action: Every person that attends should be invited to become a future participant or contributor. Enrollment in your community is the goal. You may only get one chance. If they liked what they saw, invite them to help make it better.
Follow-up: Don’t let your future volunteer leaders fall away by never cultivating the relationship. Follow up with each one that expressed an interest and commit to helping them find a place where they fit. While it might not be immediately, some seeds take longer to germinate. Remember that change comes with one conversation at a time.
Next Action: Spend the right amount of time developing the plan. Give responsibilities to every core member and involve the leader-partner to review along the way. Before execution, share key aspects with the sponsor and ask if you have missed anything. Have a backup date and review contingencies should an emergency arise and the launch gets postponed as part of your plan. If you are on track, continue to step 6
Alternate Action: Should your plan encounter material problems or a material flaw is discovered, take a pause. Identify and consider carefully your options, then bring them to your leader-partner. Make the decision and take responsibility for whether to delay or move forward.
Step 6: Launch the community
Time to celebrate. All your work is about to pay off in the official community launch. Your volunteer leaders shine and leadership gets to come and show their support. Whatever the event that draws employees it should be focused on enrollment. Identifying the individuals that will benefit and those that want to contribute.
If you have the budget, hire a photographer or a cinematographer that have the eye and focus on capturing the right moments. Record testimonials, presentations, fun, activities, speakers, leaders, and employees interacting. Seeing the organic interactions later will keep the spirit of the launch alive long after the event and can be leveraged to build momentum
Seeing real people on media inspire current and future employees to contribute.
You did it!
Now get your team together for a celebration. Your launch event will mark the beginning of something special and is worth celebrating. Afterward, the new work starts to keep and build momentum. Each of your volunteer leaders will be responsible for important aspects of the community.
As you produce it, continue to regularly share fresh promotional material and branded merchandise. Over time you will find your brand is contributing to the organization’s culture more visibly. Employees won’t wear, carry, or use merchandise for a brand they don’t trust. When they do it demonstrates a connection with what you and your team have built.
Next Action:
Trust your team as they have trusted you. Establish a cadence of meaningful activities with your employees. Members of your formation team will become the next generation of community leaders. Areas of community management, communications, and programming all require focus. Consistency and keeping commitments consistent with the vision will strengthen the brand.
Alternate Action:
It is possible that your launch didn’t go as planned or the results are not what is needed to proceed. If that is the case, you may have a smaller, more intimate group of friends to collaborate with and develop some smaller-scale initiatives. Deeper relationships and shared commitment to what matters most is the win.
Conclusion
Launching a vibrant volunteer community is simple to understand. The work is in finding committed employees and leaders to make it happen. It also requires you to become a servant leader. This means what you want becomes secondary to the needs of those you serve.
When you are well-equipped, motivated, and committed you are on your way to deeper self-discovery. Your efforts have a high probability of enhancing the value of your organization her employees.