To say you've created a community is like saying you've created a tree.
I'm seriously troubled by Guy Kawasaki's claim that organizations should "create" community. I'm also troubled by Guy's assertion that organizations should "task" someone with "building" community. It's impossible to create community, and a single person certainly can't build it.
I believe a better choice of terms would be "cultivate." I realize that this particular post Guy wrote is a work in progress, so I hope he'll take this suggestion to heart: I would assert that the only thing organizations can do to "create" community is provide an environment suitable for community to self-organize. Cultivating community is like growing a tree. I can't make the tree grow, I can only put a seed in the soil and provide the conditions it needs to grow: Water it, keep it warm and give it sunlight.
For point #9, related to my thoughts above, I would offer this: "Get out of the way." Meaning that once you've set the conditions necessary for community to self organize, take a step back and let it grow by itself. This is paradoxical to -- but not incompatible with -- the fact that the community needs a "champion."
Yes, the community needs at least one person to tend the grounds, but the community will suffer if s/he participates too much in the community. Check in on the community frequently -- at least every other day -- but fight the urge to interject on every post, comment, or what-have-you. The best contributors to the community are the people who have chosen to join it, not those who provided the conditions necessary for community to evolve.
The best point in Guy's post is #2: Identify the thunderlizards. I blogged about this a few weeks ago, and I still think that tapping into existing communities is a far better option than trying to "create" your own.
Tagged: Association Management; CAE; Certified Association Executive; communities; community; Guy Kawasaki
February 17, 2006
You can't "create" community!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I agree with most of your points, Ben, but not your title premise. Associations have an obligation to build communities, not just cultivate them. That doesn't mean "build them and they will come." We both know that they need to grow organically.
Just as a developer builds a new community and markets it to prospective owners/members, associations need to build and market new communities. The builder does not control the final nature of that community. Those that buy the houses will build a close relationships or not. But the builder still plays an important role. It's not enough to just build the houses. We need to organnize communities in ways that will appeal to our constituents and then nuture them. If you don't provide appropriate leadership to "prime the pump" many opportunites for great communities will be missed.
I have certainly seen robust communities that grew spontaneously. But I have seen others that floundered for a long time until the association stimulated conversations that generated sufficient interest to become self-sustaining.
Communities are self-forming: It's an opt-in list. In your analogy, the planner hasn't built community, s/he has created an environment for a community to organize. In exactly the same way, organizations can only create the conditions necessary for community to evolve. I hold to my assertion that communities can't be created, so we will have to agree to disagree. When someone says they (or their company) built a community, it suggests to me that they have little understanding of how communities form. By realizing that communities form from the bottom up, associations stand a much better chance of creating the necessary conditions for community to evolve.
Wow, great comment, Jay. I agree with you 100%. We have to be looking out for communities that are organizing and find ways to participate.
Post a Comment