A few of years ago The Community Roundtable debuted our Community Maturity Model (CMM) in the hopes that it would help members of TheCR Network, our advisory clients and, well, everyone advance the business of their communities. It has been wonderfully received over the years, but we often get asked for more information. What do companies look like in certain maturity stages? What have they done to get where they are. What was their road map? What are the milestones of maturity?
We have compiled a trove of information in our State of Community Management reports and in TheCR Network but as the saying goes “a picture is worth 1,000 words” so we have started to develop graphic case studies to depict how this happens at different organizations. We will be sharing a few of these in the coming weeks. This one shows one of our TheCR Network member companies, CSC and their journey in social business and community management from 2008 to today.
CSC’s journey is a great example of an organization in CMM Stage 3 and as their journey illustrates, it takes a combination of tools, leadership, culture, strategy and other competencies to succeed. Communities are multifaceted and so should be your adoption plan. A few things they did which we think were particularly smart were to:
- Find a great leader for an enterprise-wide approach in Claire Flanagan
- Develop an advocacy network early on
- Work with compliance groups from the start
- Find senior executives willing to share openly early on
In general, CMM Stage 3 is typified by meaningful business outcomes but they are often still separate from core business operations and measurement. There is also typically a network of advocates that support and help with community management but that can result in formal community management being de-prioritized – dangerous because the growing power in the community needs to be balanced with organizational goals.
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