I was obviously an early believe in the power of online communities and networks to generate value for organizations and over the years I have been gratified to see many of my beliefs born out through experience and data. One of the reasons that I always believed communities were so powerful was that they expose tacit knowledge, thus speeding time to innovation. Communities do that and so much more. But I was missing a key element of why communities matter so much until I recently read The Power of Habit and the three requirements for sustained behavior change:
- Understanding the mechanics of change (how to do something differently)
- Belief that change is possible
- A community that reinforces the change when you are stressed
It gave me new insight and appreciation to why what we are building at The Community Roundtable is so critical for community and social business leaders. One of the things that is true of most community and social business professionals is that they have their feet in two worlds – they go to their office, interact with their colleagues and are immersed in their company’s culture. But they are also people immersed in the online social environment and hyper-connected to a world outside of their organization in a way few others (if any) are. They are constantly pulled by the past and the future simultaneously.
And that is hard, sometimes almost untenable.
The “easy” part is articulating how things might change – how people might communicate in networked environments vs. through email and thus be discoverable or how they might write their expertise down in a blog so everyone can see it and those most affected by it can raise their hand instead of being hunted down.
The harder part is helping people build up the faith that work can, in fact, be better and communities can help by letting people expose what they know and be rewarded for it directly; by compounding their knowledge vs. fracturing it; and by removing unnecessary hierarchical barriers.
The hardest part still is when you get knocked down, dismissed or ignored repeatedly. As one of the few within your organization to really get the profound impact of digital communications you are isolated and because of that, it is often easier to believe you are crazy than that everyone else is. If you hope to succeed, you must find a community of like minded peers to reenforce the value of your work and its validity. It doesn’t have to be TheCR Network, although I personally think that would be a good choice, but it is critical that you have a support structure outside of your organization if you are to be any good at helping your organization do things differently. Change will almost surely not come from within.
As TheCR Network has grown, we have also been able to offer more value to our members. Along with weekly programming, we also offer:
- Speaking opportunities
- Event passes
- Early access to industry research
- Opportunities to advise and collaborate with TheCR on industry research
- Access to some of the smartest peers in the industry
If you (and your boss) are serious about the success of your community initiative or serious about growing your own career in the community or social business space, joining TheCR Network is a no-brainer for $995/year.
