The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

The End of DIY Community Management and the Rise of the Community Executive

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By Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable.

The discipline of community management is growing up. For us at The Community Roundtable it’s easy to see as the conversations have shifted from how we best execute on day-to-day community challenges to how do we transfer that knowledge and how do we integrate community processes into core business processes. But it’s also changing the role of the community manager – we see responsibilities of members of TheCR Network shifting to include more:

  • Internal consulting
  • Training/coaching
  • Building governance for other community managers
  • Program management

From my perspective this is a great thing – it means community management is extending to everyone in an organization and becoming they new approach to management. But it is also disruptive, because not all community managers understand this shift and many don’t (yet) have the skills to execute effectively on these new responsibilities. Add to this, for community managers who have been in the role for a while, they likely got started in a context where there were no formal resources or services available to them and they had to figure everything out on their own. They experience a tension between wanting to grow in the field and get more authority within their organization and still preferring to do everything themselves.

This struggle between wanting to do everything yourself and needing to scale is not uncommon – most people experience this in some form or another as they gain responsibility within their field. In order to become a director or VP, it is an absolute necessity to stop doing everything and start assembling a team of resources, both internal and external, to which you can delegate the doing. Once you do that, your responsibility is to help create a shared sense of purpose, the operations to support your point of view consistently and to mentor those who are on the front lines. Practically, that means you need:

  • Documented standards and playbooks
  • Training/Onboarding solutions that frame the challenge
  • A common way to assess and track performance, at various levels
  • Common tools and resources available to your whole team
  • External resources that have more cost-effective expertise or scale, to complement internal resources

In many ways, these new responsibilities fundamentally shift the day-to-day work of community management as it becomes more about assembling the right resources, managing budgets and hiring than planning community programs or moderating discussions. Not everyone wants to or needs to make the leap but it is helpful to understand the trade-off; if you want strategic authority and responsibility, you need to learn executive skills.

The other challenge for community managers who do make the transition to senior roles have is a hesitation to ask for and spend money – they are so used to operating in a context of scarcity that they assume they have to do everything themselves. We see this all the time with TheCR Network membership fees – when we talk to executives, membership for their community team is an easy and obvious yes but community managers themselves often assume they don’t have budget before they even ask.

Times have changed – community programs are now much more strategic, we have data and case studies that demonstrate community effectiveness and the role of community management is much more well understood. However, community managers still often fail to recognize that:

  • If you have built a reasonable and itemized roadmap that is tied to business outcomes, you are likely get at least some of what you ask for but do not limit your asking to your direct supervisor – you may need to go up a couple of levels.
  • You cannot scale without spending money and it’s not about the money per se, it’s about scaling your impact. If you do not build a roadmap, ask for budget and bring on resources that help you extend your reach, you will hamper your ability to grow your community program and its impact. If the community is effective, that harms the organization as a whole.

Growing up is a bumpy process and different people like different stages of maturity better than others. It’s worth really thinking about which part of the process and work you love – and seeking out opportunities that are weighted toward those responsibilities. The tide of community management is rising and bringing all of us along with it – enjoy the ride!

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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level? 92% of members agree that TheCR Network supports and advances their personal and professional goals. Learn how our research, access to peers and experts, targeted content and exclusive concierge service can help you achieve your goals. 

 

Executive Engagement Matters

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By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

We’ve heard a lot of talk in the last few weeks about the link between executive support and community success  It seems like executive adoption is on the mind of many community practitioners, and with good reason. In our State of Community Management 2014 research we saw that communities with CXO participation are more likely to have a fully-funded community roadmap.  We also found (and were a little surprised) by how much executive participation increased general engagement, particularly when the CIO participated.

In best-in-class communities, 58% include CEO participation vs. average CEO participation rates of 36% – those are the same communities that are most likely to be able to measure value, have a fully-funded roadmap and have advanced community leadership programs. This brings us to Community Fact #03 – executive engagement matters.

SOCM Fact #03

 

You can review more findings related to community maturity in the State of Community Management 2014. This post is the third in a 10-part series highlighting some of the most thought-provoking data from the SOCM 2014 – brought to you via a fun poster – perfect for sharing on Twitter, hanging at your desk, or printing out and waving around your next community strategy meeting.

You can view Fact #01 and Fact #02 or download the whole report today.

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Looking to take your career in community management to the next level? 92% of members agree that TheCR Network supports and advances their personal and professional goals. Learn how our research, access to peers and experts, targeted content and exclusive concierge service can help you achieve your goals.

 

Executive is Just Another Word for Community Manager

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Executives are charged with executing on a set of goals. They all want to accomplish those goals in a way that maximizes their investments. Executives need to marshal a range of constituencies (their team, peers across the organization, customers, partners, experts, consultants) to make things happen. Most executives do this by creating a plan and then packing their calendars with meetings, webinars, conferences – all of which they use to negotiate their position and drive progress. Their email inboxes are also overflowing with similar interactions. Those executives that best maximize their time are the most effective and as a result, executives are always looking to understand with whom their time is best spent.

One-to-one communications – or even small group communications – is limiting when your most precious resource is time.  Regardless of the tools and methods of interaction, executives all have communities they want to influence but until recently they haven’t been able to see the community as a whole and they have dealt with constituencies individually or in small groups. Social software has made communities and ecosystems visible.

By taking a community approach to an operational goal, executives can do the following:

  • Maximize their communications investment by making their positions visible to a community, enabling the community to build momentum around their ideas
  • Quickly understand community influencers, regardless of explicit roles
  • More quickly understand objections to and interest in their approach or project so they can adjust their strategy if needed
  • Reduce the time their teams spend sharing information one by one and eliminating misunderstandings that happen as a result
  • Allow individuals closest to the problem to speak directly to everyone else
  • Discuss opinions, positions, and goals with many more people synchronously than they can using any other approach

At The Community Roundtable, our goal is to help business leaders understand the dynamics of communities, how to communicate in networked environments most effectively, and how to use that knowledge to maximize investments. To us, community management is not just the day to day tasks of interacting with people online but a strategic perspective on efficient operations. Done well, it reduces the cost of sales, increases employee and customer loyalty, reduces internal duplication and waste, and helps to empower employees.

We will be discussing the Future of Communities today at FutureM in Boston and from our perspective, communities are the future of business.  I’m betting most executives do not yet see themselves as community managers – do you think a community approach is prudent for your senior executive team or is that extending the concept of community management too far in your mind?

Photo by Nestlé