The Community Roundtable

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

(Roundtable) Remote Work isn’t Going Away – Finding Your Business Advantage

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Remote work saved many businesses during the last two years, and employees got used to flexible work schedules. So much so they don’t want to go back to the office. Yet many bosses are trying to order people “back to work”. How do you successfully navigate this new workplace landscape and make it work for your people AND your business? Join Mari Anne Snow to find out.

 

At her Remote Nation Institute, Mari Anne Snow is rewriting the rules of leadership in this new age of remote, distributed, virtual, flexible work. Her experience operationalizing and optimizing flexible work programs is practical, real-world, and results driven. Mari Anne’s latest book, The Remote Work Handbook outlines her practical, pragmatic approach to building and leading successful, resilient teams in today’s new, flexible workplace.

Community Conversations – Episode #82: Chris Catania on Community Leadership

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Chris Catania on Community Leadership

Community Conversations is a long-running podcast highlighting community success stories from a wide variety of online community management professionals.

Episode #82 of Community Conversations features Chris Catania, Head of Community at ESRI

On this special State of Community Management 2022 episode, Chris Catania and Anne Mbugua discuss the importance of thoughtful leadership programs in online communities. Chris shares the role community leadership programs, including executive leadership and customer champion programs, play in the ESRI community and explores the most surprising findings from the 2022 report.

Chris Catania on Community Leadership

Chris also shares advice for aligning your community program with other internal programs to drive revenue and boost customer satisfaction.

Listen to Chris Catania on Community Leadership

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About Chris Catania

Chris is an award-winning community and collaboration leader, who always thinks “people first, technology next.”

For more than 20 years, he has helped organizations build relationships with their audiences through strategic communication, community management, content development, and global business strategy.

He believes in the proven power of community to deepen trust, increase loyalty, lower costs and grow revenue. And that power comes when you align community with real business goals to design meaningful online experiences and deliver measurable business results.

He is driven by a passion to empower companies to leverage the power of community as a strategic asset and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

About ESRI

Esri is the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping. Since 1969, we have supported customers with geographic science and geospatial analytics, what we call The Science of Where. We take a geographic approach to problem-solving, brought to life by modern GIS technology. We are committed to using science and technology to build a sustainable world. Learn more about ESRI.

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The Community Roundtable Recognizes Excellence in Community Management with the Community Leadership Awards 2021

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Cloudera, AAMC, BluePrism, ESRI, and The Conference Board among global organizations recognized as leaders of innovation in community management.

The winners of the sixth annual Community Leadership Awards were announced Monday, December 13th and included community leaders from organizations like Zapier, Leidos, Commvault, Motorola, and more. The Community Roundtable, the leading global resource for the community management industry, presented the awards virtually. As the recognized leader in community management research, training and thought leadership, The Community Roundtable is uniquely qualified to evaluate and reward individual and organizational contributions to the industry.

Community Leadership Awards recognize excellence in online community management across five categories: Outstanding Community Program, Outstanding Community Dashboard, Outstanding Community ROI, Outstanding Community Design Element, and Best Recognition & Reward Program. Members of TheCR Network – the world’s premier resource for community professionals – were recognized in six individual categories. Two additional awards, Community MVP and Outstanding Community Achievement were awarded based on peer nominations. In total, 14 organizations and individuals were recognized for outstanding efforts in community management.

“2021 proved to be another unprecedented year in the community management space,” said Jim Storer, Co-Founder and COO at The Community Roundtable. “The community leaders recognized this year provided invaluable guidance and vision for their organizations, amid near-constant change.”

The winners of 2021 Community Leadership Award are:

Outstanding Community Dashboard 2021: Cloudera

The “Outstanding Community Dashboard” award recognizes a community dashboard that exhibits the most impressive and engaging design, sharing metrics and measurement in an impactful way that contributes to the overall narrative of a community program.

Outstanding Community Program 2021 – AAMC

The “Outstanding Community Program” recognizes an exceptional community program that supports new member onboarding, including communications, training, mentoring, and more.

Outstanding Community Design Element 2021 – ESRI

The “Outstanding Community Program” award recognizes a design element in an online community program that demonstrates meaningful engagement through thoughtful design.

Best Recognition + Reward Program 2021: Blue Prism

The “Best Recognition + Reward Program” award recognizes outstanding community recognition, reward, and gamification programs that increase engagement

Community Champion 2021: Nick Frunzi, Chief Customer Officer, ESRI

The “Community Champion” award recognizes an outstanding community stakeholder or executive.

Community MVP 2021: Rachael Silvano, Community Operations Manager, Zapier

The “Community MVP” award recognizes excellence in community management – including outstanding efforts, willingness to share with peers, achievements and excellent community results.

Community Detective 2021: Christine Vazquez, Associate Director, Professional Development International Foundation of EBP

“Community Detective” awards the member who helps source group knowledge and expertise by regularly asking thoughtful and meaningful questions in TheCR Network.

Community Explorer 2021: Lisa Allison, Senior Community Strategist, Analog Devices, Inc.

“Community Explorer” awards the member who charts new territory in the community management industry. They take best practices, research, and community models to experiment and advance the industry.

Community Pack Leader 2021: Tracy Maurer, Senior Manager, Community and Knowledge Management, Commvault

“Community Pack Leader” awards the member who consistently leads the most discussions, online, in-person, and on virtual calls, and shows leadership around a topic or initiative in TheCR Network.

Community Journaler 2021: Tammy Triplett, Enterprise Community Manager, Leidos.

“Community Journaler” awards the member who works out loud the most regularly and with the most depth.

Community Power User 2021: Lori Harrison-Smith, Enterprise Community Strategist, Motorola Solutions

“Community Power User” awards the most active member in TheCR Network who contributes on a regular basis in a wide variety of ways, from sharing their expertise to supporting and encouraging other members.

Community Rookie of the Year 2021: April Uzarski, Associate Director of Community, Xandr

“Community Rookie of the Year” awards a Network member who has fewer than three years of industry experience, is new to TheCR Network, and is a power user – regularly collaborating and contributing inside the Network.

Kat Vellos and Tracy Spears and Paul Zak, oh my!

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Sure, it’s still “Summer” here in the Northern Hemisphere, but our minds are already focused on our annual community event, TheCR Connect. In 2020 we went virtual based on all the factors that were keeping the world apart. And, we found out that being apart, together actually had quite a few benefits.

In 2021, we’re staying virtual (although believe me when I say I want to squeeze each and every one of you) and expanding on what made Connect 2020 great. Amazing speakers that we might not be about to fit onto the agenda? (or afford) if we were flying everyone to Boston. A diverse group of attendees from around the world (last year we had New Zealand, the Netherlands, the UK, Isreal, Australia, and yes, the US and Canada) dialing in and connecting through those tiny little zoom screens. Oh, and of course tasty and silly small group networking events to bring us together when cocktails and photo booths are still out of the question.

I am excited to be the one to announce that Connect 2021 will take place entirely online on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in October 2021.

Like last year, events will take place both live and in moderated forums. All educational sessions will be archived. We get that even with expanded access sometimes you just have to sleep. Connect participants will network and collaborate in an event community featuring discussions, platform groups, session archives, and more.

If you’re looking for more technical content, our (free) Tech Thursdays events (which kicked off on June 3rd) runs through October, providing a robust agenda of technology demos, case studies, panels, and more.

So, what’s up for Connect 2021?

We’re organizing the sessions in a few big buckets: inspiration, connections, leadership, etc. – you can check out the full agenda, and learn more about the session types here. Our goal is to create meaningful content that will recharge your community battery, introduce you to new people and ideas to make your work more fulfilling and effective, and also: have fun!

We are excited about our keynote line-up. In keeping with Connect tradition, our keynotes are the only speakers on the agenda who aren’t attendees. We’ll explore Temperament Fluency with Tracy Spears. Talk about meaningful relationships with TheCR Network Book Club author Kat Vellos. And, focus on building high-trust cultures with Paul Zak. View the full agenda here.

Early bird registration ends on 8/15 and our call for speakers closes on the 15th as well. If you want to take an active role (and get the discounted price!) register before then.

Community Centers of Excellence Enable Distributed Leadership

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What is a Center of Excellence?

Centers of Excellence are groups that are charged with enabling their organizations with a specific practice or expertise and often have other names, whether that is an Enablement Group, Adoption Team, or Internal Consulting. Historically, this has not been the role of community program teams, who were generally tasked with managing one community.

Community Centers of Excellence Enable Distributed Leadership

However, as communities have become more integrated into organizations and as they address more objectives across the employee and customer experience, more people are involved in their management and leadership. The result is growing demand for community management expertise that falls on the community team to deliver. We see this evolution accelerate as communities mature. Only 11% of early communities are explicitly resourced to be centers of excellence – transitioning to a majority of community teams for the most mature community programs. This dynamic is also seen in the growth of groups outside of the community team producing programs in the community. At Stage 4, a majority of communities have cross-functional peers, community leaders, and community members leading programs – all of whom need guidance or training on how to do so effectively.

What kind of enablement services do community teams deliver?

Early on, community teams universally focus on technical support, training, and to a slightly lesser degree, coaching and templates. As community programs mature, they tackle metrics and reporting, consulting, and for some, enterprise governance. Community budgets reflect this transition. In Stage 1, community management resources are only 19% of the total community budget. By Stage 4, 43% of community program budgets go toward talent acquisition and training.

Community Centers of Excellence Enable Distributed Leadership

These services correlate with increased reporting responsibilities and increased expectations for engagement for cross-functional peers. More people and groups are involved in both managing aspects of communities, interested in their performance, and measured on their engagement. No longer are community programs isolated and discrete. Instead, they are expanding to align organizational groups in order to address myriad employee and customer experience objectives.

Learn more about centers of excellence and online community programs in the State of Community Management 2021. Download your free copy.

The Community Roundtable Recognizes Excellence in Community Leadership with TheCR Awards 2020

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Ultimate Kronos Group, World Bank Group, and Avnet among global organizations recognized as leaders of innovation in community management.

The winners of the fifth annual TheCR Awards were announced Thursday, October 29, 2020 and included community leaders from organizations like BAE Systems, AECOM, and Dassault Systèmes. As the recognized leader in community research, training and thought leadership, The Community Roundtable is uniquely qualified to evaluate and reward individual and organizational contributions to the industry. The Community Roundtable presented the awards at their annual conference, Connect 2020.

TheCR Awards recognize excellence in community management across four categories: Outstanding Community Program, Outstanding Community Dashboard, Outstanding Community Change Agent, and Best Recognition & Reward Program. Members of TheCR Network – the world’s premier peer network for community professionals – were recognized in six individual categories. Two additional awards, Community MVP and Outstanding Community Achievement, were awarded based on peer nominations. In total, 13 organizations and individuals were recognized for outstanding efforts in community management.

“Community leaders have been the driving force supporting the global shift to remote workplaces,” said Jim Storer, Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable. “COVID-19 forced many organizations to embrace community solutions in a more holistic way this year, and these community leaders and their teams enabled this dramatic change with their skills, experiences, and practical know how.”

The winners of TheCR Awards 2020 are:

Outstanding Community Dashboard 2020: Ultimate Kronos Group

The “Outstanding Community Dashboard” award recognizes a community dashboard that exhibits the most impressive and engaging design, sharing metrics and measurement in an impactful way that contributes to the overall narrative of a community program.

Outstanding Community Change Agent 2020 – PMC Center

The “Outstanding Community Change Agent” award recognizes a community program or initiative that supported the cultural transformation in a significant way at their organization.

Outstanding Community Program 2020 – Avnet/element 14

The “Outstanding Community Program” award showcases a community program that displayed outstanding creativity, effectiveness, or member participation as part of an overall community strategy.

Best Recognition + Reward Program 2020: World Bank Group

The “Best Recognition + Reward Program” award recognizes outstanding community recognition, reward, and gamification programs that increase engagement, drive participation, and contribute to the overall positive health of the community.

Community MVP 2020, Internal Community: Sarah Mahon, TPN Enterprise Community Manager, AECOM

Community MVP 2020, External Community: Christopher Stanton, Senior Specialist Community Insights & Engagement, Premier Farnell

The “Community MVP” award recognizes excellence in community management – including outstanding efforts, willingness to share with peers, achievements and excellent community results.

Community Champion 2020: Rebecca Kalogeris, Vice President, Marketing & Product Strategy, Pragmatic Institute

The “Community Champion” award recognizes an outstanding community stakeholder or executive.

TheCR Network Detective 2020: Jillian Bejtlich, Community Collaboration Strategist, BAE Systems

“TheCR Network Detective” awards the member who helps source group knowledge and expertise by regularly asking thoughtful and meaningful questions in TheCR Network.

TheCR Network Explorer 2020: Dennis Pearce, Online Community & Collaboration Strategist, Start Early (formerly The Ounce of Prevention Fund)

“TheCR Network Explorer” awards the member who charts new territory in the community management industry. They take best practices, research, and community models to experiment and advance the industry.

TheCR Network Pack Leader 2020: Ashleigh Brookshaw, Manager, Community Engagement, ASSP

“TheCR Network Pack Leader” awards the member who consistently leads the most discussions, online, in-person, and on virtual calls, and shows leadership around a topic or initiative in TheCR Network.

TheCR Network Journaler 2020: Tammy Triplett, Enterprise Community Manager, Leidos.

“TheCR Network Journaler” awards the member who “works out loud” the most regularly and with the most depth.

TheCR Network Power User 2020: Peter Broadley, Manager, Community Development and Engagement, CSA Group

“TheCR Network Power User” awards the most active member in TheCR Network who contributes on a regular basis in a wide variety of ways, from sharing their expertise to supporting and encouraging other members.

TheCR Network Rookie of the Year 2020: Ryan Priddy, SOLIDWORKS Digital Community Manager, Dassault Systemes

“TheCR Network Rookie of the Year” awards a Network member who has fewer than three years of industry experience, is new to TheCR Network, and is a power user – regularly collaborating and contributing inside the Network.

View all winners and learn more.

Lauren Klein on Community Leadership

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Join the community experts at The Community Roundtable as they chat about online community management best practices with a wide range of global community professionals. Topics include increasing online audience engagement, finding and leveraging executive stakeholders, defining and calculating online community ROI and more. 

Episode #70 features Lauren Klein.

In this episode of the podcast, Lauren shares ideas on how to cultivate a strong leadership presence in your online community, empowering young women through mentorship, and ways to make an impact in your communities.

Listen Now:

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Links from the Episode:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelaurenklein

https://www.girlmade.co

Listen to more episodes of Conversations with Community Managers

About Conversations with Community Managers*
To better reflect the diverse conversations our podcast covers we’ve changed the name of our long-running series to Community Conversations.
Community Conversations highlights short conversations with some of the smartest minds in the online community and social business space, exploring what they’re working on, why they do what they do, and what advice they have for you.
These episodes are a great way to begin to understand the nuances of community strategy and management.
Each episode is short (usually less than 30 minutes) and focuses on one community management professional.

Measuring Networked Leadership

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For many years, I had an uncomfortable relationship with the word ‘leadership’. It seemed vague, imprecise and conflated with ‘executive’, especially in corporate settings. It certainly didn’t apply to me. Then I was an executive and I still think of myself as a leader. To me, it felt like the word beauty; something that is in the eye of the beholder.

Working with online communities, however, has helped me clarify what leadership means because you see leadership clearly in behavior. It is, in fact, fairly concrete. You can see it by looking at who:

  • Validates others regularly, encouraging them to engage
  • Shares what they have learned
  • Offers perspectives and asks clarifying questions
  • Asks open-ended questions

You might be thinking that a lot of people do these things and you are right – because leadership is available to everyone. What sets leaders apart is the willingness to pursue it. By engaging transparently, leaders show a willingness to be vulnerable, to expose themselves to critique, to go ‘on the record’. Leadership then is not the same as being an executive. There are executives who are leaders and there are leaders who are executives – but there are also plenty of executives who actively eschew any kind of conflict, difficulty, or vulnerability. Executives who are not leaders tend to surround themselves with handlers and operate through structured channels in predictable ways.

Leadership requires courage – the courage to be different and to expose yourself to critique, which is challenging when many decisions are nuanced and messy. Through the lens of behavior, it is actually easy to see who the leaders are. And it can be measured.

In communities, leadership is revealed in measuring engagement, which we measure through four categories of behaviors: validating, sharing, asking & answering, and exploring. Each of these categories of behaviors results in a cultural outcome, from a culture of comfort, to connection, to trust, to partnership.

How to build a community - Networked Leadership

By measuring the breadth (what percentage of a population or community exhibits this type of behavior) and depth (how much of this behavior/person is exhibited) we can measure how cultures change over time – are they becoming more open or more anxious? Are more leaders emerging or is curiosity getting shut down? And because we can measure culture – we can measure the effectiveness of the executives in charge in their ability to create this culture.

SOCM 2019 Chart - Community Generates High Engagement Rates - Networked Leadership

One of the primary reasons community approaches are so powerful is that they encourage and reward leadership behaviors. In a knowledge economy, those leadership behaviors are critical to distribute and cultivate so that organizations can optimize learning, change, and innovation.

For those organizations looking to digitally transform and create a networked business model, this is one of the most important aspects of making this possible. Executives are now being tasked with creating a culture of innovation. In many cases, what that means is not defined and can be interpreted in many different ways – making it is hard to help executives understand what success looks like or to hold them accountable when their efforts fail.

Our experience with communities shows us exactly what a culture of learning, change, and curiosity looks like – and allows us to measure it. Those that understand this are using communities to change how they change – and making progress on some of their most complex organizational objectives.

SOCM 2019 Chart - Communities Advance Complex Objectives - Networked Leadership

Communities aren’t just about creating awareness and reaching more people – they are an operational approach and governance structure to change how organizations lead and manage. Find more insights in the 2019 State of Community Management report.

Podcast: SOCM 2019 Highlight – Community Leadership is Unevenly Distributed

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Join TheCR’s Rachel Happe, Principal and Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable, as she chats with Marjorie Anderson, CSPO, Manager, Digital Communities at the Project Management Institute, about the State of Community Management 2019 report.

In Episode #62, Rachel and Marjorie discuss key finding #3 from the 2019 research: Communities Propel Engagement

Rachel and Marjorie discuss how community management can feel like playing “1001 and one ways to say no, without having to say no”, how community professionals can advocate for themselves in the workplace, and ways to avoid burn-out.

Haven’t downloaded the State of Community Management 2019 yet?

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Do You Have the Mindset to Lead the Future of Work?

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With the streams and volume of information coming at us today, how do you prioritize your attention and time?

This is a critical leadership question as we move further into the world of exponential growth and AI.

I don’t think most people are ready for it – and not because they don’t want to be but because everything we’ve been socialized for is about managing scarcity. Grading on a curve. Spots in prestigious schools. Hiring. We can’t ALL have a Harvard education. Everything needs to be filtered, prioritized, and sorted. Because of that, life brings a lot more rejection for most of us than acceptance. It sorts us into the haves and have nots. In turn, those that have access and acceptance are insulated from the experiences of the majority. It creates terrible blinders that people often cannot even see. All because some people fit our notion of success and some people don’t.

In a world of information scarcity, we created hierarchical and linear processes for evaluating and assessing who and what got promoted. Those in key structural roles amassed a disproportionate amount of power – and reinforced social norms like racism and sexism – not always intentionally but because we feel comfortable with people like ourselves.

Then technology and the Internet hit. Suddenly everyone could push information at us – and it just keeps increasing. It is overwhelming.

There are a few ways to handle this and trying to opt out of as much as possible is a common reaction. But suddenly, your hierarchical position that used to let you control the flow of information has made you a target. Even if you ignore many channels, you still have an overwhelming amount of information coming at you as people, still socialized to try and get your approval, vie for your attention. 

One of the popular methods I have seen to address this is the “Hell Yes” approach – only pay attention to and engage with things that are obviously important to you. This IS a great gut check on what you should pursue but I actually find it incredibly limiting and it has the negative effect of reinforcing your own echo chamber and assumptions. It prevents you from learning.

Why? 

Because the very things that drive innovation and change will make you uncomfortable. 

New ideas also require engagement and conversation to develop into something valuable. Innovation rarely shows up in your inbox fully formed.

So if you only say yes when it’s a Hell Yes you are likely reinforcing your own information bubble and increasing the gap between what you think you know and what everyone around you is discussing. 

What if…

… you could say YES to EVERYONE?

I know what you are thinking… government regulation won’t allow you to clone yourself yet so that’s a hard no. 

But what if you could?!?

What if you had a way to enable everyone with an idea or a passion to purse it? What if everyone *could* go to Harvard?

Social media has played this role for many – breaking down traditional channels and access. But it’s turned into crazy town and it’s not efficient for deep collaboration, which is what is necessary to build value.

This week, I was interviewing a client who has close to 100,000 customers. Historically the number of customers the client has been able to engage in a meaningful way is around 500. It’s simply impossible to bring more of them into the conversation. The result is that only the customers that spend years establishing their credibility, spending a lot of money, and building relationships get access to influence the organization and its priorities. It’s too expensive to imagine anything else…. until recently.

We worked with them to build a strategy for a customer ecosystem of many communities and groups. This ecosystem gives every customer the space and access to pursue their goals and the opportunity to build support and advocacy for them – and they don’t have to wait their turn and pay their ‘dues’ to do it. If they have the expertise and ideas – they can start now.

This organization can now say YES to EVERYONE. Not by processing and approving every request but by enabling and empowering every customer, within the boundary of their shared purpose.

The role or the organization then changes dramatically – instead of arbitrating who and what gets attention, their responsibilities are to:

  • Continue pursuing and investing in organizational priorities
  • Provide the space and support for emergent opportunities to surface 
  • Listen and respond, as needed
  • Make small investments in emergent opportunities that are growing
  • Incorporate powerful emergent opportunities into corporate priorities over time

If you don’t have a community to point people to, you are stuck in the position of saying no – a lot. In the process, you will never know what you don’t know and that will increase your business risk dramatically as the pace of change increases.

Imagine the latent and potential value you could capture by engaging and empowering the other 99% of your ecosystem.

Wouldn’t it be nice to say YES?