I’ve long held communities of practice are essential for any organisation to grow its capabilities, respond quickly to opportunities and challenges in the market, and gain an engaged, productive, and satisfied workforce. Creating and growing such communities takes investment and skill however.
This recent article from FeverBee, from which the image above comes from, is well worth a read:
We Need To Rescue Employee Communities From Mediocrity
Some points I drew from the article:
- The community’s value proposition should be urgent, memorable, and succinct
- Build peer-to-peer communities oriented towards success – rather than transactional, ‘support’ Q&A communities
- Invest in community managers, and their training
- Provide targeted, behavioural guidance for various community personas to improve their motivation
- Asset based community development is a critical tool for communities at a formative stage. Run a workshop to:
- Identify the members’ assets (expertise, tools, contacts, templates)
- Group then prioritise the outcomes they seek
- Feed that back to them, showing them the content they’re after, the members who can help to generate it, and a plan for building it
I heartily recommend Richard Millington’s blog; it’s a fantastic resource, and FeverBee have long provided excellent services to the community management discipline.