When
we announced that November's theme in TheCR Network was going to be "Community Value", I was curious to see what discussions and ideas would come out of this topic. We didn't want to only focus on financial value or areas like metrics and reporting, but also open up the conversation to finding value in other aspects of community like culture and community narratives.
I'm grateful for taking the time to focus on this topic, because I think it started a lot of great conversations around subject areas that are important to be constantly exploring:
- Measuring the value of culture
- Determining how to communicate with different people
- Pitching our community
- Identifying which metrics truly matter and continuing to develop our analytics programs
November in TheCR Network: Roundtable Calls
We had some thought-provoking and deeply useful Roundtable Calls this month.
Our first call touched on the area that I associate most with "value": metrics & measurement.
@Matt LAURENCEAU became another amazing leader of our Who's Measuring What? series and graciously gave us all a look at his metrics and how his analytics program has grown and evolved over time. By continuously testing, tweaking, and adjusting what and how they measured what they were measuring, Matt and his team were able to get to a place where they can measure ROI and truly show the value of their community program.
Our second piece of programming focused on the value of creative content, design, and the value of building effective relationships (especially on a global team). In her Ask Me Anything (AMA), @Dina Vekaria graciously volunteered her time to share about her work, her values, and her processes when it comes to the amazing community program she works on at Pearson.
Members had the opportunity to pick Dina's brain and hone in on some of the incredible ideas and implementation that she's accomplished over time.
I especially love the super power that she mentions in her introduction post: "Finding a workaround for just about anything! Ask me about documents in Jive and how to make them go from boring and dull looking, to a pretty spectacular design, without the use of HTML."
In facilitating this AMA, we (one) were able to see the value in just bringing a member's work into the light and making it more visible, (two) saw the value of enabling member collisions and conversations, and (three) saw practical value in creativity. How do you make content engaging so that people will view, download, and use it? How do you keep your team engaged across time zones? These might not be the obvious conversation topics when talking about value, but the little things add up to much larger, much greater aspects of community.
The next "Community Value"-focused Roundtable Call we hosted was on prioritizing and finding the value in culture. Culture can be difficult to define and harder to measure the value of, but this call opened up space to discuss not only how to measure culture, but why it's valuable and how we can use both hard data and anecdotal data to prove that value.
On a similar call, our last Roundtable Call focused on the power of storytelling. Through exploring powerful components of stories, story structures, and even identifying the most striking components of our own community stories, we looked at how we can use elements of storytelling to intertwine data into our community narratives to create powerful pitches that showcase the true value of our programs.
While these last two calls were more conversational than our first call on metrics, they started important conversations around topics that are harder to define, but tie into much of the work we're doing in community. Storytelling and culture are key parts of how we communicate and measure the success of our communities, even if they're not always seen as such.
It's because the common perception of value is of something finance- or business-related that we wanted to start these conversations. Communities change people's mindsets, behaviors, and ways of working, so how we talk about and prove the value of that change is key.
We did, however, want to dig into that "proving" part a little more...
What Did You Think?
For the length of November, we opened up a poll that asked the question: "Does your platform allow you to measure the metrics that matter most to you?"
It's a bit of a two-parter in that it asks you to think about the metrics that are most important to you and then decide if the tools you use allow you to measure those metrics. So, what did members say?
The majority of members who responded said that no, their platforms do not allow them to measure the metrics that matter most to them.
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
As I've said before and will say again, this is not the end of the conversation, but the very beginning. Taking our anecdotal evidence and data in stride, we'll be exploring some of the questions that came up in these discussions in our research next year. We'll continue to discuss platforms, metrics, governance, and how we can use the tools we have to do what we really need.
In writing a strategy for TheCR Network in 2020, we're looking to dig in more and explore more of these conversations, looking more at people-first initiatives, culture, and technology in the beginning portion of the year.
As we move into planning mode, we're also always looking for member input. So, if these discussions opened up topics of interest for you, or if just reading about them brought up an idea, let us know! We always leave a lot of space on the calendar for member ideas, involvement, and spur-of-the-moment programming, so leave us a comment, send a message, or make a post and we'll talk.
And if you're not a member of TheCR Network, or if you know someone who isn't a member of TheCR Network, but would love to participate in these conversations, let us know! We're happy to talk about how you or they can get involved.
#2019_MindsetsSuccess#metricsandmeasurement