While culture is an amorphous and fluid concept, it's also at the core of community, so we wanted to focus some time on the idea of Culture & Community for March in TheCR Network.
Over the month of March, we looked into culture in regulated environments, new situations, new communities, and how community culture affects and is affected by organizational culture.
March in TheCR Network: Roundtable Calls
Our first Roundtable Call of March focused on navigating the culture of highly-regulated or risk-averse environments.
On "Growing Engagement in Regulated Spaces", we heard from two members, @Julie Blutstein and @tanya caruana, about how they navigate their highly risk-averse organizations and how they're able to still create and foster engagement in their online spaces, even with a host of regulations.
While they say that there's no silver bullet for navigating traditional or highly-regulated organizations and building engaged communities, Julie and Tanya talked about how work with what they have and the culture that has been built in their organizations to still build valuable communities.
This was a great way to start off the month on culture by highlighting how, no matter how your organization is run, we can still find success in building community strategy based on what we have. Not everyone will deal with organizations with traditional cultures or that are risk-averse, but we can all learn about how to be more creative with what we're given.
Our next call focused on a very (coincidentally) timely topic: remote working. On "Working Well on the Web: The Ups and Downs of Remote Work", we gathered to discuss data around remote work, why culture matters, how to navigate remote teams, as well as quick tips and tricks.
Amidst the global coronavirus crisis, more people are working remotely, so this call was a great way to tap the knowledge and lessons learned from experienced remote workers as well as understand the benefits and struggles that come with working remotely.
Tying into our theme of culture, this call was especially relevant for many who are working remotely for the first time as well as those who are dealing with newly remote teams or larger organizations and how they're managing that. We talked about how we must foster a supportive and collaborative organizational culture in order to both support and guide those who are newly remote and continue working and sharing information efficiently.
While this call was a great source of tips, tricks, and advice, it was also a great look into how the ways in which we work can truly affect what we create.
If you want to listen in on this Roundtable Call, you can find the Roundtable Recording here.
For our next Roundtable Call, we got a little more practical and went back to basics with a look into how an organization builds and launches communities. On "How The Red Cross Builds, Grows, and Sustains Communities", we were joined by Ernesto Izquierdo from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who gave us a look into how they plan and launch communities and how he has built a guide to sustain and grow their online communities through strategy and tactics.
To connect to our overarching theme, Ernesto explains how developing and fostering a collaborative culture is key to creating these engaged communities, and culture needs to be a part of your strategic goals. To also connect to the current global coronavirus crisis, Ernesto also spent some of time to also discuss how they build community amidst crisis and why having a strong community culture built before a crisis is key.
If you want to listen in on this Roundtable Call, you can find the Roundtable Recording here.
On the last day of March, we held our last Roundtable Call, "
Community, Culture, and the Beloved Organization with Erica Kuhl". Going in a different direction from our previous call, this Roundtable Call was a chance to think more broadly about culture, both in terms of community culture and organizational culture.
Not only talking about the value of culture, our guest facilitator, Erica Kuhl, also shared some of her vast experiences and knowledge of building collaborative culture in her previous role at Salesforce. Akin to some of our February calls, people are always at the heart of building this culture, and Erica talked a lot about how she didn't fully build these communities (even though we think that she deserves
a lot of the credit!), the members did. Making culture an explicit part of your strategy is important, but if you're not a part of building this culture through participation and modeling, then it's hard to succeed. We must believe in the purpose of our communities in order for our members to do so.
If you want to listen in on this Roundtable Call, you can find the Roundtable Recording here. Our conversations covered a lot of ground, so to bring it back to some applicable takeaways...
What Did You Think?
For the month of March, we opened a poll to ask the question: "What impact has your community had on your organization's culture or brand sentiment?"
After exploring this data in the State of Community Management 2019 (where 100% of communities with advanced strategies impact their organizations in positive ways), we wanted to ask TheCR Network members what they see in their own communities.
So, let's find out...
Overwhelmingly, TheCR Network members see their communities making a positive impact on their organization. The fact that almost 71% of respondents saying that their community has a significantly positive or positive effect on their organization's culture or brand sentiment heavily contrasts with the fact that 0% of respondents said that they see negative impacts from community. While there was a good chunk of responses that see community being a neutral impact, the vast majority see positivity, which where you'd hope to be. For the neutral folks, there's plenty of opportunity to grow!
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
Our goal for March was to encourage conversation around a fluid topic, and we did just that. Culture is something that will continue to be relevant, so we wanted to create space for members to be able to look at culture through different perspectives in order to see how they can convey and leverage their own community's culture.
We got to see what others have done to build positive and collaborative cultures in a variety of contexts. We also got to see how others convey the importance of a supportive culture, especially in the context of a crisis, and why that supportive culture is even more important to have built before the crisis.
Because culture is infused and the undercurrent of many aspects of community, we're going to be taking these thoughts into future months, starting with April's topic of Rewards & Recognition.
So if any aspects of March's conversations have sparked an idea or recommendation for you, let us know! While we plan our programming calendar, we also leave space for reactive programming, spur-of-the-moment topics, and member involvement, so leave us a note or send us a message and we'll get something together to address your topics of interest.
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, please reach out! We're happy to talk about how you or they can get involved.
#culture#launch#member_leadership