As 2020 progresses, we are more and more seeing the need to take breaks and spend time away from work, so it is not surprising that August got a bit quieter in TheCR Network. But because 2020 is hard to predict and everyone is dealing with different circumstances, we continued with our thematic programming and focused again on: Measuring What Matters.
As we mentioned back in July, whether you are just starting out with a community or you are working with an established and mature community program, metrics is an ever-relevant topic. Through looking at examples from others, strategizing on how you communicate to others, and understanding how to relate community to business goals, we can be even more successful at proving the value of our programs.
In August, we wanted to dive in a little deeper to these discussions and continue looking at what we can learn...
August in TheCR Network: Roundtable Calls
Like in July, our first Roundtable Call in August focused on something a little outside of the world of metrics, although not that far...
On "Your (Community's) Name in Lights! All About TheCR Awards", we heard from TheCR's Director of Marketing, @Shannon Abram, who gave some insight into this year's TheCR Awards.
While this call does not have to deal exactly with our August theme, it does deal with celebrating and rewarding the work that matters in community, and metrics is included in that conversation. Whether you submit your own or another member's work for an award (which we encourage everyone to do!), acknowledgement and awards can help bring internal (and external!) attention to your community program, which can be some extra help when you are looking to communicate why your community program is valuable.
See? It all ties together!
If you want to listen in on this Roundtable Call, you can find the Roundtable Recording here.
Our next call in August, "Get Inside Your Boss' Mind With Metrics", focused on looking at how we report and communicate our metrics from different perspectives, because, in order to get others to understand, we need to understand who we are talking to. In order to explore that, we took a different approach to this call and led a collaborative exercise where we created a "slide" of metrics based on several prompts that addressed what our bosses want to know, what they are interested in, and what we want them to be interested in.
Overall, we found that, while each use case has its own unique contexts, there were quite a few similarities. One such similarity was that we struggle with conveying the value of community up the leadership ladder. This is partially because many of us do not have the visibility past our direct leaders and are not able to know what information is brought to the table above that.
With issues with strategic alignment across the board, we can understand why we might struggle with communicating the value of our communities...
...so our last Roundtable Call of August looked at that relationship between community and business value. On "Communities & Value: Breaking Down The Business Model Of Communities", TheCR's @Rachel Happe led a discussion on the third key finding of the SOCM 2020 report -- Advanced Communities Create Generative Value -- and dug deeper into sub-findings: Advanced Communities Creative Generative Value, Communities Propel Organizational Change, and Empowered Cultures Seize Opportunity.
We started off the call by discussing if and how we determine value in our communities and then started looking at how we can measure and communicate value through different means as well as if and how that value changes in different contexts. Rachel used the SOCM 2020 research to approach areas of interest like cost per member, value add and value gain, and behavioral value.
This open Q&A gave us the opportunity to dig into areas of interest and help frame the questions to start the conversations with stakeholders and organizations about the value of community and, legitimately, measure what matters.
If you missed the chance to join this conversation, you can still participate in a discussion around this key finding here.
We didn't only host Roundtable Calls this month...
Another piece of programming we held in August was the "Ask Me Anything with Alex Blanton". As a part of the SOCM 2020 Working Group, Alex was a key part of both adding value to the SOCM survey (especially from the internal community perspective) as well as making sure that the SOCM 2020 report was a valuable resource.
Alex has some amazing experiences as the Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, specifically managing their internal Machine Learning Community, which has 6,800 members from all organizations and geographies across Microsoft and is the second largest internal technical community (after the Azure community). With almost 23 years of experience at Microsoft, getting to pick Alex's brain was a fantastic opportunity to see what knowledge he has gained through all of his work, especially around managing a technical community (when you are not really technical), migrating in-persons events to the only space, and managing communities in a loosely-governed environment.
While this AMA didn't focus solely on metrics or proving value, Alex did showcase exactly how to determine how to measure what matters and understand the value in what you are doing, especially in terms of managing technical spaces and translating value to different contexts and environments.
If you want to read through the AMA thread, you can find that here.
We also held our next two Member Mixers for members of TheCR Network to meet, speak with, and get to know each other a little bit. With a variety of questions on the Icebreaker tool, we were able to both have a little fun and make new connections: two great things!
Lastly, we held a new kind of programming for a bit of fun and also a bit of professional development: "The PowerPoint Games".
On this call, we provided some off-topic and maybe a bit "odd" PowerPoints and asked attendees to present them, the catch is that members did not see these PowerPoint decks prior to the call. This encouraged everyone to think about how we approach presenting or public speaking and how you can navigate a less than ideal situation.
This might not be metrics-related, but if you can make a presentation on something you are learning about as you go, you can make a presentation on your metrics to anyone who asks.
We heard some great examples and had some great discussions this month, so why not round it out with what we learned about members of TheCR Network overall...
What Did You Think?
For the month of August we opened a poll to ask something a little more fun: "Are you more of an inbox 0 or an inbox 7,923 person?"
As more people shifted to working remotely this year, online communications have become much more prevalent in places where that was not the common practice before. To get at a fun question and also see how people might be handling this overload of digital communication, we wanted to hear how people manage their inbox.
So, let's find out we all have thought...
The poll results were not even close from the start. With two thirds of respondents saying that they are an inbox 0 person, it is clear that members aim for that ultimate goal, with messages all read. While only 33.3% of respondents said that they were more of an inbox 7,923 person, it does not mean that they are wrong, it just shows how we all function differently, even those of us who do the same kind of work or have similar perspectives.
While this poll was for fun, it is also a great way to think about how and how frequently we are communicating with our teams and communities. If we want to manage our inboxes, don't our members? It helps to think about what we would like for our inboxes. Do we want fewer emails/messages? Do we want to automate them? Do we want them at different frequencies? How can we take the answers to these questions and translate them into how we use communications in our communities?
If you are not already measuring your communication (email/message/etc.) engagement rates, that might be a great place to start to find this information! Just make sure you are measuring what matters...
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
In August, our goal was to continue July's conversation on metrics and value and think about who we communicate those to and how we communicate them. Through exploring specific research and data, hearing about how others have approached metrics, and getting perspectives into how people see value in their community, we were able to continue exploring how we are all thinking about measuring what matters.
While this is definitely not the start of the conversation, is also isn't the end. Metrics, as a topic, will always be popular and important, so we are looking forward to learning and exploring more as the year continues into its second half.
While we are also continuing into the "back to school" feeling in many places of the world, we will be finding more ways to connect and learn as a group while also learning from industry experts, so if you have any requests, now is a great time to let us know. The comments below are a great place to start!
We are also getting excited for October and TheCR Connect 2020 where we will get to have all of these conversations and more! (Psst! Connect is free for members, so register while you can!)
If any of these conversations or concepts 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.
If you'd rather do that yourself, you can find out more about how to join TheCR Network here.
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