Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another.
Which might also mean, if there is no need for any forgiveness between people in your crowd, you do not truly have community.
forgiveness
4
Consumers
My biggest concern about our obsession with consumption, is that we are even beginning to treat people like things to be consumed.
waiting for gmail
I am trying to cleanup an number of my gmail filters and labels this morning. (Let me know if I should dive into the details of my system in the comments, I’ll skip them for now.) And, I am spending way too much time waiting for the ‘loading’ notification to go away.
I don’t understand why I should be waiting for gmail to finish processing the changes to labels on the front-end. Why can’t they do that in the background on the server side?
Leave it Where You Want to Begin
One of my practices right now is to begin my day on a blank page. Or, more specifically, a blank screen. I finally realized that beginning my day in the urgent mode of triaging my many inboxes destroys my chances of getting into the important mode of setting goals for the day. After several weeks of practice, I have successfully formed the habit. But my form is still bad. It takes a couple minutes of closing windows, (and being distracted by the content), before achieving tabula rasa.
So, now I am adjusting my behavior further by making it a point to close my computer in the state I want to open it in.
I’m pretty sure we can find ways to apply this to other areas of our lives.
The Lost Art of Practice
Do you even remember what it felt like to practice something, and then experience that aha moment when everything clicked? Other than video games and yoga, what happened to practicing things?
I want drills, and exercises, and dedicated practice times that far outnumber the games or performances. I want to review the tapes, and scout the other team. I want a teacher or a coach to watch my technique and give me feedback.
How would you begin to break one of your roles or functions down into a practice regimen?
How I use LinkedIn
TL;DR – I only connect on LinkedIn with people I can personally recommend.
I realize that many people use LinkedIn as tool to grow their professional networks, and to “bookmark” people they have met at conferences etc.
There are many reasons why I prefer Zerply (please connect with me there), but there is still enough critical-mass at LinkedIn to utilize the value it does provide.
I consider myself a LinkedIn purist. A core function of the product is the ability to connect to people two or three degrees away through introductions. All my connections are visible to people several degrees away as someone they could get an introduction to. So, it only makes sense to connect to people I feel confident personally and professionally recommending to someone else.
I am more than happy when anyone reaches out to me through LinkedIn, because I love to help out however I can. I am just highly likely to move the conversation to another channel, and connect on other networks.
What qualities make someone a good community manager?
Got a great question today in my inbox, “what qualities make someone a good community manager?“
First, I can not promote the title community manager, because I do not believe the role is to manage the community. I don’t think the title is fair to the professional or to the community.
So, I can only promote titles like,
Community Architect A product centric person who designs and creates the spaces for communities to gather in and go about their life and work together
Community Curator A content centric person who is a good story teller, and can draw out great stories and examples from the community to reflect back to itself.
Community Cultivator A person who cares about rules and procedures and knows when to break them… the person who plants questions and content, moderates conversations, and mediates relationships.
Some of the qualities necessary for these roles are:
- Compassion – you must love people in all their shapes and cultures and proclivities
- Empathy – able to step in the shoes and head of anyone within the community, or outside the community
- Strong Character – able to roll with the punches, dodge attacks, and defend community guidelines
- Decider – gotta just make decisions quickly, communicate clearly, and keep moving
I probably need to add a hundred more, but these keep floating to the top.
do you even like math?
As a mentor, your job is not to dash the dream, but add realism to the endeavor. Don’t tell them they cant be astronauts, tell the entrepreneur that they have to study math to be an astronaut, and give them the direction to determine if they even like math.
under-communicating
Due to the extreme pace and environment of my little startup-life these days, I have had a chance to recognize how much poor communication bothers me. Especially under-communication. A.K.A. the expectation that I should somehow get your drift and immediately comprehend what you are trying to communicate.
Obviously, as soon as I convinced myself this is about everyone else, I realize that, no, this is about me and what I need to work on to improve my communication.
So, I made a couple guidelines for myself:
Provide the context
Everyone else hasn’t been reading the same emails, or articles, or overhead the same conversations. So, let people in on the context of where I am coming from.
Be clear about my opinions vs. the facts
I know whether I am stating my opinion, or citing facts. (Um, usually.) But, that doesn’t mean anyone else does. Unless, I explicitly tell them.
Be clear about any questions or expectations for response
Don’t you hate rhetorical questions?
Make sure communication is directed at the appropriate channels
Reduce unnecessary duplication of information, or needing to have the same conversation multiple times.
What would you add to the list?
Saying No
Evan Hamilton published a article on the UserVoice: Understanding Your Customers blog, “Launchrock gains one million signups during beta by saying no to customers.” As I was reading it, I realized the one thing that might be missing, is an understanding of how hard it can be to say no.
I posted this as a comment there as well, but wanted to share it with you here.
To completely over-generalize I think engineers are very good at saying, “no, unless you justify it.” So, they might have a tendency to say no to customers TOO much. But, CEO’s and bizdev, and sales people love to say, “yes of course we can do that, and it will only take two weeks to give that to you, now give us money…” Then, they get all disappointed when they find out their team cannot deliver on their promise in time.
But, the type of no I am describing here, is different from that set of yes or no. This is more like the Apple no. The–how can we create the most simple things that works without too many buttons and menus–no.
That kind of no can be very difficult for startups who are still trying to find their product/market fit. And when you are in the midst of that, you’ve got to get out of the building and talk to your customers.
And, ironically, the best way to understand your customers is to say, “no”.
“Yes, that is on our roadmap.”
“Yes, we’re already planning that.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.”
These are all ways to kill a conversation. There is nothing more for your customer to tell you, and you’ll have no idea whether you really understood their request. But, by saying no, AND keeping the conversation open, you give your customer a chance to justify their need and explain why it would make such a difference to their business.
Then, that is a perfect time for a, “maybe.”