Our Blog
Here you’ll find ideas and observations regarding process design, community design, and intelligent automation that enables the human touch.
How Might We Stimulate Broader Participation in Our Conversations?
The degree to which status and one’s ability to contribute are perceived to be coupled can inhibit the participation of relatively low-status persons in collaborative communities. That’s a problem because complex challenges are best tackled by cognitively diverse teams. That suffers when the conversation is limited to people who are high-performers along similar dimensions. If we wish to cultivate valuable and equitable communities, we need to find ways to help people identify and articulate the unique value they bring to the conversation.
Our Favorite Asynchronous Video Tools
Asynchronous communication tools enhance effective collaboration. Video is a particularly rich medium. Nevertheless, technological and social friction has inhibited the widespread adoption of asynchronous video. That is changing fast. Specialty tools are getting easier to use. More importantly, the pandemic has normalized the creation and use of video. It no longer feels so awkward to be in front of a camera. Our favorite tools—which we use every day—include Snagit, Loom, VideoAsk, Camtasia, and Vimeo.
Build an Audience and Cultivate Community
The emphasis on collaborative, peer conversations that demand mutual trust—along with the active brokering of connections and facilitation of conversations by the host—distinguishes communities from networks and audiences. As a consultant, make your expertise visible and build an audience. At the same time, keep an eye open for opportunities to cultivate a community.
How Might Starting with Small Group Conversations Lead to a More Successful Community?
Gina Bianchini, the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks, notes, “Our most successful Hosts only had 10 members in their communities after 30 days.” We can think of a couple of reasons why that might be true.
Learning Community as Mutual Improvement Society
A learning community is like a mutual improvement society, much as an online course is like a self-help book. Both can be useful. Learning communities are best for sharing experiences and developing wisdom or mastery.
Our Predictions as Conversation Starters
When confronted with a prediction, we tend to react by thinking “true or false.” A more productive response to a well-considered prediction would be to ask, “Under what conditions is the prediction likely to be true?”
Our Responsibilities as Meeting Hosts and Participants
Too often, business meetings suck. They don’t have to. Meeting hosts can help build trust in the process by being mindful of Purpose, People, and Process. Meeting participants, in turn, have a responsibility to be Prepared, Prompt, and Present. Effective—even energizing—meetings are the result.
Communities Are Purposeful
Proximity or propinquity may be necessary to instill a sense of community, but they aren’t sufficient. Communities are purposeful. That may be particularly true of successful online communities.
Mixed Messages
Effective meetings have a clear purpose. Agendas and patterns of conversation that send mixed messages—however inadvertently—are likely to undermine the achievement of that purpose.
How You Fail Determines Whether You’ll Succeed
Research supports the contention that success is a product of failing better and faster than your competition. Persistence is necessary but insufficient. You must learn efficiently from failure and act quickly on what you learn.
Are You Qualified to Host a Learning Community?
A learning community host must be a recognized member of the community, must have deep, practical experience, and must be able to articulate a coherent theoretical framework.
Selecting the Right (Meeting) Tool for the Job
A facilitation process or collaboration tool used in a meeting have value in context, and the context is determined by the purpose of, and people in, each individual meeting.