Designing an Impact Community
Doubling Down on What Connects Us
Summary
Community is at the heart of any thriving association. It’s our timeless value and a common anchor to help us prepare for the future.
However, just because we share a profession or industry, doesn’t make us a community. Loose affiliation (i.e. heart surgeons or librarians), industry ties (trucking, peanut farming, or pharmacy), or coming together for an annual event isn’t enough.
This article provides an overview of social network analysis and how it could be useful for helping associations design and get the most out of their communities.
The Product Community is a product development learning community designed specifically for associations.
What is an Impact Community?
"Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions.”
Rick Rubin
The beauty of community lies in its imperfection.
Great communities offer what everyone wants: deep connection linked to meaningful progress. The draw is timeless: a strong purpose to attract core participants tied to the promise of an ongoing, flexible evolution to pull in new people and ideas.
An impact community goes further. It is more than a gathering or commonalities afforded through a shared profession. It is a network of people with diverse experience and wide-ranging perspectives designed to build bridges and solve problems. Impact happens when trust and learning are valued and great ideas can be developed and shared. It is how we move the needle.
Impact communities work due to the essential tension created by tackling tough issues, harnessing deep care, and fostering an ongoing commitment to each other. Over time, community becomes a catalyst for enduring connection that drives focused action and meaningful outcomes. It is where we share in the hard work and where innovation takes root. It's how we foster a culture of shared purpose and collective impact. It’s how we envision better ideas and fresh solutions.
Impact communities have the following features:
Intentionality – Focuses on direction, intention, evidence, connection, and outcomes.
Leadership – Balances vision and tactics, openness and decisiveness, order and action, decorum and consistency.
Openness – Actively involves and engages members seeking input and participation.
Challenging – Fosters new and better ideas that challenge our worldview.
Relationship Building – Establishes trust, fostering loyalty and support.
Interdisciplinary – Encourages cross-boundary coalition-building to strengthen community ties.
Adaptability – Adapts to changing dynamics, needs to ensure ongoing relevance.
Empowerment – Offers opportunities for growth and development.
Associations are wise to invest in, design, and cultivate impact communities. Belonging, trust and responsibility are infectious when tied to meaningful progress. To drive this home, let’s look at a concept called social network analysis.
Social Network Analysis
“Join forces with others to maximize knowledge, speed up ideation, and minimize wheel-spinning. Share what you know and you will, in turn, have others share with you. Multiple heads truly are better than one.”
Joey Cofone
Rob Cross is a leading researcher in social network analysis, which explores the connections and relationships among individuals within and across organizations. His work revolves around understanding how people interact, collaborate, and share information. In analyzing informal networks at more than fifty large organizations, Cross and his team identified four common role-players whose performance is critical to the productivity and health of any organization.
The value of this network effect can be applied to developing an impact community. In doing so, they help us uncover hidden sources of influence, fresh ideas, or empowering catalysts.
“The value of networks and adaptive space is that they enable influential people to tell stories about an innovation they are championing in ways that echo across the network. As these stories spread, others are attracted to engage, and the network of those engaged begins to include critical stakeholders, therefore enhancing the likelihood of organizational support for the innovation.”
Michael Arena, Rob Cross, Jonathan Sims, Mary Uhl-Bien. How to Catalyze Innovation in Your Organization. MIT Sloan Management Review. Summer 2017.
Brokers, connectors, and energizers all play important roles in successful innovation. While brokers and connectors represent distinct positions in a network, energizers can be anywhere in a network and can be brokers, connectors, or play another role altogether.
Brokers build bridges from one group to another within and outside an organization. This helps create new insights. They keep different subgroups in an informal network together. If they didn’t communicate across the subgroups, the network as a whole would splinter into smaller, less-effective segments.
Connectors link most people in an informal network with one another. They are essential to garnering support and developing and implementing new ideas. They aren’t always formal leaders within a unit or department, but they know who can provide critical information or expertise that the entire network draws on to get work done.
Energizers help push people beyond safe bets. They can be brokers, connectors, or anyone who brings focused enthusiasm which helps to unleash the passion necessary to drive co-creation, engagement, and innovation. They take the time to consult with and advise individuals from many different departments— marketing, membership, learning, or technologists — regardless of their own affiliation.
Challengers nurture productive conflict. They can be outliers who need extra motivation to be pulled in. They can also be people in an informal network that we can turn to for specialized expertise. These otherwise high performers tend not to leverage relationships.
Social network analysis (SNA) maps these roles to reveal patterns, clusters, and key influencers within a network. In the context of developing and sustaining healthy impact communities, SNA becomes vital due to several reasons:
Identifying Key Players – SNA helps pinpoint individuals who act as connectors or bridges between different groups. These key players often hold valuable positions in disseminating information, fostering collaboration, and driving community initiatives.
Enhancing Communication – By visualizing communication patterns, SNA highlights gaps and bottlenecks in information flow. Understanding these dynamics allows for interventions to improve communication, ensuring that information reaches everyone effectively.
Building Collaboration – Healthy communities thrive on collaboration. SNA identifies clusters of individuals or groups who work closely together, enabling community leaders to encourage cross-group collaboration and break down silos.
Predicting Behavior and Trends – Analyzing the network structure helps predict trends and behaviors within the community. This insight aids in forecasting potential issues or opportunities, allowing proactive measures to be taken.
Supporting Change Management – When implementing changes or initiatives, SNA helps in understanding how these changes might affect the network. It aids in predicting resistance points and identifying influential individuals who can help drive acceptance and adoption.
Measuring Impact – SNA provides metrics to evaluate the impact of interventions or changes within the community. This measurement is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of community-building efforts.
Social network analysis helps us understand and nurture healthy communities by enabling leaders to visualize, analyze, and optimize the connections. It offers a strategic lens to identify opportunities for fostering collaboration, improving communication, and strengthening relationships—all essential elements for sustaining vibrant and cohesive impact communities.
Practical Application
“Human experiences are the heart of your brand.”
Joseph A. Michelli
Here are some practical ways to leverage social network analysis to help design, enhance, or deepen our association communities:
Identify and Empower Connectors
Recognize these individuals and facilitate their role by creating platforms or events where they can share critical information or expertise.
Encourage them to lead informal discussions, webinars, or Q&A sessions where they can connect people needing information or expertise.
Leverage Brokers
Foster relationships between brokers and other departments or similar networks in different organizations.
Facilitate cross-departmental or cross-organizational workshops, forums, or joint projects where these individuals can exchange ideas and best practices.
Support Energizers
Encourage open communication channels that allow energizers to easily disseminate important updates or messages across subgroups.
Create dedicated communication platforms (forums, newsletters, online spaces) that cater to various subgroups but facilitate interaction between them through brokers.
Engage Challengers
Recognize and highlight the expertise of these specialists within the community.
Encourage them to contribute through webinars, blogs, or discussion panels focusing on their specialized areas to attract engagement and knowledge-sharing.
Network Mapping and Facilitation
Conduct periodic network mapping exercises to visualize the connections and roles of these individuals within the community.
Use this mapped data to strategically facilitate connections between different role players and encourage collaboration where needed.
Incentivize Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing
Offer incentives or recognition for individuals who actively bridge gaps between different segments of the community.
Create awards or acknowledgment programs for those who contribute significantly to the community's cohesion and knowledge sharing.
Training and Development Programs
Offer training or workshops that help individuals enhance their skills in connecting, bridging boundaries, brokering information, or showcasing their specialized expertise.
Encourage skill development in communication, leadership, and networking to further strengthen these roles within the association's community.
Feedback Mechanisms
Establish feedback loops to understand how well these roles are functioning and contributing to community engagement.
Regularly gather input from members to assess the effectiveness of these roles and make adjustments as needed.
By recognizing and actively supporting these roles and responsibilities, we can use social network analysis to do the things to make an impact community thrive: strengthen engagement, foster collaboration, facilitate knowledge sharing, and solve meaningful problems.
Impact Communities are Growth Communities
“Creative ecosystems are habitats open to new people and ideas, where people network easily and offbeat ideas are not stifled but are turned into new projects, companies, and growth. Such ecosystems are likely to do the best job of tapping the diverse creative talents of the most people, thus gaining competitive advantage.”
Richard Florida
Our members desire deep connection and to move the needle on meaningful problems. They want content, experiences, and products and they want to meet people who they have enough in common with, but who are different enough to learn something new, evolve their perspective, and make progress.
An impact community is a healthy, growth community. Not just in reducing isolation, teasing out the best ideas, and making connections, but in thinking differently about growth. Though it isn’t always easy, Impact communities successfully balance intention and inclusion, patience and action.
Referring to a graphic from one of my earlier articles (Leading the Growth Association), impact communities also push us toward a different type of growth. From the operational emphasis of organizational growth (on the left in yellow) to the cultural emphasis of community growth (in the middle in blue) toward the strategic emphasis of impact growth (on the right in green).
In the world of associations, two intended outcomes of an impact community are refreshed interest in membership and a financially diverse and fiscally healthy bottomline. Diverse stakeholders are motivated to contribute – time, talent, engagement, money– when they feel connected and this connection leads to meaningful change.
Product-led growth fuels connection. Join the product community and flip your destiny.
About the Author
James Young is founder and chief learning officer of the product community®. Jim is an engaging trainer and leading thinker in the worlds of associations, learning communities, and product development. Prior to starting the product community®, Jim served as Chief Learning Officer at both the American College of Chest Physicians and the Society of College and University Planning.
Please contact me for a conversation: james@productcommunity.us.