There aren’t any steps. I’ve never really liked “STEPS” lists, because they are too generic (unless you are putting together the Space Shuttle, or something like that).  It is as if they will take you to the holy grail.

Steps imply that they must be done in order – in sequence.  Yet each community is in its own phase.  They have their own unique strengths & weaknesses & culture.  There isn’t a One-Size-Fits-All method.  It is impossible to come up with a list of steps that will cover them all.

Instead, here are 10 things you must do (or not do) when creating a community.

1. DO gather (virtually or in person) the community together (or a portion of it) and look at it from a performance improvement perspective.  You can’t go in thinking that an online community will solve all of its problems.  How much better to be able to go in, recognize an area that can be improved, and then be able to provide a solution, whatever that may be!  If not provide it, then recognize what a potential solution could be and who to contact.  It could be training, process re-engineering, dealing with cultural issues…
2. Don’t just target the GenY or Millenials.  Those who are older get this just as much as they do.
3. Don’t ask them to blog, or tweet, or use a wiki.  They won’t know what to do with it.  Well then, how do we help them use these new tools?
4. Work the tools into their workflow.  If it is an extra chore, they won’t use it (this seems pretty intuitive, but is forgotten in practice).  Make it a part of how they work.  But don’t focus on the tools either…
5. Focus on the people, the culture.  Usage of the tools will follow.  Help the people “work out loud.”
6. Don’t create communities hoping they will join.  Make sure you have a plan! (Again, that seems obvious, but…)  Throwing something out there will rarely work.  Be strategic, yet flexible enough to allow the employees to set the agenda.
7. Do set the example yourself.  Use it.  Show others how it can be used in the real world.  At NASA we are in the middle of development of our enterprise social solution.  How do we communicate?  Using the tool and principles of transparency.  I can’t tell you how effective that has been in showing others the value and how to use it practically.  Oh, and I have avoided a ton of meetings and emails as well.
8. Do dare to be different.  Don’t go with the flow which will only lead you back to the same results the organization has always achieved.  You MUST go against the grain – not to be combative, however.  But when people challenge you, stand up with them (not ‘to’ them) and help educate them, allthewhile having a smile on your face.  Some will laugh at you and that is okay.  Just smile, knowing that they will come back later and use the very thing they mocked.
9. DO focus on TRUST.  I can’t stress this enough.  Talk about it in your meetings, online, on the phone, all the time.
10. Help others understand the difference between personal and professional uses – internal and external uses.  They are very different (although they can bleed into each other, but keep it simple with them for right now).  Beat that drum loud and hard.

Over the course of a couple hours yesterday and one today, I sat through a deep dive into a web site redesign.  They wanted to refresh it, bring it up to speed (so that, for example, it does not show an old cell phone on the front page).  They had plans to update layout and navigation and organize the current information a bit better and bring in some new info.  After some prodding, I found out that the purpose of this redesign was to help people find information better and just to make it look more modern.

In the old version there was navigation and search to help users find information.  In the new, there was search and a redesigned navigation.  The improvement for find-ability was very incremental.  But if that is really the goal, we weren’t doing it.

We forget that there are more ways to find information.  Search.  Heirarchical navigation. Tagging. “Others who viewed this also viewed…” and other techniques.  Those are the technical ways.  But we can’t forget that one of the best ways to find information is through PEOPLE.  I know – weird concept, but it works.  Link people together and they will find the information that is not in a system.  Rather, it is in their heads, or their desk drawer on a piece of paper, or on a local hard drive, or in a book you didn’t know about, or it hasn’t been discovered until you and they put your heads together to discover it.

Right now more systems focus on information or documents.  What they should focus on is people since they are the ones who create the information. Focus on the people and the information will take care of itself.  As @dave said during #lrnchat tonight, “Biggest thing for lrng professionals in adopting soc learning is changing mindset – let learners share expertise #lrnchat.”  Enable that and you are golden.

Photo from Flickr by Thomas Hawk

WHY #1: Social Learning FOCUSES on People.

What this means could be different for everyone.  But I think that there are many similarities.  (ASIDE:For some reason, whenever I think about this, Barbara Streisand starts singing in my head.)

This is what it means to me.

First, social learning focuses on people rather than focusing on a presenter or instructor.  This may be a little scary to some, and  others see this as threatening to their job.  Instead of being a presenter we need to become a true facilitator of learning no matter what the mode.  It is a slight change of wording, but a large paradigm shift.  It is not a one way street – the instructor to the pupil.  Instead of the main contact being from teacher to student, it is student to student.  Because we focus on people, we want to help them exchange ideas and learn from each other.  We facilitate conversation, share resources, share information.

Second, it is not focused on content because we are not the ones creating it anymore.  It’s the learner who is creating the content.  For example, if you go out on a public drive at your company, you can learn a lot.  But how do you find it all?  And which folder do you look in?  Which version of the document that you found is the correct one.  And who ‘owns’ it?  This lesser approach focuses on the content itself and on the document instead of the person. This is why I am not a fan of Microsoft’s SharePoint – it centers on files and content.  I prefer systems that focus on the people, and there are plenty of them (a shortlist here).

Another thing it does not do is focus on the legal or corporate mandates.  For example, being forced to take sexual harassment training.  In our new of environment we are not focused on what one MUST do, but on what they CAN do according to their individual needs, not according to the needs of the organization.  And that is really the crux of it.  Focusing on what the learners want and need, not on what the organization wants or needs.  (Not that there shouldn’t be mandates from a company on training, but this is not the focus in this context.)

What it DOES do, is it gives the “power to the people” and allows them to take control of their learning. This may seem like craziness at first, but hold on to this thought: They already have control.  As much as we learning professionals like to think we have control, we don’t.  Influence, yes.  Control, no.  For example, how many of you have created (in your estimation) the best training and still had someone give you a bad Level 1 score or they fell asleep?  It has happened to us all.  Yes, they have control.

In my next series post I will give you a fabulous example of this and talk about the ramifications of focusing on people.

Until then…  What does “Focusing on the People” mean (or not mean) to you?

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