Community by Association Talks the State of Community Management 2018 Research with Rachel Happe

The Community Roundtable has dedicated itself to advancing the discipline of community management and championing community professionals. From putting a focus on the skills community managers need to get the attention of executives to highlighting what best-in-class communities are doing to move forward, each year the research gets better and better. And 2018 is no exception.I had the opportunity to speak with Rachel Happe, Principal and Co-founder of The Community Roundtable, about this year’s research and here’s what she had to say:

Community by Association: Thanks for taking the time to chat, Rachel. For those who aren’t familiar, can you take a moment to explain what The Community Roundtable is?

Rachel: Sure! We are a firm that is dedicated to helping organizations (and that’s important, not just any individual, but organizations) build successful communities and championing those people who run communities within those organizations. We try to elevate the perspective of community program owners in the market and through research, training, resources, and advisory services.

CBA: You mentioned research and some people may be familiar with the State of Community Management research. For those who aren’t, can you explain what that is and how long The Community Roundtable has been conducting it?

Rachel: We started in 2009 as TheCR and, at the time, nobody had a shared understanding of what community management was. It was absolutely done out in the market, but everyone was kind of doing it differently. There wasn’t really a common language, it wasn’t really acknowledged by people who were not doing it, and because of that nobody understood what it was or the value of it. We started a membership network because we thought “we need to bring all of these community professionals together and develop that shared understanding of what it is we’re doing.” So, our shared purpose was to document the value of communities and community management.Our shared value, then, was the research that came from it. It’s something that we couldn’t do on our own. I mean, I suppose I could have written a whole document on what community management was myself, but it wouldn’t have had any credibility if it hadn’t had been a collaborative effort soliciting the actual practices of community management from our network and from our broader ecosystem.

CBA: How is this year’s research different than past years?

Rachel: We’ve gone through a couple of phases in our research. In the beginning it was qualitative because we didn’t really know what to ask. We were just hosting conversations with our members and documenting the practices they were sharing about how they approached community management. We then categorized those (approaches) so that they were organized and shared them in a consolidated way, through our research. So, the first few years was focused on “this is how community management is practiced.”Once we did that for a few years, we started to see patterns and we realized “oh, well we can ask how many people do it this way.” So, we transitioned the research into quantitative research to document how many community practitioners were approaching it in certain ways. After doing that for a few years, we got to a place where we could benchmark what a great community approach was versus what a standard or average community approach was. That helps community professionals and their stakeholders understand the difference between just practicing community management and practicing it at a really high level. And that’s important as we’re all trying to figure out what it is and how to do it better.In the past couple of years, those operational measures have matured. We were at the point where we were like “yes we know you all need a strategy” and saying that again wasn’t all that helpful so this year we transitioned yet again. Because communities are getting a lot more visibility at higher and higher levels of the organization we decided it’s time to take this research and ask, “how are communities impacting their organizations?” Not just how well you practice community management, but what are communities producing, what are they generating, and how are they impacting key strategic objectives? That’s a pretty exciting evolution and I’m proud that we’ve been able to get that far in 9 years. This year’s results are incredible.

CBA: Yeah, and the question around impact to organizations is a big one to answer. Knowing that you found some very exciting things, what are some of the key themes that came out of this year’s research?

Rachel: The way we figure out what’s most interesting to research is not only our experience with the research, but also from members of our annual SOCM working group. Going in we already had some ideas about things we were hearing from our advisory clients and our members on a regular basis, so we had a pretty good sense of where things are from that perspective. But then we bounced things off of a group of members who are familiar with the research (the SOCM working group). And they often say “well, yeah that’s interesting but there’s also this other thing” or “that’s not really how I’m seeing it” and together we figure out what matters.That collaboration led us to three things this year. We were looking at how communities are acting as change agents, what financial value and other value communities are generating for their organizations, and how community management roles were evolving. We know there’s a lot of flux in the market right now and it almost seems like executives are a bit seized up in that there’s more visibility for programs, but hiring hasn’t opened up. There’s a growing awareness of community value and yet the executives aren’t quite sure where to make their bets in terms of investment. We wanted to figure out what was going on with that.

CBA: It seems like that could pull in a lot of information that could really surprise you or have you say “yeah, well, we kind of know that already.” That said, what did (or didn’t) surprise you about the 2018 research findings?

Rachel: There were a few things. The really big thing is this disconnect between the value being generated and the resources being applied. Having said that, I could back up and say (and I actually wrote this in the research), you never want to ask a question that you don’t want to hear the answer for. Asking about value generation was a bit nerve wracking because, while we know some programs absolutely are generating a lot of value, it’s not clear even to us how widespread that is. Are 90% of communities failing and only 10% succeeding or is success more widespread than that?What really surprised me was the scale of the impact and at every level of the organization; the breadth and the depth of the impact that all communities are having on organizations. It allowed us to say, “yes communities are absolutely transforming their organizations” and most people can’t see all the ways that is happening because of the functional boundaries we have. We see things in these very siloed ways, so we see the impact that communities are having on our little box but not any broader. The other thing that surprised me was how supportive executives are at this point of community approaches (at least theoretically supportive) and how positively communities are affecting cultural and brand sentiment. There’s very little negative sentiment generated by well-managed communities.

CBA: Which is different than we’ve heard in the past, right? Because we’ve always heard the narrative that there was negative sentiment therefore there was no support. But it’s not that there is negative sentiment maybe it’s just the thought of “ok, we get it but help us understand what you need from us.”

Rachel: Right! When it’s well managed there’s barely any negative sentiment. It’s both of those things: the overwhelming support of executives and the overwhelmingly positive impact on sentiment both counter a general narrative that’s out in the market which is executives aren’t sure and there’s a lot of risk involved. And that’s not what we saw.

CBA: I wanted to ask about resources. Many associations generally don’t have significant access to resources that will allow them to help build their programs or they lack the appropriate support to obtain the necessary resources they need. How can community managers use this research to gain that support?

Rachel: What I’ve observed in the association market is that communities are seen or have the perception that they are a cost center that supports members. If you step way back and take a macro perspective, associations are communities. Online community programs are what will digitally transform associations to create lockstep alignment with their markets. A lot of associations right now are struggling with affinity, relevancy and/or impact on the day-to-day success of their members. Well, how do you address that? You provide a community that gives those people help every day, not by providing content for them but by acting as a gathering spot for them to connect with each other. If associations did nothing else, they could provide a shared space for people to interact and do better.My perspective on that is that most association community teams aren’t thinking about their impact in big enough ways. They are thinking about “how can I get these documents to people faster? How can I execute a survey faster? How can I do this tactical thing faster?” It really needs to be brought up to a completely different level and lately we’re seeing some associations who are having this discussion at the board level because the boards are starting to see that they really need to provide this mechanism for regular interaction with their members on an ongoing basis.And I will say that if associations are struggling for resources, some of the smallest associations I know with less than 10 people have a community because it’s the most efficient way you can interact with your members and conduct research and serve them. So, I think that’s a bit of a false understanding of the role of community in the association world.

CBA: Now that we’ve got this beautiful research that gives us these wonderful “a-ha” moments, what should executives be pulling out of it?

Rachel: We found two things. First, almost half of all of community professionals are burned out, which is problematic. And there are two things that are going on. One is that community teams are doing a lot of hidden work. When we ask them how much they are supporting the rest of the organization or how many part-time people are involved in the rest of the community, we discovered that there’s a lot of governance and coaching work going on by community teams. They’re acting like centers of excellence, but they’re not being tasked with that responsibility. That’s all additional work they’re doing on top of helping the community engage and succeed. When we ask how many communities consider themselves centers of excellence, only 8% did. There’s this huge gap between communities acting like centers of excellence and community teams that are resourced to be centers of excellence. That’s huge and represents a lot of skillset issues. If I’m an internal consultant, that’s a totally different skill than engaging members. You’ve got to know about how to engage members to help coach your colleagues, but some people who like to engage members do not have the skills to coach their colleagues or to walk through workflows and explain how it impacts their business.That gets me to my last point which is that communities are generating immense value, but community teams are only spending about 10% of their time on business management tasks. Everything that goes into that bucket is communicating value and advocating for community within their organization. That value is not getting translated in a way the rest of the organization can understand. The gap there is business skills or resources. Community managers may have skills but may not be able to use them because they’re strained on the resource side or they may not have the skills at all. Meaning we need more business analysis and consulting skills, we need more business program management skills to advocate across the organization. So, the biggest thing I think executives could do is bring in some operational expertise and some business expertise to help support community teams who are, rightly, prioritizing their limited time on engagement, content, and making sure that community is generating value (which is what they should be doing if they have limited resources). But it’s kind of this chicken and egg problem where if they can’t communicate value, they can’t get resources. If they can’t get resources, they can’t communicate their value. Something has to give, and it really has to be the executives coming in and seeing that issue. It’s very hard to get out from under the boulder on your own. Someone has to help push it off a little bit and give you some breathing room.

CBA: So those are some pretty big revelations that came out of that research and a lot to take away. With all of that how do you think the findings will shape the future of community management?

Rachel: It’s interesting because I was asked this question by the working group and I was like (laughing), “I’m really busy with this year’s findings that I haven’t really digested what happens next!” But I started thinking about part of that conversation and figured that if this year we’re looking at how communities impact organizations, we’ll probably do that for a couple of years. We need to really figure that out and learn how that works. Once we figure that out and are comfortable with that, the next thing to look at is how organizations are affecting their markets/industries. I just read an article about how online healthcare communities are really disrupting the healthcare market and I think they’re sort of the canary in the coal mine. There’s something called lead user research in product development where you’re looking at cases that really have a pressing need or more extreme need and that’s healthcare right? If I have a disease that I can’t get enough support for, I’m absolutely going to reach out to a community and try and empower that community to exert pressure on the medical industry to get answers for me. That need isn’t quite so high in other industries, necessarily, but the dynamics will be the same as communities start becoming a more solid approach to consolidating your customer base.So, I see market transformation as the next wave or phase. Then, I don’t know, world domination comes after that?

CBA: I see it on the horizon, Rachel! What else would you like people to know about this research that we haven’t already covered?

Rachel: I think what I’m seeing, and I am just a tangential participant in this conversation, but the whole digital transformation/future of work conversation, a lot of that is very technically oriented (what systems do we need in place). But there’s a whole cultural transformation piece of that and I feel like that’s the part where executives are kind of seized up because it seems nebulous and squishy and you can’t just apply technology. There’s so many angles you could address, so which is the right one to make your bets?I feel like we have started to give them a clear path by saying you could use a community program to start that transformation and co-create the future with your organization rather than making one bet. I mean, you’re making a bet on your employees being able to help you figure it out and that is the future of leadership – stop telling people what to do and help them figure it out. Enable them to help you address the future. I think that’s what community programs can do. And I think what we’ve been able to document is that we know how to do this, there’s clear impact and that impact is broad and deep in organizations and it empowers individuals which I think is the most important thing. So, the message I want to take to people is that you can be confident in investing in this approach because it is what will help you see the future.I want to give a big thank you to Rachel Happe for taking the time to chat about this year’s research.

To access this year’s report, or for access to previous research reports from The Community Roundtable, go here, or visit CommunityRoundtable.com for more resources to help make your community more successful. You can also follow Rachel and TheCR on Twitter.

Rachel Happe (@rhappe) is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable, a company dedicated to advancing the business of community. The Community Roundtable collaborates with clients to develop proven, practical strategies for better engagement. Clients rely on TheCR’s models, research, and networks to take their communities to the next level.Rachel co-founded The Community Roundtable to support business leaders developing their community, collaboration, and engagement strategies. Clients including SAP, AAAS, EA, Ciena, the Canadian Medial Association, and H&R Block benefit from Rachel’s ability to make sense of abstract trends and her ability to see the implications that technical and operational decisions can have on people and processes.Rachel has over twenty years of experience working with emerging technologies including enterprise social networking, eCommerce, and enterprise software applications. Rachel has served as a product executive at Mzinga, Bitpass, & IDe, and as IDC’s first analyst covering social technologies. She started her business career as an analyst at PRTM.