It’s September. Has Your Online Community Checked In?

I can’t believe it’s already September. Where has 2018 gone? Granted I’m incredibly excited about cooler temperatures (me and summer don’t get along), but my stars how are we already three quarters of the way through the year?Because we’re so far along in the year, you should also be taking stock of your online community. I get it, it’s also conference season in the association world. Everyone is busy with preparing for board meetings, chapter meetings, and final budget reviews and approvals for the following year. After the dust has settled, it seems like everyone disappears until January. But guess what? The work within your community still needs to move forward. Now’s a good time to take stock of where you are, how far you’ve come, and how you need to prepare as we begin to wrap up the third quarter and head into the fourth quarter of the year.Check in on your operational planIf you haven’t taken a look at where you are in terms of community operations before now, you need to do so today. It’s a little late in the game to figure out where you stand in terms of meeting goals, but it’s not too late to try to pull a Hail Mary if you’ve fallen behind in something.Examine where you said you would be at this point in time on your roadmap and be honest about how far you’ve come and how far you have to go. If you know that things are going along smoothly and you are planning to meet or exceed the plans for your roadmap for the year, congratulations! You and your team have managed to avoid/move roadblocks and stay focused throughout the year. Go you! Since you’re in such a comfortable position, consider reaching out to your colleagues to see where they are on their roadmaps and offer help, if you can.If you know that you are not expecting to meet one or more of your goals for the year, you need to set that expectation and ask for help. Identify areas you know that you will struggle to meet, if at all and areas where you can make up ground in the last quarter of the year. Have a conversation with your manager so they are aware and aren’t caught off guard when a senior leader questions them about where the program stands (and quite honestly, you should already be having these conversations regularly).Knowing where you stand operationally will help you and your team understand where you need to focus your energy to finish out the year as strong as possible.Check in on your staffIt’s incredibly easy to work with your head down and plug along to get work done. You may hear comments like “wow, your team is laser focused!” or “I always see Tara leaving late. I admire that she works so hard!” But these may also be signs of burnout and that is something you want to avoid.If you’re a manager, check your team’s PDO balances and make sure they’re taking the time they earned. Create an environment where they don’t feel like taking time off makes them less productive than the rest of the team. We all need an opportunity to disconnect from work, regroup, and refresh so that we are at our best when we’re in the office. If you’re an individual contributor, check in with your team members. If your workload is light, ask others how you can lend a hand to help move things forward. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask your team/manager for help.The goal should never be to work yourself to death and no one should have to wait until the last three months of the year to catch their breath. Check in before you have to intervene and your team will feel good about moving into the last part of the year.Check in with your leadershipIt’s easy to look at the numbers and see progress. Everything looks good and each month you send a report to senior leaders to show them how the community is doing and performing against the agreed upon metrics. And you don’t receive any questions or feedback. No news is good news, right? Maybe.Just because you’ve not heard anything regarding the monthly information you send doesn’t mean all is well. Leadership is busy. They receive a ton of information on a daily basis and sometimes they just skim over what hits their inboxes just to make sure there aren’t any glaring issues. That doesn’t mean they have taken the time to sit down and thoroughly read through each report they’ve been sent. Take it upon yourself to get some time on their calendars and check in. Put 5-7 slides together that shows where you’re at, what things look like going into the final quarter, and give them a heads up regarding any issues you foresee that they will need to know about. Stick to the important points and keep it digestible.Remember what I said about your manager being caught off guard when senior leadership asks for an update on your community program? Same goes for senior leadership. No one wants to go into the final board meeting of the year with the board asking questions about how the community program has contributed to the success of the business and not have solid answers. Give them the courtesy of providing concrete information that they can speak to, if needed.BONUS: Check in with your organizationThis one is super important. Not that the other three aren’t but knowing the direction your organization is going in is incredibly important to how you move forward with executing and modifying your community strategy. Has there been any information that has come forth regarding a change in direction that you may not have caught throughout the year? Was there a stronger emphasis put on engaging chapters more and providing them greater support? Did the focus on certifications shift from new certifications worldwide to supporting new certifications in India only? These are all things that you consider when building your community strategy. If any of these items have changed, you should be looking at any of the tactics you developed to support them and see if they need to change, also. Remember, amazing communities aren’t built in a silo. Your strategy should be pivoting with the rest of the organization, where appropriate.A quarterly check-in is essential to maintaining the health of not only your community, but your community staff and the rest of the organization.What quarterly check-ins do you have in place to make sure your community stays on track? What did we miss? Tell us in the comments below!