Be a Partner, Not Just a Collaborator
I’m a firm believer that genuinely impactful work does not happen in a vacuum. It takes the creativity, passion, and brainpower of people dedicated to the success of something to bring it to life. That’s partly what makes communities so powerful, in my opinion. People are coming together to share knowledge and advance a cause because they are passionate about it or believe so wholly in it.
When we’re building our online communities within our associations, we know how important it is to find the common threads across our organization to uncover where we can add value and connect to business goals. We are aware that understanding the association’s priorities is key to figuring out where the community can solve pain points and show the impact of those efforts on the business. We also know that having conversations with key stakeholders within your association is the best way to uncover those priorities.
The key lies in how you build those relationships as you have those conversations.I have a team of 6 people that I lead in my daily work, managing a large online community for a membership association. One of the things each of my team members is incredibly good at is cross-collaboration and relationship building. My content editor attends a regular organizational content team meeting to talk about upcoming content and how they can help one another. I have a specialist who is responsible for our data that has built strong relationships across the organization. He is part of a hub and spoke team for customer experience to ensure the community voice of the customer is captured in other dashboards (and that we’re capturing those insights for the community in other places). These are examples of the work this team puts in to ensure that we are strategically aligned across the association to provide the most value. These internal connections allow us to make a dynamic impact on our membership, which creates member loyalty. Community is becoming an essential part of the way we do business. What our online community enables has been key to the discovery and support of some of our new products and experiences.
But it’s not enough that these connections exist for my team. What they do with those connections is what makes them strategic partners across business lines. They don’t just attend cross-functional meetings and bring information back to the larger team as an FYI. With every interaction they have, they walk in representing the community and the association with an eye toward mutual benefit. They become extensions of these teams because of how they work together. And to be clear, every conversation they have doesn’t always end with a community “to-do,” but the questions they ask is what creates those partnerships for the long-term.
What questions are they asking? I’m glad you asked.When people come to you (or when you go to others) to understand how you can help drive strategic goals, begin with these questions:
What are your goals/what are you trying to accomplish?
What’s your pain point/what’s causing you to be stuck?
What would be the ideal fix for this situation?
What have you already tried? What worked and what didn’t?
Why community?
If approaching someone to see if community collaboration is an option, ask how you can help or offer solutions based on what you know, if possible.
The important thing about these questions is that it shows an interest in what is happening outside of your bubble. These questions also position you to be a part of the solution, where possible. It opens up the opportunity for new projects and experiences for both community and the other lines of business that lead to long-term partnerships and collaboration. If you are a team of one, this is one way you can ensure that you have support for other initiatives where community resources are lacking AND allows for development opportunities for others within your organization. They are learning more about building community while you are learning about what drives your association and what else you can do to contribute to value creation.
Being a strategic partner isn’t just about executing and showing impact. It’s also about building relationships that allow the community to be a consideration to drive greater value, even if it ultimately isn’t a fit for a particular activity. When community is top of mind for others, that’s strategic impact that can’t be disputed.