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| Photo by Sarah Ziegler |
A friend and I were recently talking about adoption. Specifically we were talking about the adoption of tools that help build enterprise communities. One idea we discussed that I haven’t read that much about is:
Setting expectations.
I find that for some people, they just want to create a community because their peer has one (the me too syndrome). Others have good intentions but don’t know where to even start to build a vibrant community. In both situations, neither have defined what expectations they have for their community. In both situations, instead of just allowing them to create the community and have it fail, the requester needs to clearly understand their goals so they can use the technology to meet their goals.
So, step 1: get the requester to define their hopes and dreams for the community they want to build. Have them define how do they see the community working. Have them, articulate what their goals are for the community. Work with them to design how the community will work. The key to the success, is to get them to set their own expectations for the community and then have them work to have their community meet that expectation.
While setting expectations are great for the community, one of the keys to ensuring the community is as vibrant as desired, the community manager must communicate what expectations they have for the community to the community. In addition, as the community grows, the community manager must influence the community to meet those expectations, while being willing to reset their expectations and adapt to how the community grows.
Setting expectations are crucial, being influential and flexible is equally important. But then again, isn’t that the recipe for success in almost all situations?
from Eric Ziegler’s http://zag.zig.us blog http://zag.zig.us/2013/11/setting-expectations.html