FABulous Idea

Nearby Bristol Motor Speedway got very deliberate about engaging their community to improve the race experience.  Last year a smart employee created the Fan Advisory Board.

The result?  An infield JumboTron, Scoring Tower, and Shuttle Bus Routes to get folks to and from the track.

Being on the board is such an honor that fans have to apply for a seat.  Last year there were 1600 applicants.  (There are 150,000 fans in the stands twice each year.)  BMS is the hardest ticket to get on the NASCAR circuit–because they listen to their fans.

Customers always have a different perspective on the transaction.  They are usually eager to improve the experience.  Listen to them.  Empower them.  Spend money on their recommendations.  They’ll come back and bring more customers with them.

Is it Secret? Is it Safe?

“My name is Todd Davis.  This is my social security number 457-55-5462.”  It was for real.  In a radio commercial, the president of Lifelock gave out his real SSN.  Lifelock guarantees that you will not be a victim of identity theft using their program.

We recently started attending a new church after 12 years at another.  During our first month, the pastor asked for volunteers to be what amounted to “hall monitors”.  These guys roam the facilities during classes and services as security guards (unarmed!).  The church had some of these, but needed some new folks in the rotation.

I instantly felt better about my kids in the other wing of the building.  Churches are communities in which there is a lot of intuitive trust.  And maybe too much at times.  There are a lot of new faces in our church.  We need to be very deliberate about security. 

If your community is based online, be diligent about privacy and information security.  If your community is face-to-face, be diligent about personal security.  And in both cases, let everyone know what you’re doing.  If you don’t make it a point to tell the group, nobody knows that you care and that you’re active. 

BTW, the post title was a tip of the hat to the Tolkien fans out there.

Building Stages 2

Friday we looked at Scott Peck’s 4 community building stages.  Today we have a model in organizational theory which is based on team building.  Again from wikipedia . . .

• Forming where the team members have some initial discomfort with each other but nothing comes out in the open. They are insecure about their role and position with respect to the team. This corresponds to the initial stage of pseudocommunity.

• Storming where the team members start arguing heatedly and differences and insecurities come out in the open. This corresponds to the second stage given by Scott Peck, namely chaos.

• Norming where the team members lay out rules and guidelines for interaction that help define the roles and responsibilities of each person. This corresponds to emptiness, where the community members think within and empty themselves of their obsessions to be able to accept and listen to others.

• Performing where the team finally starts working as a cohesive whole, and effectively achieve the tasks set of themselves. In this stage individuals are aided by the group as a whole where necessary, in order to move further collectively than they could achieve as a group of separated individuals.

• Transforming This corresponds to the stage of true community. This represents the stage of celebration, and when individuals leave, as they must, there is a genuine feeling of grief, and a desire to meet again. Traditionally this stage was often called “Mourning”.

Take a look at stage two here. Organizational Theory calls it storming. Peck calls it chaos. Your team or community needs to have a Code of Honor BEFORE you get to this stage. Coming up with your code in the midst of this stage is not a good idea.

Building Stages

I want to share with you, as food for thought, two different models academics have constructed as observations of the formation of communities.  These are similar in many ways.  The first is from Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author.  This description is from Wikipedia.

In his book The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace’, Scott Peck says that community has three essential ingredients:

• Inclusivity
• Commitment
• Consensus

Based on his experience with community building workshops, Scott Peck says that community building typically goes through four stages:

• Pseudocommunity: This is a stage where the members pretend to have a bon homiewith one another, and cover up their differences, by acting as if the differences do not exist. Pseudocommunity can never directly lead to community, and it is the job of the person guiding the community building process to shorten this period as much as possible.

• Chaos: When pseudocommunity fails to work, the members start falling upon each other, giving vent to their mutual disagreements and differences. This is a period of chaos. It is a time when the people in the community realize that differences cannot simply be ignored. Chaos looks counterproductive but it is the first genuine step towards community building.

• Emptiness: After chaos comes emptiness. At this stage, the people learn to empty themselves of those ego related factors that are preventing their entry into community. Emptiness is a tough step because it involves the death of a part of the individual. But, Scott Peck argues, this death paves the way for the birth of a new creature, the Community.

• True community: Having worked through emptiness, the people in community are in complete empathy with one another. There is a great level of tacit understanding. People are able to relate to each other’s feelings. Discussions, even when heated, never get sour, and motives are not questioned.

I find the description interesting, if a bit idealistic (complete empathy, never get sour?!).  I can see some truth in the description as I look back on my marriage.  Twelve years into it and I would say we’re more in the true community stage than any of the others.  The not questioning of motives is a big step.

Communities can differ in so many ways relating to size, commitment level, whether or not they are voluntary (family), etc. As we continue to study communities and how they form and grow I think it would be useful to define those differences and how they affect that formation.  The description above would probably be one of a very high level of commitment, which is not the level of most of our communities.  More later.

Come back Monday for a team building model from Organization Theory which is very similar to Peck’s.

The 14-Day Free Trial

A couple of weeks ago, I called three health clubs in town. 

1. “Hi, I wanted to see if you offer a free trial period.” . . . “Um, no we don’t. (Sounding disgruntled that I even asked.)  You can come by and work out for 8 dollars a day, though.”

2. “Hi, I wanted to see if you offer a free trial period.” . . . “Um, no.  Wait, we do give you the first week free if you sign up for one our plans.”  (Somehow that doesn’t sound like a free trial.)

3. “Hi, I wanted to see if you offer a free trial period.” . . . “Absolutely! (sounds very excited) Let me let you speak with Chris who can set up a time for you to come by!”

I’m on the last day of my 14-day free trial with #3.  Go figure.  Surely I don’t have to sermonize over doing things like #3.  This one speaks for itself. 

I met the woman who answered the phone that day.  I didn’t have to ask the name.  I just knew who it was.  She works the front counter and is that sickeningly cheerful all day long.  She may be the most valuable employee in that place.   Every community needs a Sonya at the front counter.

This post is really about two things–the free trial and Sonya.  The point is, #3 wanted me in the door, and they acted like it with policy and people. 

(Oh, sorry, did I just sermonize?)

Stats into Monsters

One more thing on keeping stats while we’re on the subject.  Read yesterday’s post before proceeding.  If I was the health club owner, I would sponsor a weight-loss drive within my club.  “For every pound that our members lose this month, we’re donating $10 to the American Cancer Society.” 

Then I’d publicize the hound out of it.  Put out press releases at the end of the month saying how many pounds cumulative the members have lost and how much you’ve donated to your Good Monsters program.  Take an ad out if you have to, but it’ll probably fly for free in most small-town newspapers.  And obviously, publicize it well within your own community.

As Julia pointed out in yesterday’s comment, stats can be useful for staff to engage members on a personal level as well. 

Keeping stats can be useful in so many ways; linking the growth (or loss in the scenario above) of your members to your benevolence program might be one of the best.

Keeping Stats

One of the big reasons we join communities is because we want to grow.  Figuratively, of course.  The way we know that we are growing is by keeping up with our stats.  That should be the responsibility of the community, not the individual.

Let’s take the health club as a for instance.  I’m 10 days into the 14-day free trial at the local club.  Last week I saw the local TV weather guy pumping some iron.  He had his little notebook with him recording his repetitions, weights, etc.  Now this is a top-notch health club with all of the bells and whistles.   And here is the individual having to do the legwork that the community should be doing.  Why doesn’t the health club make it a point to keep up with this kind of stuff for the individuals?

Think about it.  The weather guy keeps up with his stats in his little notebook.  What keeps him from taking his little book of stats to the gym across town?  Nothing.

Now, picture this . . . The health club has little data entry kiosks spread throughout the gym.  The user finishes his curls, walks to the kiosk, enters (either electronically or on paper) his ID, his weights and his reps and keeps working out.  Next to the kiosk at the front door is a set of scales and a blood pressure machine.  Same thing happens.  They make the info available on their website which is tied to the database at the gym.

The weather guy doesn’t have to carry the little notebook.  The gym keeps the stats for him, makes them available to him.  The next time he thinks about going to the gym across town he’ll think “Gym number one has my stats.  If I go to the other it’s like I never did all those workouts.”  Most guys won’t go to the trouble to carry a notepad.  But they would get excited about their progress if the gym made it easy to keep up with.

If I owned the health club I might even pay some kid minimum wage to go around and take notes if folks want them to.  How about those fancy schmancy eliptical machines?  I know those things can keep up with the time and calories and such.  Why not hook that data into the individual’s account so they can see their progress?

I’m addicted to Sport Clips.  Yes, I like to watch ESPN while I’m getting my hair trimmed.  That’s an obvious plus.  But here’s the little thing that keeps me coming back.  Every time I walk in they ask for the last four digits of my telephone number.  They enter it into the computer and then they say “You usually get a number two (clipper) guard on the sides and a scissor cut on top.  Is that what you want today?”  “Yeah, that’s great,” I say.  They even keep up with my preference on hair gel (none, at the moment).

Their little system of record keeping has saved me a lot of stress and a lot of bad haircuts.  I could never remember which size guard I liked.  Was it a number 4 or a number 1?  Geez, I never got it right it seemed and my head always looked wrong when I left.  But at Sport Clips, they take notes.  They keep stats.  My hair looks the same every time I walk out of there.  That’s a big lock-in for a scatter-brained customer who can barely remember the last four of his telephone number.  It’s easy.  I don’t even have to think. 

Now why can’t the health club do that?  They could lock me in if they just kept up with my stats.

It’s not just about the lock-in for the business or community.  Keeping stats really helps the individual.  Why doesn’t the gymnastics gym my daughters go to keep up with the scores from the competitions each year?  They could show progress for their students so easily if they just kept up.  Why don’t more parents keep up with the stats (memories) of their kids through digital scrapbooking?  Why don’t churches keep up with more than the attendance and offering?  They could show the spiritual growth of their members through recordkeeping if they just tried. 

Most communities are there for the growth of the individual members.  The only way we can grasp or even remember the growth is through keeping stats.  That responsibility should rest on the shoulders of the community.  As community leaders, we know which stats to keep up with and the most efficient way for our members to enter and track that data.  If we take the initiative to set up the system, it’s much better for everyone.