Thread by @marksbirch

There will always be setbacks when building a community.

After the initial success, bumps in the road start to appear as I experienced in scaling the Enterprise Sale Forum (@Enterprise_Sale).

These are ten lessons learned. A thread 🧵

#community

1/ Cult of Personality where you as founder have an outsized impact on community and members feel the community is about you, not them.

Reduce your presence while empowering others to lead and shine in your community.

2/ Bureaucracy crops up as you expand and operationalize, communications get muddled, silos crop up, and this causes decision making to slow.

Keep communications open and foster transparency as a core value.

3/ People and personalities often clash which is inevitable when many different people from many different backgrounds come together.

Listen actively and always talk issues out among the people with grievances.

4/ Turnover in leadership is a common issue in volunteer organizations and can cause communities to crumble quickly.

Always be recruiting and build up future leaders on an ongoing basis.

5/ Personal burnout is real, something I faced a few times when you pour your time, energy, and passion into something you love.

Entrust others to lead the community and dedicate yourself to rest and recovery.

6/ Diversity and inclusion is often talked about in companies, it’s also a common problem in communities.

Prioritize diversity from the start by making your leadership diverse.

7/ Member safety is an ever growing concern and situations will arise when one community member harasses or threatens another.

Create, communicate, and enforce a Code of Conduct so that members are clear on appropriate behaviors.

8/ Financial stress can happen then situations disrupt a community’s revenue stream, much like COVID-19 has in ending in-person events.

Know your finances inside and out, economize, and develop new revenue streams.

9/ Data privacy and sharing is a growing concern and laws are getting more stringent, your members are trusting you with their data.

Avoid sharing any personal data on members and guard their data religiously.

10/ Acts of nature cannot be predicted and such tragedies that can have a terrible impact on members in a community.

Humility and the heart to help are your guides to leading community during these times.

11/ If you found this useful because you are building or managing a community facing any of these challenges, please reach out. I am happy to help.

I also wrote this in my recent book Community-in-a-Box if you want to read more:

amazon.com/dp/B08JNFRLP3

#community