Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how communication happens at work. I'm not talking about project communication or personal interactions. I'm talking about connecting with a community at large, a community whose members you may not have interacted with (much) in real life. Given that today we have so much communication going on in our lives, finding the mind-space for yet another unofficial missive is challenging.
There are a couple of options that I've tried:
1. Writing to the group email - This seemed like an obvious choice at first - I am writing to a group email which was created explicitly for this purpose. It's a democratic forum, where every member of the group has just as much right to write into it. There are no hierarchies here. However, is it effective in reaching out? Not really. Discussions here worked about 10% of the time. Some of the failures, I chalk it down to lack of interest in the topic or perhaps, people have set up filters and don't bother to read the emails. After awhile it feels like you're spamming the rest of the group as no one responds except maybe a couple of your
Sometimes it happens that the topic gets off track and it's hard to get everyone back in track without sounding like an autocrat. Eventually when that happens too often, the community stops taking the forum seriously. This can be mitigated by moderation or posting guidelines but it becomes just an additional headache to monitor.
2. Brown Bag/Talks/Presentations: This one is an old trick, have a scheduled mid week 30 minutes set aside for presentations/talks. Requires a not so trivial amount of effort though in tracking down speakers, following up, ensuring at least some presence and keeping the momentum going. Still, it's probably the one I've seen most success in.
3. Guerrilla style - In any office community there are some people who are more enthusiastic, more influential, or simply more loved. Reach out to them and have them spread the message of whatever latest initiative you have up your sleeve. I have had moderate success with this, but again this gets old very quickly. Initially the influencers are happy to spread the word, but then someone or the other gets busy and you're back to square one.
4. Call for real life gatherings - In a desperate attempt to go beyond the email wall, I've tried to have a gathering of the community on a regular basis. Time and project schedules are the number one blocker in this case. Not many make it and then it seems pointless to go through all that trouble (Schedule an event - plan an agenda - find a time - book a room - invite people - rinse repeat)
Problem : No one wants to log in to YASN (Yet Another Social Network). However this idea needs more exploring. Certainly several groups have found a lot of success with blogging, for example.
I've been looking around for ideas to help keep a community growing and together. I've been looking specifically at the successful forums - the Developers forum for example. What keeps them ticking? Are Developers naturally a loquacious lot? Or is it the excitement of building stuff that keeps them together? On other forums such as the Open Source community, it's easy to see why that works - they are working towards a common goal.
I'm wondering if that is it, if the QA community at office is somehow missing a common goal? Ideas are welcome!
Nicely captured. My 2 cents on it !
ReplyDeleteHowever, what we need to understand is why do we need to communicate (let's say as part of QA group)? Is it because we want to share things or is it because I want to learn from other's experience or is it because I see too many unknown faces in office. So I think the first step is to identify the need of communication. Probably thats why we have 2 modes of communication one active (like your Brown Bag sessions) and one passive (like your broadcast emails).
Also in my professional experience what I have noticed is there are extroverts which keeps the lamp burning (trust me). There are people who will always extend their hand first to greet you and they are the one who will drive any face to face communication mode as well. You just need to find them and get started. Slowly people will join and also we need to keep a tab if they are hogging the space regularly.
Also there are many people who are not extroverts but they just need a small push from our side to step up. Then need to be mentored and coached. They would keep your community alive and active.
So IMHO solving communication problem is largely about solving people issue and identifying need as well.
It's also about creating a comfortable environment for people with varying personalities where some would volunteer and some would need to be prepped for that.
Nishant, thank you for the detailed comment, much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteActually the real reason I'm looking to communicate IS to communicate. While what you're describing is transactional in nature e.g. I want to unilaterally make an announcement or I want to learn from someone. what I'm looking for is a little bit more, I'm looking for us to have a sense of community and belonging.
That may sound all touchy-feely but hear me out :) I feel that true collaboration happens when people just hang out. Like it's a safe place for me to ask questions, it's ok to reach out to anyone in this group regardless of whether I know them in real life or not. I've experienced that in parent-blogging, where the community of first time parents I met online have become a true community, so much so, it has led to a lot of fruitful non-mommy engagements even after the first flush of parenting passed us.
Maybe I'm being foolish to even wish for something like that at Work, who knows?