Always start with purpose with Tanja Laub

Hello, hello, it's Sophie here today and I've had the chance to have a long conversation with Tanya Loeb. Tanya has over 15 years of experience in community building internally in companies as well as external communities. So in this conversation that you're going to listen to you can expect a lot of insights and really taking most of her with them on community building. We used our extensive experience to take a little bit of height and discuss mainly the purpose of community building, how it evolved over time, how we can surface it in the different groups and we also talked about other building blocks of each community. And another topic that I thought was interesting to approach was what can be holding back companies in the efforts of community building and what we might be scared of. And Tanya used this sentence from Priya Parker that you have to close the door to create a room to introduce this conversation on audience and how do you limit the audience to align with your purpose for the community. So enjoy this discussion. So today I'm joined by Tanya Loeb who has more than 15 years experience in community building across industries such as retail and the media. So this should really be a conversation full of wisdom tips and tricks for all of us. So Tanya was actually even going to join us last year and then the store didn't quite align so I'm really excited to finally be recording this conversation. Tanya thank you so much for joining my theme ties and actually be your first recording of season two as well. So let's start with you and can you tell us a little bit about how you fell into community building and how you stayed into it as well. Community building in general and then also more specifically building communities in companies. So tell us a bit more. Yeah, hi Sophie, great being here and I'm really looking forward to this because when you first told me about your idea I was like, oh wow, sounds great because we need to get those stories out there and tell them how I fell in community management that actually phrases it quite right because in 2006 I did an internship and German company called Glippfusch and they aimed to be German YouTube and they asked, okay, who's going to take care of all the emails from our users? My hands flew up and that's kind of how I started in community building because from that day on I was responsible for everything that was related to the users. The emails, the communication, the volunteers, the motorwriters but also the technical side, administration, everything and that's how it started and I always loved connecting people. I loved bringing people together to get to know new cultures to kind of help other people to develop and get the best out of themselves. So I don't need to be the one to be on stage but I love to see others going there and that I could help them and that's kind of what fascinates me about community building and community management and I started with external communities for some friends and then step after step I went into internal ones which is quite fascinating because it's so different because all the other people in there are your clients and that's a complete different story than working with people who don't know each other and who don't have the same culture. And so that's really interesting, this switch from external to internal because I think there is definitely two sides of community building and the birth of mapping ties was because most of the resources we could find were about this external community building. So what prompted you to pivot and apply some other things you learned and go towards the internal communities? For once my interest but also external communities never really hit it in Germany. We have a few ones but it's not like we have a vast landscape like other European countries or internationally they never really hit but we have some really really good internal examples and I always knew that internal communities was something that would at some point be really valuable and really important for the companies looking at change management and the children's formation. So kind of on a pandemic hit all of it passed forwarded by 20 years and I had already reshifted my focus to internal and that's when it hit and the companies came up and said oh that's what we need and that's what you're talking about all those years. And we have some really really great examples in internal communities that are going on for years in Germany but they are never out there as you said you don't know a lot about it you don't hear a lot about it and so yeah that's what I really liked your idea of doing this podcast. Amazing and you mentioned some really good example in Germany so if we're looking to find some of these case studies what companies or what example come to your mind of good internal community building. There's some that are really pioneers in this area like you have Mercedes who are using their internal communities really for digital transformation and all the change management going in there. They even have a community manager for community managers and they have a whole learning journey inside to build the community managers and to teach them. We have Tila Com that are doing a lot of community building and it's actually twofold. They've kind of got a say name at the managed communities like the cream pioneers employees that want to bring more sustainability into the company and into their lives and also a lot of communities they're self-organized and there's a whole concept about it and around it even a book has been written so they are doing a lot in this area. You have continental who work a lot with ambassadors internally when they have new software products and tools and there's a big roll out to actually bring it closer to the people. You have Bosch who did a lot of working out loud. Yes. Yeah I love the Bosch example because it's also I think it's probably about 15 years old as well now so in my head it's definitely one of the the transsetters for getting people to connect and work together. Do you want to tell us just if some people don't know a lot about working out loud what it looks like and what are the main principles? Yeah working out loud and interestingly I'm going to start a new round today so it's a concept developed by Transstepper and you have a learning journey of about 12 weeks. You get to get our encircles of four or five people and then you have your own own goal. You have your aim. Everyone has an independent goal and set this on goal and then you're getting together and you see how you can with relationships and talking to people and learning develop your goal in 12 weeks. So you have kind of a booklet with all the information and then you're going out there and you're talking about it and you see who can help you with reaching where you want to go and learning what you want to learn and get to know and so it's about connecting people showing who you are and learning things and you have the theory and you have practical guides and you have exchange and exercise every week and it's going on for 12 weeks. I think that's quite interesting actually the 12 weeks because often what we hear the expectation is for communities to be long-lasting, to to become mature and become self-sustained and this is actually a good example of showing that it can also be bound in time for specific purpose but building this group of people who work together and learn from each other and practice together so still achieving this connection and the tangible output of their connection and working together. So really good and is this something that you have experienced in implementing from scratch maybe for some of your clients or in different companies? Yeah, communities to build that it really takes a long time but those 12 weeks are a good time to actually to put the first seats and what's also good about working out loud and if you want to compare those two it's like you start with a core group when building your community and you need to bring a small amount of people together who work closely together, we have a lot in common and after that you can throw an expand. So you have a time where you work in those tiny circles and after that you are going out there and you have people that are really active and involved and that stay there for the long run and you have water searches there for the beginning or in the middle of it and otherwise just look and don't participate. And what I also like is it shows that like with 100 people in a circle people wouldn't participate. But if you only five you actually need to participate. It's such a small group and it's so much easier to build a safe space and when you have to save space and those let's say 100 circles it's so much easier when those 100 circles all get together in a big group because everyone has the same values and the same standards and everyone knows okay here's a good atmosphere. I can speak up here and no one is going to blame me and no one is going to say any harmful things. So the whole culture develops from those smaller groups onto the bigger one and everyone is comfortable on those okay this is the atmosphere where I can really participate. Yeah I think this element of psychological safety being created and the culture and smaller group and enable really this small group is really important and and I think this is something that's often a challenge as a community grows like you said when if a community grows to 100 or a thousand people a thousand people won't know which they won't work together it's just impossible we all know the the number etc and so then they becomes the in as part of the community strategy and the community leader role is like what formats and what forms and how can we engineer smaller groups to form within big communities. So these circles of working out like I guess a one way of achieving this and creating really these links between members within the bigger community so it's really really interesting and a good tool to look at so maybe moving away now from the working out loud and looking at the types of communities that you've worked on when you work with a new company what do you find are the main issues that generally companies are trying to solve when they raise their hand and say oh I think we need support we think we need community building like what are they problem in their pain points usually. They're mostly two points or two stages when companies call me it's either they already have a community and they call oh well we do have a community but there's no engagement what can we do can you help out there and one of the main problems I always see is that what we just talked about it perfectly fits that the target group in a subject is too broad so they are trying to address too many people with too many subjects so there's no niche there so people don't really feel comfortable to share their knowledge or it's not defined enough that they say why should I discuss here I rather go somewhere where I really can talk to people that I like mine it so that's most of the time when I need to help them and redefine the strategy and help them okay what do you want why do you need that community and the other thing is when people trying to establish a community so when they're really at the starting point and the basics are kind of the same to decide okay first of all why do you want a community I mean there's so many other things you can do in a company you can do hack a term still can do webinars so why does it have to be a community why do you want really that people exchange with each other over a long term so what are the other things you have in your company and what does community differentiate from this so that's one thing we are establishing and after that we are looking at target groups and the purpose and what always helps there and also when you want to redefine your community is do an elevator pitch like really get to the point what your community is about don't write two pages of it but really get it into a three sentences you can tell a person write an instant when writing an elevator so they are hooked about your community and exactly now what they want yeah somehow people are always afraid to exclude others and want to be as inclusive as possible but when building a community you really have to exclude people because otherwise you don't have this feeling that you have with those like-minded people and to really bring people together you have to really kind of borders in a good sense to who belongs and who can participate in there yeah there are quite a few things that you said that I would love to know a little bit more and for example I let what you mentioned about the elevator pitch so it's kind of decided that if you can't explain to an age old whether community is about you haven't defined your purpose yet like if you can put it in a two sentences that are very clear about what it is and what it's not then it's not a purpose yet so are there any I don't know tools workshops or how do you help these either communities already exist or about to be formed or companies that are looking at communities in general to narrow down purposes what do you use as tools it's really a process and it's an iteration it's like you start with the first idea and then you're tossing it around and you're discussing it with others what could the purpose be and how could it be unique and bring some value to the members and then you go to your core prove and discuss with them and have a look at it and I adjusted a organization I worked with for over a year so a year ago we kind of defined the purpose we defined the motivational factors and now just recently we took that again and now we developed the elevator pitch because you can't develop the elevator pitch right on day one because then you don't really can define your community it needs time to grow and to look okay where are we developing what we really want and then you can do your elevator pitch and see that you have everything in it for whom is it what is the value what are the emotions why should you be a member of it and so it's really you go back to it every now and then and see okay that's it still fit is that us and do other people see what they get from it yeah I think I like this idea of it being evolving and it's okay if it moves because that takes off a little bit of the pressure as well of the early days and yes we have to have an idea of the why we're starting it and why we're gathering and what vision we have but actually as we go from five members to 50 this will evolve because if it's truly cool created it will be influenced by the others joining along the way which you don't foresee this in advance and it's interesting because internally with colleagues we created a kind of a it's called the parenting tribe so it's gathering all the working parents in our company and to have a support network to influence some of the policies etc and and so we we were three people starting it in the spring last year and now we are six month in and literally today this afternoon we have a workshop about this is okay six months in now we are actually five hundred what do we want our purpose to be for 24 because it might be different from what we had in my last you know a group of three so yeah it really makes me feel the journey we've been through with this group what you just said like it's a constant evolution so it's really interesting to see that you've observed it as well and so the purpose then is one of the guiding principle of the community and I guess it links also to what you said that really pick my curiosity about you have to kind of be brave enough to exclude people so it sounds like this is another building blocks again you tell us a bit more about this one I think was it Priya Parker who said by closing the door you create the room and I really love that sentence because it kind of says it all when you close the door and you say you're out that's when you really shape the space and you create the room where you can feel safe and where you have a good atmosphere and what I always tell people because in the first moment they're always like a bitch oh no we can't do it and there's the concept there's the theory about that other people you would like to have in there let's say about controlling do you want to bring everyone together who works in that industry or do you just want to have people who have 20 years of experience or who work and really define space of it and then that's the theory you have and then And that's what you're creating your community for. But if someone comes and says, hey, I'm really interested in it. I want to work with you. I want to engage. You're not showing them the drones. Say, OK, leave. If they want to engage, they are more than welcome. But it's more like that they know what it really is about so that they can say, oh, that's not for me. I'm not going to engage in this one. I rather go somewhere else. Yeah. And I guess, like, for these people who are interested, because back to understanding why they're interested, because maybe they're interested in the knowledge that is created within the community because they need it for-- so they're not going to be part of creating it, but they need it somehow for some of their objectives or mission internally. And so that's why it's really interesting where we see, for example, communities of practice that might have interactions with other teams that maybe can use their knowledge or need an awareness of it to be able to work better together. So then, like you said, it's not about closing the door completely. It's creating that window between the inside and the rest of the company. So yeah. Yeah. And you have to make the difference like the people that are in the community, that are exchanging, that are participating. And then you have those people outside of the community who can benefit from the knowledge because the people in the community are sharing their knowledge outside to the audience. So they can read about it. They can learn from it. But for that, they don't have to be part of the community. They don't have to interact. They can just go there when they need some help, or there's just one specific area. They want to get to know something about it. So they go there, get the knowledge, and then they leave again, because that's what they need it. Yeah, exactly. And I guess once again, it all links back to the purpose, right? Because the purpose defines actually who needs to be in the community to achieve the purpose. And then the purpose also define how the community will interact with the rest of the company because if your purpose is to influence and educate, obviously there will be a lot of interactions. So depending on the purpose, once again, it defines this as well. Exactly. There are two things that you always need in the community. You need the purpose because that's the direction. What you want to achieve, where you want to go to. Because if it's going like this, you're not going to get somewhere at all. So you're reading one direction that everyone says, "Okay, yeah, that's what we want to go to." And then you need to drive in the motivation. Like, why are they motivated? What are the intrinsic factors that they get engaged in the community? So you need a direction and you need this field or drive or whatever. And there are two components that you need in every community. That's really interesting. Because what I hear is the purpose for the group and then the drive and the motivation for each individual that is in there. So it's that real tool level, creating value for the individual and then collectively also achieving the purpose. So it's always really good to go back to this tool level. And so you talked about second avenue that companies might be reaching out for, which was existing communities with what was diagnosed as lack of engagement or it's not working. And I'm sure actually for a lot of people who do community building internally, they've heard this before. So how would you go about in that case to kind of audit? What are the types of questions that you would ask them to go down to the root cause rather than just, it's not working? Well, first of all, I would start with expectations. So what does engagement mean? What kind of activity is really valuable to them? So not only when there are a lot of comments somewhere on a platform, does it mean that a community is active? It could be a lot of comments of no value. Then you have a lot of comments. And it seems like an active community, but you don't really get value out of it. So what really means engagement? What is good engagement? What is it? What do you want to achieve? And also I kind of really set the expectations because people are kind of blinded by all the social networks with, oh, they've got a million page likes. And we need about 100,000 people. And we need 1,000 people in our community. But when looking at communities, smaller, more people are more active than the community. And I think that's the biggest problem. And you have 20% that are really active, that are your most valuable members, who are doing all the content, all the interaction, all the engaging. And actually, I think 20%, sometimes it's hard to achieve this 20% in terms of the core group and the super members who contribute. I think it can also be lower than this in cases. But for sure, there's always a bit of education on the numbers. I love this discussion on numbers in communities. And it's great that you said, smaller is better, because that is one of the myths that we often have to debunk, I think, internally. And maybe one reason is that it's not always clear that actually, communities impact more than their members. So yes, the community might be 200 people, but while they're creating a role-modeling, they might give ideas for other people to get together. They influence the culture when they took outside of their community, they influence other employees. And so that's often overlooked as well, when the focus is on growing, growing, growing the community, I don't know if you have any techniques to help companies and stakeholders and sponsors to move the focus maybe or to shift it from growing the community to growing the impact. How did you get people to see that? Well, I try to make them clear that it's not about the reach at number of people, but about really the depth of the connections. So how intertwined those are, how good the people connect? That's the important part. And have you ever seen really good ways of measuring or representing this? Because we've always put a number that were used in any of the companies that you worked with. To measure the connection? Yes, to measure this. Like you said, the interconnectionness and the multi-way connection within the community, because this is obviously very hard to measure or reach the end for stakeholders. So if we just do a quick brainstorming and see if there's anything that you've seen that was going to be-- No, it's really hard. That's kind of one of the discussions I have most with my colleagues. So how can we really show that those connections are so important that people are staying more connected to the company that they are not leaving the company that there's not so much fluctuation and all that kind of things? So that's really hard, especially today. When-- I mean, so many people working remotely. And if I'm sitting at home with my laptop, it doesn't matter if I work for company A or if I work for company B. It could be any company at all. So communities get more and more important. And really, this connectedness gets more and more important because that's how the culture is transported. And people are staying in the company because of the people and because of the culture. Because most of the jobs, I can do an any company. And it doesn't matter if the color is blue and white or red and green or whatever. But it really comes down to the people and to the culture, right? It's decided to stay there. But pulling that numbers, that's-- Oh, yeah. Numbers are other ways, like, if-- yeah, clever ways of telling these stories. I think at the moment from personal perspective, that mainly showing individual stories. So we try to include them in any reporting because reporting numbers would be hard to avoid, but then having that balance of including both. But we mainly use a quote feedback that we've received examples of projects and output, so showing off the artifacts that were created by communities. And it's interesting that you mentioned retention as well and how being part of a community and how it impacts the culture and how you feel like you're being-- because I think that's one thing that we're-- also exploring internally and we were just talking literally about, okay, can we even try to look at any correlation between being part of a community or a learning community and the RGSCUI and the nutrition rate versus nutrition rate if emperor is on part of any and things like this. So there's definitely at least from all perspective internally there's definitely a lot still that we can do to try and refine it and meet these things for numbers that we see. Yeah, really interesting to dive in there and see, okay, is it really the reason because the problem is you can't usually single out just one thing. So are they part of the community because of the culture or how does the community support culture and it always gets together and the one thing depends on the other? Yes, yeah, no, no. So as I was preparing for today, I also saw about your circle model and framework. So I put the link for everybody as well in the episode notes but that as I was going through it and you can tell us a bit more about the four quadrants but I was really wondering how do you take a framework and a model and then bring it to life when you work on unique cases in, you know, with your different clients etc and how you articulate this element of the theory and the practice if you can tell us a little bit more about this. Yeah, developing the framework, it took me a few years because I realized during my work that it always came back no matter what I'm doing or talking about or trying to show people to four things that you really need to have in the community. You need a good strategy where it's the purpose in it, where you have the motivational factors, where you have your roadmap, your budget, all those things because if you don't have that, everything just goes astray and you will never reach anything. So the first point you need is strategy. Secondly, you need a good culture. So something that really brings all those people together like the sense of community and if you don't have that, you have an audience. That's fine if you want to have an audience but if you want to have a community, you really need this culture and this feeling of connectedness. You need a place for exchange. That's number three. This can be, doesn't have to be a technical platform where people connect and where people exchange. And the number four is you need a person or a few people who connect those people and bring them together like the community manager and you need those four elements because if anyone of this is missing, you won't have an engaging and sustainable community. And why I came up with this framework is I really love the community canvas model and it's awesome and I worked a lot with it. But when explaining it to people, I always realized that it was to complicated for them. That way I had too many things like with the three areas and the 17 themes. So I wanted to make it a bit more simple. So that's why I came up with this four points. So you have the four main areas and then in each one you can delve deeper into it and all of them are interconnected with each other. So you need a community manager to develop the strategy in which you decide on the technical platform. They are all interwoven and it's not like you say, okay, now we're doing the strategy, now we're doing the culture. It's just that you have an overview of what you need in your community and like the culture. You can't create a culture but you can set a frame and you can help it to develop. But it develops on its own. And so that's the thing that you have to have it all in mind. But it's not like a roadmap that you say, oh, do this, this and this step after step. How do you usually introduce the model and do you have an example of one community, maybe that used it and how it helped them to move through the community development curve? Yeah, I always use it in my workshops. I present it to the people and then really work in the single areas of it. Like we start with what we just discussed with the purpose, the direction and the motivational factors to set them as a stage. And then we look in every area, okay, what do you have? What do you need? What you're missing? Like when we're looking at the exchange, a lot of times, especially internally, people have a team's channel and a select channel. They have an internet page and they have an email list. And so we decide on one main channel where all the people come together that could be a local meeting and the email is just the part where people get invited or that can be in teams channel. Even so teams is not really the best one to put communities, nevertheless. Most of people using it really look that we have one main place and we look, okay, which one is it for you and which are the ones that are just additional? And then we look at the community manager and we look at the role of the people there. I realize that it really helps people to get a better understanding of this concept of a community. Because when you say, okay, let's build a community and they have to swipe page, they have no idea where they should start and what they should do and what it means and what all the longs to it. And when you have those four parts and in each part, you can dive deeper and see the concepts that belong to it. That really helps. Like in the strategy part, that's when you can work with the community canvas model. That's when you develop the strategy. And then when you look at the engagement, that's when you look at the community commitment curve. So it really is kind of an overall framework where you can go deeper and then have a look at the other models at exactly the point where they fit. Yeah. And so what I hear is that obviously that could be the basis of a workshop or thinking sessions at the moment of creation or to be used as a noted to see where where stands and existing community. And then as you were talking, I was thinking as well that such like a simple four quadrant of what a community is can also be really useful to talk about communities to the rest of the company. So if we think about business stakeholders and they're always some natural sponsors of the idea of building and actively enabling internal communities and others that we have to take on a journey. So I guess that could be another use that I was thinking of as as you were talking through that kind of the simplicity of it. So yeah, there could be some of the tools then around it. And actually talking about tools and what we can take away from the discussion today and learn from your experience, if you had and will maybe wrap up and close off today with this, if is there like a sentence or a concept of one message that you keep on repeating and that you would like people listening to this and anybody in any organization to know and to really integrate about internal community. So what would be your one message? My one message, one message I always claim everywhere is that an audience is not a community because the term community is so widespread and everyone uses it in a complete different way, especially externally. So many people are using it just for their followers. So that's why they really get a misconception of what it really is. And at some time, even have a negative connotation to it. So that's kind of the first thing I always do to really show people what a community is and what you can achieve with it. And when you've understood what a community is, everything else is much easier to achieve. Yeah, I love this. And no, Jens is not the community because I remember as well the first time I heard it, I was thinking, oh yes, and it actually comprises quite a lot. Jens is one way communication, community is multi ways and one is broadcasting, etc. So yes, that's a really good one that actually covers quite a lot of two-pick-of-community building. So I think that will be probably our last comment for today and what we can all remember and repeat every day as well. No Jens is not a community. And so thank you very much, Tanya, for your time and for also being so generous with your knowledge and all of your experience. We'll link your LinkedIn profile in India, episode, and also the Circle Framework that we've just discussed and really a practical approach to community building. Thank you to everybody who listened today and if you are as well building internal communities and your company or for other companies like Tanya, we'd love to hear from you. So we'll put a link and so that everybody can get in touch with us so we can learn more from more people who are building internal communities. But yeah once again thank you so much Tanya. Thanks for having me. Bye. It was great. Bye bye. And that was it for today. So I hope that you really enjoyed this conversation and that you could learn from our guest and if you are as well a community builder or if you are just launching one in your company or if you work with companies to help them build internal communities, let us know. We'd love to hear from you, to learn from you and to share your stories with others. So you'll find a link to our form to reach out in the episode notes and we're looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much for listening for being here and we'll see you soon on MAPIQ ties.