The Social Learning Lens—with Deborah Madelaine

[Music] My name is Sophie Auguste, I'm a community leader at Beck Hughes and I'm really excited to have a conversation today with Deborah who leads social learning at Maths and I think we're working on a similar mission of enabling communities as part of the learning culture in a global company so I'm sure that's another event where I'll be taking a lot of notes. So Deborah, welcome to Mapping Ties. It's amazing to have you as your closing event for this 23 series but let's start with you and let's see if she can introduce yourself and maybe tell us a bit more about your personal stories with communities. Thank you, thank you for the warm welcome and tell everyone I'm really, really excited to be here in a Maria and Sophie. We've been talking to each other now for a few months about this event. I'm really excited about this opportunity. I've been going through the padlet also looking at the takeaways from the previous conversations and I got a lot of inspiration and I see a few familiar names in the attendees as well. Thank you so much for joining. A little bit about me. I'm not a podcast, podcast full host yet. Hopefully one day sounds like an exciting adventure. I'm French like Sophie, something in common beyond just being obsessed with community building. I've been living in I only give you for five years. My background, I think something I wanted to mention was my background is actually in packaging science and engineering which is quite far remote from LND learning in the world and community building. But I gave me that experience and knowledge around design thinking human centered design and the consumer lens. I think that's a fine quote useful in the context of learning and development and community building. I've been working for Mars now for 11 years and prior to that I worked six years for Nestle. I've always been in this large big corporations. I've been three years now in learning and development looking after social learning for Mars and the story of how I move from R&D to social learning is a story and a different podcast in itself. In the past three years I've been focusing on a few things with the team such as bringing human centered design to the table and learning in our learning and development practice as well as building a practice of curation and most importantly enabling social learning advice. A couple of words about Mars. Mars is a privately owned company with about 140,000 employees across the world and about 80 countries. Mars has brands like you familiar with the Mars bar of course, the also M&M's, quick sneakers as well as pet food actually 60% of the businesses in pet care with brands like WISCAS pedigree. And so I'll stop here with my introduction. Thank you so much. That's already some effect I definitely didn't know about the pet kayak side of things. And I can see we've already had two hands up so I think for today we might just as well start with with the questions that that we've got from from our participants. So Chris, you had your hand up first. Would you like to go ahead and ask a question? Well, good morning ladies. How are you guys doing this morning on wonderful Wednesday? Good. Thank you. Thanks Chris. Welcome. Oh no, I am so humbled and honored to be here with all of you today and good morning everyone. This what comes up for me when you're talking about community in and of itself. I truly believe this union community in the way we can build that. It's just maybe just meet people where they are and take a for who they are and build a bridge to them and with them as that's a way. And not only does it work in their world, but works in hours and I truly believe ladies are the next thing that comes to pass. It's not only a gift in and of itself. But literally it's the very definition of change, which is transformation and we can do it from the very small of things that we do in and of itself. Hey, I'm willing to not only once show up. Well, number two, just allow everything to naturally and organically occur because I want to, I want to have life happen for me. And also that to be there for other people too as well, because if I can see what they see or even believe and just take it for what it is first is what it's not. So maybe we start that journey with them, or then with us that they had to say, Hey, let's start with alignment and go from there into agreement. Or you flip it around and say, let's go into agreement and flip it into alignment. And by just allowing that, that's literally a gift in and of itself because see for us to really create a great community, this bound in unity. Maybe we can have curious conversations just like this one, then the only will will be moving the needle and dialogue forward. But then maybe great, even more opportunities out of that too as well. And like you said earlier about having aha moments and everything like that, but take it from any direction in me coming. So it's like I share with people every day that I don't care how you start the race. I don't care how you finish the race. Well, I care about the most is what did you learn along the way? What value was bestowed upon you? What value did you gain? What knowledge did you give? What knowledge you received? And by allowing that to occur and just taking it for what it is, our communities when I only built me built on unity, not only in our communities, but literally in our businesses as well because think about it. The very same community that we live in, most often and not is the same one that we work in. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chris, for sharing all of this and for the inspiration as well. And I let you mention, you know, starting with alignment. And actually that probably for you, Deborah, if she can help us and understand what that means in March. So how is the landscape of the communities organized and around what kind of topics do people gather in the learning communities? Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, Chris, for your, for the energy and the inspiration and bringing that humanity. I saw that in your, in your title on LinkedIn. And thank you for that reminder of humanity in community. I think that's one of the things I'm very passionate about is bring the hearts into, into work as you said, community outside of work inside of work. At the end of the day, we're the same person with the same hearts. So communities at Mars, how does it work and learning communities specifically? We Mars as a culture of collaboration that's quite strong. If you were to join Mars today and in your onboarding plan, you'll probably see a list of names to, of people to talk to, not a list of documents to review, to learn about how to do your job. So building community is part of your onboarding as a matter of fact. Mars relies a lot on tacit information and knowledge. And so as such, learning communities are emerging naturally organically as a must have almost to be able to do your job. So we don't have necessarily from a central learning and development team any control into how this community is emerged, how they are run, how they are prioritized, how they are advertised. And so that brings a lot of opportunities and a lot of challenges at the same time. Opportunities of the freedom and the autonomy of, you know, motivated, engaged community needs to form, create and have the space to lead these communities and challenges of, you know, sometimes down like these amazing communities, but you don't hear about it because you don't know somebody who's part of it. And so we're trying to bridge that gap really of can we help bring visibility to some of these amazing communities that are doing the work and having an impact on the business, especially now with the, you know, working from home, and not going to the office every day, there's less opportunities to learn about these communities. So one of the examples we've done very simply is trying to build a directory of these communities with a few elements to understand if these communities will be valuable for you. And the second thing is to also help these community leaders that are stepping into these roles with a lot of energy, enthusiasm, and a few, you know, early adopters and members to give them a little bit of guidance if they need it. I'll have to be set up for success. So that's one side of things as I'll mention another aspect of learning communities. There are like two distinctive aspects. One is the one I mentioned where the LND team, the learning team can help enable them, enable visibility, enable effectiveness. And the other side of learning communities is in the context of a learning program where it could be a cohort that you could call, you know, a learning community, especially in longer term programs where it runs over a few months. And that's where the learning and development team has a little bit more control and ownership of the success of these communities. That's not where my work has been focused on as I've been working more on the enablement and the culture of learning in the past three years. But I still wanted to mention that there is a space for learning communities within learning programs as well where the LND team can have full ownership and accountability for the success of it. of those? I like how you mentioned this idea of the control and how as well there's clearly a cursor and then for some types of social learnings or communities you place it really low in other it's higher but while still using the principle of bringing people together and making it a social learning experience and I think that's something that we need to kind of intently choose depending on the different projects. As you were talking I was really amazed but what you said about having a list of names instead of a list of documents because I think it does show off that culture of collaboration like you said and it's probably a type of culture of or outcome of feeling that a lot of us are trying to implement in our organizations so if you look back on mass journey what were the kind of pivotal moments or the projects, the initiatives that really helped propel sing this culture forward? That's a tough question because yes I can answer with my lens right and I'll answer with my lens it's a huge organization as you know and I think all the pivotal moments is just like maybe the butterfly effect they all happen in various places in the world of Mars and then suddenly it becomes an academic emerging trend and I think that's been the case for social learning where simultaneously or almost simultaneously we have leaders that became more aware of the power of networks and social learning and and I think you know that's also the reason we're here today's like there's more and more people talking about it and I think I don't know if there's one thing that's made that happen as a catalyst or one of my reflections it's not necessarily linked to Mars but linked to our context of COVID and digital workplace and feature of work where since COVID sadly I think it was I call it the perfect storm for social learning at almost we became familiar you know but back to what Chris was saying earlier that there's no differentiation between home and working some capacity we became more familiar in having Zoom calls with our families and our friends and communities and have games and social events which we didn't experience as much in the workplace at all or at all even using like putting yourself on video at meetings before COVID was less prevalent than it is today or using tools that enable this like online connection and socialization and then when it was time to go back to the office not everyone went back to the office and you know policies shifted and so there was this huge gap for human connection and they're what a cooler moment and I think that's also when companies started to realize the missed opportunities that serendipity brought to innovation and productivity and onboarding that we we lost through that so I think that might be one of the pivotal moments of our history that made community build the internal communities more prevalent in the mind of our leaders and also as a way to bridge that gap with the social you know water cooler serendipity is in your serendipitous moments another one more maybe specifically two Mars and my own experience that has been pivotal in my own experience but also in the experience of the people that experience it with me at Mars that is cited as a reference as well in the business is few years back so five years ago I moved away from my packaging scientist role into a digital technology's role and my role I was part of a small team and our team's role was to bring design thinking and user-centricity mindset to the entire organization as part of our digital digital transformation and we had very visionary leader that thought that creating a community creating a movement for that change to happen for people to adopt this mindset of user-centricity of design thinking would be critical would be necessary would be maybe slow at first fast and effective and sustainable in terms of engagements and retention of knowledge and so I was brought into lead that movement to lead that community around design thinking and we had really strong sponsorship and funding and visibility and that and the very ambitious targets to reach we had to enroll 10,000 members in our community year one which is not another small feat for a team of three but we did it like it was a hustle we did it and then we grew and you know we had its different types of memberships with champions and so on and we saw the impact it had on the business on how suddenly and not suddenly not overnight but after 18 months which is quite short when you think about large transformations like this one in a large organization within 18 months we heard more and more people talking about the user about using design thinking and so there's been this this moment and this proof that community movements and transformation like we're a good trio or a good recipe for business for business and I think that at least for me in my career has been transformative because I really felt in my heart and my guts the power of community in advancing change and advancing positive change and that's since then there's no way back for me like this is it the obsession is on it's not going back right the power that we can play as community internal communities for business but also for belonging inclusivity and empowerment is just astonishing so yeah it's at least two things come to mind to answer your question thank you man I was really good and I think the um that from what I get from this is this finding the perfect opportunity where really truly aligned with the business need is it's probably the best work that we can do to to reach an impact this culture when there's alignment with a business need and John um probably not pronouncing your name right but as you come on stage you can correct me I think you've had your hand up for a long time so sorry for this but um if you have a question for Deborah let us know hello yeah greetings Anamaria Sofe Deborah and 35 in the audience briefly I'm a doctor a skin specialist and I teach management worldwide various peace schools and universities I just have a two or three points to share this is a very very interesting topic and it requires consideration to see when we were maybe a little younger there was empathy love for the community and for one another as people became more effluent and the nuclear families took shape the voluntary services disappeared they almost disappeared if you look back you'll understand that it has to be voluntary you cannot uh make somebody do it if they don't want to number one since I've been in multinational incorporates I find that CSR is almost non-existent now they are not they are just looking at the bottom line over and out I personally do three things and one of the biggest disappointment is I try to usher in my patients a request to join me in three plantation and maybe clean up ecology not one not one has ever volunteered yet they pay money to go on holidays or to a park amazing the second is that I teach voluntarily on an weekends career consoling in the rural areas to students poor students they have no inkling neither the parents have an inkling where would they actually get to in life and last I do free medical camps in the rural areas and in various schools once a month and uh if at all in my hospital anybody steps in thank you very much reading to the police thank you and congratulations of of being obviously a very active community members in in the communities around you you touched on the volunteers and this is a topic we've actually talked about in my pig ties before because and Jamie from Microsoft talked about how she even researched the motivation and the drive behind educating your own time to community work and to getting together so I was wondering Deborah how that show up and how do you cadence and two out the I guess the high numbers of people who spend some of their personal time in the communities as well and how do you enable this yeah that's a great question that that I actually took a note also from around this volunteer and not forcing people, you know, to take action. And I love that call out earlier. And so a couple of things. One is a find in the work environment from my experience over the last couple of years. We have people that come in that want to set up a learning community because they have this capability that they need to build for their teams or their function, right? And the assumption is that they will add their names one by one to the team's channel or the Yamagurupe, which is in a way a bit of a forcing aspect, which for me is a recipe for disaster. But still, you want to make sure everyone is included and learn. But yeah, so there's this little conflict, right? If you want to build a learning community and you have this business objective that this target population has, like the sales team or a commercial team, have to be part of the community and learn because you'll be seeing some of the program is important. So they'll work around on this. But again, only a few years experience. So still working on testing what works is really using sponsors and people with authority to influence to say it's gently to influence and show how great it would be to be part of this community. That's how we did it with the design thinking community. We had a lot of naysayers and people that were resisting the change thought design thinking was a buzzword, which whether they're right or wrong is it on the topic. But we didn't try to convince them to join. We got the first, you know, the enthusiastic people first, they converted the others step by step. And then the naysayers started to be the only one that were nuts in this movement in this community and felt that they were missing out. So there's this aspect and I know it doesn't answer your question directly Sophie, but I wanted to call it out. That's what came through when gentleman was talking earlier of this specifically in internal communities, when the business has an objective of having this target population, 100% of that population into or you know, however many percent of that population upskills and we use communities to do that. We still need as community builders to be mindful of having people do the first step and own their learning and sign up and enroll themselves. And then we can take different tactics to get them there. But I think it's a critical thing to achieve and it's a it's a tension I think that we see in companies in corporate settings or in internal communities that we might not see necessarily otherwise. Before I move on to answering your question, do you want to react or add your perspective on this? I'd love to hear your perspective as well. And so from from all sides as well from the beginning, it was clear that it would never be a nomination or a automated process. Let's say we have a community for example for people leaders, you become a people leaders and you're automatically added. So definitely this this idea of owning your your entree to the community was really important as well. And then because ultimately not everybody will be will be in the community at any point. But it doesn't mean that they're not going to get the influence of the community. So I really think that the active members will will share some of the things they do internally externally. So you you still get that influence. And I think one challenge we had along the way with this is actually stakeholder management. So some model stakeholders might sometimes expect nominations and they might have been done like this in the past, etc. So that's actually a discussion that is useful to have very opening. Namaia would you like to add something? Yes just just a little caveat. Well basically almost the same as what you and Debra said. It's important that we as the working in L&D or in HR, it doesn't matter where where we're sitting within the company. But we have seen examples of what community actually looks like. And what is the type of structure and of microculture that we need to nurture within that space in order for it to be truly thriving and have an impact. It's also this matter of stakeholder management which is said so for you, but also education and help our colleagues or stakeholders who are mandating community as a solution for this kind of mess upscaling or capability building across a large population. Maybe a good strategy is to make them understand that community is a tool that we have in our toolkit but it might not necessarily be the best approach in this example. So do we have to go with different types of a different type of solution? Does community belong in there or does it come as a separate layer where folks are invited to join but it's not made as a mandatory piece of the puzzle for that capability building process or strategy. So I think it's also good to keep that in mind. There's so many solutions and we can puzzle those out and communities just it's just a piece of that puzzle that that we can bring forward. Yeah, is that came Debra? Yeah, absolutely and I love in America what you mentioned around the education of our stakeholders. I made a note on that because I found over the last three years there's been a lot of different like people have different references in terms of what they think a community is and the work community is used in so many different different ways, right? So a lot of the work when I joined this team was to start building awareness around what do we mean by internal community work place communities and so that we can have like a baseline where everyone understands from from the start what we mean and indeed then presented as one of the ways to accomplish some of their goals maybe not the only only tool. But yeah, that's been an interesting journey as well to educate and and I was personally a little not surprised but I didn't expect that many different understanding of what community means to different people. So I think that's a key critical aspect for anyone starting any sort of you know social learning learning communities in the organization to really start building infographics or you know very very technical communication plan on how to bring the stakeholders along on the journey because it's easy for us you know the obsessed ones to go directly into technical language or assuming understanding as you know as we see it when we speak to us the callers. But in terms of volunteering in community and doing that extra work we try as much as much as possible to make it meaningful in the context of somebody's performance and development plan and attach any role they are playing as a leader or active core member of a community to make it to link it to any development of specific skills whether it's in leadership or collaboration so that it's fully recognized and accounted for during the annual review. So we try to do that as much as possible. We discourage people from using their own time to do these work if it's directly related to business impact. We do try and something we've tried in the last few years to start building recognition within the organization for these roles which there was but more like a holistic more enterprise-wide recognition so in January there is the community manager appreciation day so we started you know starting communicating about that and highlighting the some of our great community leads at Mars and doing that also externally only in Dens that's been quite successful. We've been also in my previous community around user centricity you know me needing that the champion of the month to really highlight some members that have been actively engaged and sharing that recognition with a manager to really boost that sense of pride and recognize the efforts that are in their contributions to the movement. So these are such examples in terms of the volunteering part of things. Great thank you for all the example I truly believe that when we link it to talent management we can really make it much more ingrained in the ways of working so I was great to say that you implementing the same as well. So let's tell us common stage and join us. So thanks for letting me join in. I've been in this industry for about 15 years I started in the community of off to digital workplace and then took it into application in a variety of organizations and one of the things that rises for me and I'm interested in your perspective is that organizations are communities and what I have seen is that the use of community really teaches good managerial processes and behaviors. And I love that you're tying this and bringing it back to the managers because I think when you are encouraging behaviors, it really should fall into your assessment, whether it's annual monthly weekly, whatever that looks like of being a good team member. But I'm also finding in the workplace. Well, I'm finding that workplace people have a greater understanding of that versus the use of community, but there is a through line to that. I'm wondering your perspective. I personally haven't come across that language of workplace necessarily, but I've heard a network enterprise as another way to call community. And also I'm with you and saying the organization is a community in itself. Like if I look at Mars, for example, we pride ourselves with being Martians. That's how we call ourselves. And when you can have this like social strong attachments with that type of identity is a very strong sign of community. And yeah, so that's this this also when we go to, you know, the M&M store in New York or wherever we're colleagues, we're part of the same group. So I fully understand what you were saying there. And then as I was preparing for this call, what came to mind just to build on your comments, run workplace is office is like there's the office that is in the office. And there's the office from home and I feel like community is the third workplace, almost. And I think that touches on what you're saying around how and how what I was mentioning earlier like the post pandemic realization of that how the need for connection beyond just sharing details on projects is necessary and how that came to to mind to our leaders as well. I want actually I need to trademark this like community is the third workplace. But yeah, so what do we do with that bet like how do we change the world? How do we. Well, you know, as we all know and getting buying in it's finding the language that works right, but it's also bringing the value forward of, you know, what makes a difference and through community we're learning it's really important to get people's input as we're making decisions and particularly, you know, whether it's community that is LGBTQ a or whether that is a workflow, you know, I find community that when I take it, say you take it to the through line of workplace, these are the behaviors we want to see in our workplace. And that's how we get to cross functional and that's how we get to discovery of each other and our strengths and our gaps and the community part of it is how do I feel help fill your gaps with my strengths and not pull it out as weaknesses all the time. And to build on out of that and to build on it's it's you know, we're here talking about learning communities and obviously in my world, I don't want to call I would want to talk about learning communities because people are not, you know, they're full and as a people are a full person, they're not a learning person in that moment and then somebody else, the next moment and communities full of people full of, you know, their own universe that they're bringing to the table. And so how do we, you know, it's like communities and these behaviors you're describing is culture and it's somehow invisible. And so where do we sit as, you know, the community and ableers, the culture and ableers, the, where do how, how does it like how can we influence and where do we sit, where do we need and I coming from a place of how could we, you know, get the sponsorship, the visibility. The money. Well, Deborah, I mean, you're already speaking to it because your ability to rise up participation in people who are making a difference in our high collaborators to their own managers and teens, that's huge value, you know, and being able to show those connections because work gets faster when that happens. And it's far more productive and, you know, work and or anything we're trying to accomplish from that perspective. I think some managers are concerned with how long consent is building takes, but in fact, it's a streamline, it's much faster when you're building out these behaviors and people are consistently using them. And I think we have a few joiners in the chat and really curious to hear more inputs and questions. John or Benoit, do you, do you want to take it over? I don't know if you had something to add to this point, the noise you're unmuted or if you wanted to, like, just bounce off the conversation will be somewhere else. My question was about dog food, so I really want to know what goes inside of dog food. I'm kidding. My question wasn't really. I can answer. Maybe not, maybe let's not answer them. Let's get this one. No, actually, you are, most of you guys are working in multi-cultural and multi-lingual, fitness test, omidam, you feel, you're working with people that are in different countries and different domain. Do you make community works when you have people that are not in time zone and not in the same languages and work in different projects and still make them Martian or butter and oil and I don't know I'm trying to find names for all of you companies, but I'm just wondering what you do with these type of international project. That's a great question. Thank you, Matthew Benore. I can start answering and I'd love to hear everyone else's perspective. I can speak on my experience in building this design thinking community. I think the one, what came to my mind first is values having aligned values, creating that common language around the purpose of the community, the values that we all operate on. You know, back to what Beth was saying, you know, you're one of the behaviors we want to see, like the bigger why was one. But then if, you know, that's all well and good, but when it comes to more specifically to accessibility to the content of, you know, whatever we're trying to share with everyone, we had in place a system of clubs, local clubs, with user centristy champions that came that were, you know, very engaged that had a match with their development plan to be, you know, the champions of design thinking in their market. And we equipped them with a toolkit framework on how to share design thinking with their units and then we gave them the freedom to translate and to shape the content to make sense for their market and their needs. So that's one way we, we were able to, to give access to more people, but also empower our associates to make it culturally relevant to them and to what speaks to them because we, we can't do that ourselves. I don't think I've, yeah, we can't imagine or put ourselves in there. She's there at pre-so. And that's one way we do it. I'd love to hear if anyone else has anything to share that particular point. Great question, but no. Yeah, it's also like a big point of reflection for us because it is we, yeah, we've got members literally all over the globe. You know that you talked about languages and from the value language, but then down to the actual practical language that we speak, we've been experimenting now with actually completely opening up even the global events and letting host, host it in any language. So naturally before it was all in English because that's what we all used to do for global events, but just one of members of our team planted the seed of actually, you know what doing it, do it in the language you want. And it's been really interesting to watch people open up and very differently when it's in their native language, even though that's a global event. You know, you might be French native speaker, but based in the US or when Kuala Lumpur and so you these global events, you can join even if you locally, you don't live in a French speaking part, for example. So that has been like a really practical, but actually quite meaningful step as an example. I love that and I think there's a lot of us that can learn from all of you or experience what about the buttery thing sure number you have some example, but you do work all in English, I think. We do work all in English and we are the our community is purely online, so we do not have local hubs offline meetings, etc. Very early on we had this we actually had community members asking is there is there a way to have events in other languages and we haven't explored that because we thought oh we're too early to start dividing it in a way or to kind of start compartmentalizing the community since we were in the first year of building it, the community is still quite fresh. But what Sophie was saying, I see that happening in Alanish. which is a much more mature community, where we do have members that are hosting sessions, for example, in Portuguese. And I think it also, it's a matter of dividing and conquer like with everything in community. And if there are members who volunteer to lead some of those projects and take it in their hands, going back to what Deb was saying with the offering them the two kids and the support that they need that they feel empowered to do so. So I am all for it. And one other way is this combination of-- because I think when we think about community is the first thing that comes to mind and rightly so is to bring people together in a virtual or physical space at the same time. So we talk a lot about events, which requires intentionally blocking your agenda being somewhere to meet with people. And that is a crucial ingredient of building community. This coming together and bumping heads. But also, how can we continue those conversations, asynchronous leads to the forums that we have, the resources that we share, so that even if you're on the other side of the world, is anyone documenting that session with the takeaways, with the resources, with the recording, so you can go back to it. So I think that also kind of ties into this building communities globally, our power of documentation and making those resources easily accessible for those that are sleeping when we're learning, like what we're doing here now. Thank you very much. Thank you for asking the question and bringing up this topic. I think John, you had something to add or ask as well? Yeah, great. Just slightly changing gears here. But Deborah, from your vast experience, do you have any insights or practical examples on generating that initial value transfer between members, especially on or just after the onboarding in today's community? Are you talking about measuring it or more ensuring it happens? Yeah, it's more about not measuring, I suppose, but making sure it happens and they get some value out of it initially. It might be huge at the start. We used it. It's the ball rolling. Yeah, that's a great question. And I'd love to hear your perspective and where this question comes from your side. So one of the models that I've been using in the community around design thinking is-- I think it's called the commitment curve and community. I don't know if you're hard about it-- is how you bring somebody from a stage of onboarding, being a bit shy or unsure about the value to somebody that might do their first reply. And then maybe they'll do their first post. And then they'll do their-- they'll attend a live event. And then maybe their host's one was Friday Next Dream. That was from the time. But this idea that you actually go as a community manager, community builder, you build opportunities for every step to first join. So make it as frictionless as possible to join, make it super clear as soon as possible to engage when the person joins the forum if there is one making sure they have the opportunity to say something and make it super easy for them to share something that's not too personal and then start connecting with other members to start creating this sense of welcome here. I can engage and then slowly take them up. So when we design the community around design thinking, we actually design it with that in mind, with having various steps from signing in to the community to then becoming more active. And we have different steps of like to make it super easy to be a bit more involved to the clubs. You know, I mentioned earlier, people that went and became like the super champions organizing clubs in their markets. So designing with that in mind, I think, helps to give these opportunities to grow your members through engaging more and sharing value and getting value. But also a lot of work behind the scenes of the community leader is into connecting with a member that's been a big silence. Maybe in the community that join and you haven't seen them in the forums, keeping track a little bit around, you know, your new joiners and going behind the scenes, checking if they all cave, they have any questions and trying to link them to other members in the community. There's a lot of that happening that I don't think we see a lot necessarily. It takes a lot of efforts, but also ensures the member feel valued and they get what they need. So I'll start with that and I'd love to hear maybe you Sophie or Emily if you want to add to that question. Yeah, I think we've got similar steps as well. And I like the use of the commitment because we literally use that word. And so all members are invited to a regular like welcome event that happens every five weeks. And in this moment, we literally give them a lot of ideas for a first step. So I think there's something as well about making these steps very visible and written in black or white so people can pick and choose. So visibility and then the element of commitment. We during the event, we invite them to choose one commitment and they can literally move it from one place to the other on a virtual board. And then in a smaller breakout room, they go and chat and so say their commitment out loud to somebody else. We also knew in the community. And so hopefully increasing the likelihood of following up on it and also creating a first connection and accountability partner in a way. So yeah, the visibility of all the steps and then really playing on that notion of commitment. - Actually, Sophie, to build on that, there's an exercise that we did recently that would really well and Jonathan, it will also help with your question is during this unboding, welcoming call, asking people, "What can I give? Like what are my strengths and skills that I can provide?" And what do I need right now? Like what are my needs? Why did I join this community? What am I looking for? And it's like a mini marketplace of sorts that you can build early on. And we found, so we did one of these calls recently and we found that we had already some matches happening there. So that could be quite engaging for a new member to see how they can contribute as much as they can get value from it. - Definitely stealing this one. - Yeah, they're all great. I think from itself as well, it's deflection. I take a huge, just make sure there's zero friction coming into the community. And as well, one thing I've noticed as well is just around features that it's sometimes certain platforms can be just too busy. So just have everything to a minimum, I think works quite well. And what I started doing as well is workshops for the introductions. And that seems to work quite well when you look at some long and short-term goals and people are kind of aware of them. But I really like the idea that you're saying about the marketplace, just a good analogy as well to be given people. So thanks for that. - I would add, along those lines, when you're asking the person of what's strengths and gaps and needs, there's an element of bringing where you start to gain support from stakeholders and leadership of what are people trying to accomplish in their job? And because in one place, I went to the C-suite and higher leadership. And I was like, what are you trying to accomplish this year? And then try to align the learning communities and community flow in general around those things. And then all of us, the power and value starts to come through at next level. So you get the internal support down the line. - Actually, I really hate to be stopping a discussion with so many like great minds putting their heads together. But I think we're coming to an end for today and only for today. But this is the perfect segue into a little exciting announcement that we have because we're inviting all of you to a celebration workshop for mapping ties on the 18th of January. So you can find a link to register in the comments of the event from today. And the goal will be really to do more of what we've just done now. We can connect with each other, reflect together, go back to the takeaway from the events and just bounce off ideas. So really just a bit more of what we've been going through. And on this, just really a special thank you to Deborah for being with us today. But also to John Benoit, Beth, Chris, and Andrew, who participated and met Tundis from one way discussion, one way we're getting to the discussion. So thank you very much for being here. - And thank you so, so free thinking of Maria. It was excellent.