Understanding community indicators – time to share our chocolate

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —August 26, 2005
Filed in Collaboration

Choc_cakeAfter a little bit of gentle cajoling, Nancy White has started to describe what she means by community indicators. And in good community building style Nancy invites us all to participate in the conversation. I love the simple and lyrical language Nancy employs. The idea of ‘signs of life’ (SoL) as an early indicator of a nascent community appeals to me. Those interested in developing communities must be sensitive to these signs of life which Nancy describes as like:

… weather reports. They give us an inkling of what might be coming. They are like ideas that wake us up in the night, but which we can only partially remember in the morning. Like the first bulbs peeking up through the snow to assure us spring is coming, even if we have to wait two more months. SoLs reassure us that this is a human endeavour and community may emerge.

Boundaries are typically difficult to discern in a complex environment which might be doubly true when trying to decided if something is a SoL or CI. I’m sure it doesn’t matter as long as community members are noticing something. Some people are better at detecting these weak signals and they will see signs of life first. Their greatest challenge will be to convince others that they actually exist.

Here is how Nancy defines community indicators:

Community indicators are patterns of group member behavior that help us pay attention to the emergence and life of a community.

This works for me. Here is another example of a community indicator.

In the early days of ActKM we had a member who whenever he posted the community would buzz and when he was absent the community felt flat. This member’s activity was one of our community indicators.Interestingly, over time the membership became used to this member’s style and some even became cynical or turned off by what he was posting. His role as a community indicator diminished. This example highlights the need for those who are nurturing the community to regularly reassess their understanding as a group of what are the useful community indicators. A white CI one day can be a black one in the future and vice versa.

The simple act of seeking community indicators is a community building exercise. I can imagine asking community members to help identify CIs and this group activity will create new relationships, new conversations and stronger communities—much like what Nancy is doing with the community_indicators tag.

How do we tune into CIs? How can we improve the chances of noticing signs of life?

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About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

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1 Comment »

Comments

  1. Nancy White says:
    August 26, 2005

    Yeah, YEAH. Great amplification of the idea. And LOVE the chocolate cake. I sent the link to the baker of that lovely community indicator. It was amazingly good – the best thing at a — you guessed it — community pot luck!
    I like this idea of improving the chance of noticing signs of life. I’m working on a project to get more women into the “speaking pool” at tech conferences here in the US. And we are slowly realizing that it is not really a matter of trying to get others to change their patterns. All it takes is to find a way to notice and talk about the existing patterns. If people see utility in changing (and they seem to be), then things change.
    So noticing can be a catalyst for change!

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