Appendix B

WORKSHEETS

You will find worksheets here that can be used to start a conversation with your leadership to clarify how you will suitably apply brand community principles to grow the right community for you.

Obviously there is too much diversity among organizations and goals for any static tool to serve all. You can start by reflecting on foundational ideas to ensure that you are building toward something that’s suitable for your vision.

Worksheet 1: Selecting Founding Members

You start a community with a foundation of only a few members.

If you already have dedicated founding members in your community but haven’t recognized them with such a title, then it’s never too late to express appreciation for their commitment.

The following sets of questions can start a conversation about how to recognize ideal founding members. You can then choose whom to invite because they closely match what you seek. (Note that the unskilled choose members first and then the criteria.)

BEHAVIORS

• If you already have a platform or group, what are the relevant activities of the founding members?
• If you don’t yet have a platform, what do your ideal founding members already do (in their free time or otherwise) related to the purpose of your organization?
• Have they shown willingness to participate in conversations about founding a community?

PERSONALITY

• What are the ideal personalities you seek?

  Some groups only seek hard-core competitors. Some seek patient contemplatives. Of course you can include many kinds of personalities. Just consider what kinds of personalities you envision will fit best.

AVAILABILITY

• What is the ideal availability for these founding members? (Daily, weekly, monthly or less?)
• When do they need to gather to participate in activities?

  Availability is influenced by a lot of factors (e.g., caregiving, studies, and work commitments). Consider what level of availability will be required to meet member needs.

INTERESTS

• What are the ideal interests of your founding members?

PURPOSE

• Do they understand the community purpose?
• Do they want to commit to supporting the purpose?
• How are they willing to support the purpose?

INVITATION AND COMMITMENT

• How will you invite them to join the founding members group?
• What are the steps for joining?

  You can consider an application, an initiation meeting, volunteer activity, or anything else.

• What do you expect these members to do as you start or reboot a community? (Note: It must be in line with both their needs and yours.)
• How will you inform them of what is expected of them?

Consider these actions to convene your first founding members:

• Name up to ten people (max) who fit the description you seek. Then consider additional people who fit much of the description and may serve as backup members.

  _______________________________________________

  _______________________________________________

  _______________________________________________

  _______________________________________________

  _______________________________________________

Ensure that you follow at least these steps in connecting with prospective founding members:

1. You contact prospective candidates to discuss a possible invitation for founding membership.
2. You and the prospective candidates engage in an individual orienting call or meeting to clarify expectations.
3. Invitees confirm commitment (opt in).
4. You send a formal invitation to each candidate, and it is accepted.

Worksheet 2: Selecting and Training Leaders

To reach critical mass, you must identify and train community leaders. Look for leaders who want to serve the community (not only themselves). You’ll recognize these leaders because their actions reflect the community core values and purpose.

As communities grow and mature, new leadership must develop for community scale and enduring relevance.

The questions here can start a conversation to identify members appropriate for a training plan.

SELECTION

• How many leaders do you need for your current size? (In any early community, you’ll need at least one leader for every ten members.)
• What actions should these members have already taken in your community to show their commitment?

INVITATION

• How will you choose leaders (invitations, nominations, or other selections)?
• What criteria must they meet to qualify?
• Will you need an application to participate?
• Who will reach out to candidates?
• What training will leaders need in order to gain appropriate skills?
• When and how will you connect them with other leaders?
• What elder will connect with them to support the training?
• How will you let them know if/when they cannot continue as leaders for any reason?
• How will you acknowledge leaders now and in the future?
• How will you offer transparent communication with these leaders?

Worksheet 3: Campfire Experiences

The following conditions are essential to a successful campfire experience:

• Proximity (close space) for speaking to one another. Participants must share a conversation-supporting space (a restaurant table, a beach circle, an online chat platform). All must be close enough to see, hear, and make eye contact with one another.
• Permission to contribute and participate. Participants must perceive explicit or implicit permission to talk with one another. Watching a presentation is the opposite of being given permission to talk.
• Conditions. There must be time when participants can freely speak in conversation. Distractions must be handled. This includes noise, interrupting messages, and menacing oversight.

With this understanding of the critical conditions, you can look at your planned campfire experiences to confirm that all the conditions are in place. If you get stuck, run a Design Sprint activity called Crazy 8s. Give each participant a pen and instruct all to fold a piece of paper into eight squares. Then read the description of campfire experiences to them (see Campfire Principle in chapter 8).

Ask all to draw eight possible answers to this question:

What campfire experiences would you like for the community?

Put on a timer for four minutes and go crazy. (Each square should take about forty seconds to draw, and stick figures are fine!) Then return to discuss the ideas you like best.

Worksheet 4: Identify a Brand Community’s Purpose

This worksheet can start a conversation to help answer core questions that influence what a brand community will look like:

Why are we building community?

How will the community enrich members?

What organizational support does it provide?

First, clarify larify the ways that community can support the organization:

• Innovation: creating new value for stakeholders
• Customer and stakeholder retention: keeping customers and stakeholders involved with the organization and providing value to the brand
• Marketing: informing the market of offered value
• Customer service: helping customers/users with service or products
• Talent recruitment and retention: attracting and retaining the people the organization needs for success
• Advancing movements: creating a fundamental shift in the culture or business.
• Community forum: making the brand a destination for a specific community

Start a conversation with your team where you address these questions:

1. How do stakeholders want to grow the organization?
2. What will a successful community help them do or be?
3. What resources can they offer a community to support growth and connection?

Once you have gathered responses to these questions, rank the answers on their importance in impacting your organization. The hidden purpose of your community may surface in the discussion.

Worksheet 5: Encouraging Engagement

Encouraging participation in the community is never as simple as giving swag, badges, and points. In fact, as we’ve discussed in this book, incentivizing with external rewards diminishes participants’ internal motivation.

Although of course you need to acknowledge, reward, and recognize member contributions every day, you also should plan formal ways to do so. The following table reviews some of the terms we’ve been using in this book.

Review of Terms

Three conditions must be in place to support internal motivation:

1. Choice
2. Connection to others
3. Progression toward purpose

Answer the following questions with your team to ensure that you will encourage engagement in ways that help members feel seen and inspire them to remain connected.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

• How will we express acknowledgment (written, video, call, email, etc.)?
• Who will express acknowledgment?

GRATITUDE/RECOGNITION

• What participation should definitely elicit gratitude and recognition?
• How will we express formal gratitude or recognition (written, video, call, email, etc.)?

TOKENS

• What participation should be recognized with a token?
• What tokens would we like to offer?
• Who will give a particular token?
• What do our tokens represent?