I’ve been doing a great deal of study on ‘Community’ lately.
I want to be clear. I’m not very interested in the soft, sales-driven style of what I’ll refer to as, little ‘c’ community. I listen to marketing and social media experts speak loosely of community as though the only purpose of organizing is to create additional revenue channels. The communities they build, and the people contained within, are means to an end. This is sad, manipulative and sad. Did I say it’s sad? It is.
If you know me at all, you’ll know that the broader, more sociological side of big ‘c’ Community is what I’m interested in. ‘Community’ is a much debated term across fields of study from biology to sociology with “ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s,” according to the online monastic Community, wikipedia.
“The word “community” is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, “with/together” + munus, “gift”), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.” Think about this for a second: together as a gift or together creating a gift. The implication to me is that in the process of bringing together people we must understand that we create something more significant than the sum of our parts. The collective wisdom is greater than any one person. Brilliant.
I’ve recently picked up a copy of Scott Peck’s In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1987). He talks about community in terms of deliberate design based on rules and stages and describes “true community” as the “the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community.” In 1991, Peck spoke about the maintenance of Community:
“It takes a significant amount of effort to build community, but it takes even more effort - ongoing effort - to maintain it. The biggest problem with community maintenance, as with community start-up, is the problem of organizations simply being willing to pay the price - which is, primarily, a price of time.”
We must realize that Community isn’t finite. There isn’t an end date or expiration. Community needs to be designed and lead. This is a slightly bigger responsibility than the community that we’ve been sold through most social media fan pages and marketing campaigns.
My firm and I are at the beginning of an evolution. I have long said that what I do for a living is “discover stories that build communities.” This is directly in contrast to a marketing and advertising mentality that “creates advertisements that sell products.”
The stories that build true Community (think Harley Davidson or Dave Matthews Band) are not created. They are discovered or revealed or uncovered. They already exist – even if they have been layered over by decades of advertisements, marketing campaigns and poor choices. It requires deep respect and true listening and you can’t do that if your only focus is a television advertising or billboard or ROI.
We want to sit at your kitchen tables, on your production line or in your retail store and help you rediscover the passions and stories of your organization. Then we can begin the process of building Community that will be a gift to you, your company and your customers.
‘We discover stories (that build communities)’ will touch on topics from new books to inspirational individuals to marketing efforts that transcend advertising and truly build Community. Feel free to share. Point us in the right direction. Criticize, but make it constructive. Perhaps this collective of information may, at some point, become a Community of its own.