Changing Your Communty's Culture: led by Lars Kurth Edit

Notes: @simsboynton More Notes: Organizing and Social Networks http://bit.ly/qF0X5LEdit

Discussion: Challenges in Motivation

• Is it possible? What techniques can I use? What are the challenges?
• Part of a 70-yr. tradition (see: Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation)
• Shared values in relationship to trust; One-to-one relationships are a primary driver of social trust
• How to help get people get past operating only within their comfort levels.
• People clump into communities/groups & usually don't mix across disciplines; esp. in PDX (talented developer pool)
• See: What motivates us video: RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us‬‏- YouTube http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
• Who people turn to: Social-Mapping; imbues Trust; people naturally gravitate toward like-minded people.
• Context matters:
  • Network of Practice
  • Community of practice
  • Social relation
  • Social network
  • Network theory

Some Current Tactics:

• Draw on people's existing networks
• Reward collaboration; How? Through perks such as visibility; reward good-behavior w/ choosing someone to do presentation; structure it as a collaborative task
• Invite people to tell their stories; community is relayed through story
• Story about Compuserve and forums, the group was trying to make $$'s at night, so they started forums, massively successful; challenged people to think about people in their link language
• Network-Weaving: make connections between people so they can grow together, organically
• Somehow reach out and include people you don't know
• To engage community/users; Get people excited/involved; massage egos; trust-factor is key; shared values held in common
• Step back tactic: “LeavingTheRoom” can help avoid creating an anti-pattern and/or limit “OverOrganizing” tendencies

Barriers to Evolution of social Web

• Dynamics of Change — Critical tension: trust-vs-change

• Growth comes from outside your comfort level & with people you don't know.

• FlipSide of social trust: what drives change is just the opposite: Counter-intuitive; Growth comes from failure, risk, personal discomfort, sacrifice, etc

• Challenge: Competition for commitment of people's time; often their most-precious asset

• Roadblocks: Evolution of social Web : Getting different groups to talk to each other; personal experiences; profiles of user groups; Getting burned; Contributors leave; Coloring-outside-the-lines - encouraged or punished?
• Prevailing business mentality: “If it's not broke, don't fix it”
• Reality: Everything's broken right now (Climate, Business, Economy, etc)
• Leadership: closes the gap. Being in service to something broader grows social capital / establishes validity

Critical need for people to buy-in:

• Cross their own personal boundaries & a willingness to change
• Conscious override of personal/pre-existing assumptions & beliefs;
• Grow listening skills; Develop Mindfulness ; Commitment to mutual-respect
• Reframe Crisis as opportunity for change/growth/evolution

A Few Examples//Resources:

• Mindful Economics : blog: Mindful Economist , Joel Magnuson, Ph.D.
• Ecortust , Diagram for Reliable Prosperity
• B-Corporations , B-Corp Community
• UNIV of TWENTE SiteMap : Communication Theories
• Fifth discipline principles; Systems Thinking Approach

Andy notes a theme

1. Successful social network take someone to organize & maintain the forum
2. Set up a virtual space for people to express themselves, as Compuserve did
3. Set up a reward system to encourage (or at least recognize): contributions; defines boundaries
4. Set time limits for tasks so that people know there will be a tangible outcome to their work (i.e. Federal Govt's open government forums early in Obama administration)