A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 8.4.B

My understanding is that the My Child Without Limits forum is actually managed by Inspire, an outfit that builds online health and wellness communities and offers them free to advocacy organizations like UCP. It’s responsible for moderation, technical support, back-end communications, and other day-to-day obligations.

‘Z’at mean that UCP doesn’t know its collaborative stuff?

Nope. It means that UCP chose to outsource in this case. The only thing that counts, anyhow, is the value people do or don't derive. The forum at My Child seems active. Participants seem to like it...

What I can't tell by browsing is if and how UCP benefits. Or if its managers have the know-how and know-what to pull off something like it on their own. And, can they use social media to collaborate communally for other purposes? The foundation for becoming a social organization is in place. But what about the other stuff that sits on top?

To attempt an answer, we still have two wholly home-grown community collaboration efforts we can look at: Life Labs and (one I left out of the discussion in part A) Brave Kids.

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Like My Child, Brave Kids is an issue-specific campaign with its own site: www.bravekids.org. Brave Kids' mission is to serve “children and youth with disabilities and chronic /life-threatening illnesses by providing a support community, information and resources on numerous medical conditions like genetic diseases, autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, ADD, etc.” 

One of the primary goals at Brave Kids is to help kids build connections with other kids based on their similar experiences. Looking to its online community for signs, however -- that hoped-for connection building isn't happening. Participation is anemic. (the flip-side o' what you see at My Child) To date there have been “3 Posts in 2 Topics by 2 Members,” the most recent coming over six months ago.

I could make more or less the same observation with regard to the participation levels at Life Labs. (re: its Google Group and wiki, for examples)

SOCIAL MEDIA, PURPOSE, and COMMUNITY are the three indispensables of community collaboration. I don't see participants in these cases being mobilized to contribute. I don't see collaboration being generated on a meaningful scale, i.e., there's no tapping into the full knowledge, talent, innovation, and energy of large groups of people. The COMMUNITY component is MIA.

One might argue that both sites, both communities, are still relatively young -- to which Gartner would counter: “Social media environments do not grow slowly over time.” 

The harsh reality is that most social media initiatives either fail to attract interest or deliver real value to the organization. Participation doesn’t usually just happen. Keep in mind a key Gartner insight: Community collaboration isn’t primarily a technology implementation. It’s a management challenge. “Let us be clear: if IT alone leads the effort," the authors of The Social Organization say, "you have already stepped off the path to success. Business leadership is crucial." 

Life Labs’ Director is UCP’s IT Director…

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If it is the case that both would-be communities are struggling, what would Gartner do? How would it go about trying to help? Methodically -- it'd start with a complete medical history, so to speak. Performed on macroscopic and microscopic levels:

MACROSCOPIC 

At the level of the WHOLE ORGANIZATION, Gartner would want to look at all the visioning and strategizing activities that lead to okaying the two projects in the first place. It would help UCP assess whether or not community collaboration was an appropriate choice, and help establish (on closer inspection) that both projects were worth pursuing. This'd entail: 

• Making sure the purposes were well formed, and that they clearly articulated the benefits to community members and the value to the organization;

• Doing "grow" assessments to systematically determine if and how the community collaboration efforts should have moved forward;

• Looking at the projects as parts of a coherent portfolio of purposeful communities -- and making decisions about them accordingly.

MICROSCOPIC

At the INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY level, Gartner would want to focus on all the following steps required to cultivate -- prepare and launch -- a successful community: 

Prepare. A green light (indicating "Yes, we think we're going to want to invest in Life Labs and /or Brave Kids") at the macroscopic level still requires more focused and vigorous efforts to decide if and how to proceed. For each proposed purpose and community, those efforts should have resulted in:

• a purpose roadmap; a malleable plan for its evolution (how the community can evolve to deliver sustained value over time);

• a more formal business justification, one that describes the concrete sources of expected value.

"This combination provides solid footing to progress to the launch phase, where a desired community becomes a reality.”

Launch. A successful launch entails: 

• Exploring and defining the participant experience;

• Creating the right environment (addressing structure, ease of use, choosing the right social media technologies, and more);

• Engaging the community, i.e., grabbing and holding participants’ attention (setting critical mass targets and rapidly driving participation).

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Gartner's overriding objective would be to help UCP build the capabilities to achieve meaningful, repeatable, and significant organizational value with social media technologies -- 

To help UCP hoist itself, in other words, securely onto the FORGING rung.