On Creating Community in Business, On Teams

I’ve been reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger finally and it’s given me focus and space to reflect and review work I’ve done under the “community” banner in business, particularly at iThemes and now at Post Status.

Looking back, I see it as a hallmark of my career, wherever I’ve been or gone. And something I enjoy.

I know one of the powerful drivers for me around “community” is creating, enhancing belonging, connection and support, but doing it as part of a business.

You know why?

I know I want and need it and crave it. We all do.

At iThemes, we created community naturally in our team and it evolved over time to be really special and why I continue to miss that team, who has gone on to bigger things in their lives and work.

Doing life together was our mantra. With the premise that you should at least LIKE the people you work with. It just seems to work way better when you actually enjoy the people you spent the bulk of your life with.

So we were intentional about creating team community from the beginning and growing and evolving it to really connect each other with the work.

And even though it had incredible results for us, it was also the right thing to do.

Team community is all about this: Treating people with respect and basic human decency. CARING. Giving a shit about each other.

Our common rally point was the work we did together inspired by the African proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

And we did. And I’m so proud of our work together.

But in 2009 or so though, we made a huge transition and transformation because of a post and questions we heard in the larger WordPress community we were serving.

That post and sentiment was THE spark for me to really engage and create community within our customers and the bigger WordPress community INTENTIONALLY, proactively.

As I reflect back today, it was really special and fun and new.

I got fired up.

And sought to connect and support our customers (who we renamed as our “customer community”) beyond just our product support.

We wanted to change business as usual as mere transaction … to transformation.

We made it personable, we made it human. We made it about them and their hopes, dreams and goals. Whatever they were trying to get accomplished that our products were a part of in their bigger journey.

And I think we were all better off for having community as a core value.

I think we need more of it in our world.