Look at the history of most communities, you’ll notice the founder plays a pivotal role.
They set the tone, establish the rules, invite the first members.
This article (pages 24 to 31), shows the specific steps the Green Brothers did to develop a powerful community culture.
Compare this with how organisations develop communities. The founder is almost insignificant.
The founder works within strict rules of the organisation. They have little freedom to do the activities the Green Brothers did to develop the culture. It’s too risky, it deviates from the norm too much.
Yet it is precisely this deviation from the norm that carves out a unique culture.
By not allowing anything unusual or wierd to happen, the community can’t develop a unique culture and is unlikely to succeed. Organisations are strangling their own community efforts.
I think the current model is wrong.
Organisations find people to help them launch a community. They should find people they can help launch a community. They need to better emphasize the role and freedom of the founders. They need a degree of separation. They can own the platform, they can have the power to remove the community manager, but they need to provide the freedom for the founder to invite their friends and create a unique culture.
They should find specifically the people that can launch a community and then provide them with all the resources they need to make the community succeed.
This probably won’t happen. That’s a shame.
