Working with communities, at scale, means working with a decentralized team of people in different geographies, with a similar, but diverse, professional background and expertise level. One of the few working strategies to keep all of us aligned on main goals, while fostering local ideas and adaptive strategies to better fit the local ecosystem, is to define and maintain a common team culture. Recently I was asked to present what is the Google Developers community management culture and key insights in front of our team of community builders, people like me in charge of supporting tech communities all over the world that want to share knowledge on Google technologies during their activities. Here a list of my main takeaways.
Why we do what we do and what is our role?
Dev communities help to solve the growing complexity of the technological landscape, adding a very unique social flavor. So, as community builders, we accelerate learning, cultivate culture and collaborate with communities on a shared mission and goals. We help them to be more successful because, ultimately, this helps Google dev products to be more successful. And because we love communities.
Community leaders first
We should already be used to the “User first Google’s philosophy principle. In our case, it translates to “community leaders first“. They are our primary focus, and should be treated with respect. We have to build a two-way and mutually useful relationship. All the rest follows.
Embrace goal diversity and work on the sweet spots
We have to recognize, and acknowledge, community leaders are driven by their own goals and reasons, and our company goals cannot be pushed to them. Instead, to keep this relationship prolific and sustainable in the long period, we have to base it on collaboration and independence, searching for overlaps in goals and build on these sweet spots. And we should be the first ones doing that. Sooner or later, opportunities will come.
Be a transparent and servant community builder
Community leaders know very well we don’t do this for charity. Like any trust-based relationship, it’s important to be transparent with them and communicate openly. We’re here to serve them, and not the other way around, as communities can exist without Google support, but we cannot exist without communities.
Treat them equally, as the ecosystem is our highest value asset
Some communities are more mature than others, some are quicker to execute, some able to have a bigger impact. It doesn’t matter, because what we value the most is a healthy growth and development of a vibrant community ecosystem. So they all are our beloved community leaders and we need to support all of them in the mid-long term, regardless of how they could help to reach our goals in the short team.
First save their time, then ours
In case we need to make a choice between saving our or their time, pick theirs: we’re paid to do this job, they volunteer their time. First, we need provide a coherent system maintained by a culture to interact with us, avoiding community micromanagement: in the long period, it will save a lot of time on both sides. Then, we can always optimize something: write easy-to-read, timely and useful communications, avoid asking data useful only to us, etc. Finally, if they don’t know about our initiatives, or they missed something, we assume it’s our fault.
Be data driven and restless student
Getting meaningful data out of communities is hard, but it doesn’t matter. A better knowledge of the community ecosystem helps us to make more informed decisions. We can be brave community builders, trying new things to improve our culture of community management one step at time, relentlessly, for the good of our communities and for a better collaboration with them. Every time we collect a new learning, positive or negative, we should share with each other.
Have fun
This job keeps a consistent part of our life busy: make the best out of this time, having fun while cultivating our passions.
If you’re curious about my life in Google, there are other posts to read.
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