Why?

People come for a WHY more than WHAT. Why are you building this product? Because they don’t buy what you do they buy why you do.

Why is Apple so innovative after the years of years they are more innovative than other competitors? There is something else that plays here. The simplest idea is WHY, HOW, and WHAT.

All organizations know what they do (100% all of them), some know HOW they do it but only a few people in the organization know why you do it and why you want to achieve it and that inspires others.

Hence always start building your community with the people who know why are you working on your goals OR products.

A good book about the science of community building is The business of belonging written by David Spinks which clearly explains this WHY concept with tons of examples.

Listen

To make your audience a part of your brand development you need to understand them and to understand them you need to listen to them. The most important thing is to create a listening opportunity to receive feedback.

According to research, 74% of employees have reported that they’re more effective at their job when they feel heard. It’s not enough to just listen to them, an organization has to take any action on that received feedback and this is how you can make them feel valued.

2 Rules

Apply these two rules at the workspace, including but not limited to the meeting, training, team-building, group chat, documents…

Be Active:

Employees’ physical well-being and mental health could be on top of the list. According to an Indeed survey. An overworked staff is a less productive one, leading to drops in productivity that can potentially stunt an organization’s growth prospects. To make keep them active and engaged organizations can plan various physical activities, like we at ExhiByte dance and do Zumba together for 20 minutes every day and this is how we are building our strong community.

A healthier workspace also benefits them to stay active in the office. Because they want to feel like they can be comfortable and active while on the job.

Be Transparent:

If you are monitoring the team or individually, you should make them aware of this. And we call it transparency. The goal of an organization should be to instill trust and foster an ethical climate in which fairness and transparency are the dominant currencies and people feel safe rather than stressed or anxious. The methods for accomplishing this may be novel, but at the end of the day, it is all about communication, engagement, and well-being, all of which are critical to improving performance and productivity.

Broadcast Your Vision

Sharing a company’s success and vision with a team is always a great way to start building a strong community. They are a part of the success. Create a powerful guiding coalition, in which senior managers always form the core. And it should create a vision and then share it with each and everyone so that others are also empowered to carry it out.

Wondering What are the good ways to broadcast the vision?

1. Create a Mission Statement

Create a Mission Statement that informs your employees that the work your company does has a real impact on the lives of thousands of people around the world.

One of the great mission statements which I personally like is of TED which is,

“Spread ideas.”

Once you’ve nailed the Mission statement, here are three suggestions for putting it into action:

1. Create an email campaign – Share at least one email per week to your internal team with the success stories and how it has impacted a human’s life. You can even use a wonderful story about your company or products to bring your goal to life and win the reader’s heart and mind in the process.
2. Over-communicate vision at all-team meetings – Repeat Repeat and Repeat your vision with a team every month, during team meetings and explain “why” all of them are behind the actions in each department and how they relate to larger company goals and part of that vision.
3. Brand Slogan – Print your company’s tagline just under the LOGO, our slogan is “We Speak Through Actions” and Employees are motivated by actions like these because they are made to feel special.

Let people write their own story

Try to find the interests of employees and create a few groups around the same, currently, we have 2 groups,

1. Share memes and videos for better productivity and some smile on each face while working and they can even share comic reels.
2. Story for the week in this channel each member can share their story. These groups have really helped in creating a good rapport between the team members even when few of our members are working remotely. They can narrate their story on slack or on their personal blog platform.

Fun Friday

We at ExhiByte have designed a Friday schedule in such a way that every team member can participate and explore different ways to communicate with all the team members by hosting a session on their favorite subject (like their favorite Movie and what they learned from it). We also play games and share lunch and stay connected with each other.

A great culture begins with an overall attitude, cultivating a mindset to learn to see the world in a new light, and it is in defining that mindset that great cultures are born.
You can build a stronger foundation that solidifies your culture for the future by empowering employees to innovate, fail quickly, and grow while remaining open and nimble as a team.