Smart growth is a decision: a decision to grow or not grow a community.
Growth can be appropriate or not depending on the maturity of a community, member needs, and the community’s goals.
If growth is one of the community’s goals, there are several approaches to use: direct, word-of-mouth, promotion, and search, or a combination of these.
What is Smart Growth?
Questions are often asked such as “How big is the Community?” or “How many members are there in the Community?” The implication is that bigger is better and that the Community always needs to be growing. However, not all communities need to grow. Smart growth means that you make a conscious decision as to whether or not you should grow your Community, when you grow it and at what pace. This decision should be driven by the Core Team, the Core Group, and ultimately, the community itself.
Why is it important to be smart about whether or not to grow your Community?
It is important to make intelligent decisions about whether or not there is a need to grow a Community. For example, if the Community has a limited membership - such as a group of volunteer trainers within a division, where only between 15-20 volunteers are needed to satisfy the division’s training needs - there is no need for the Community to grow beyond these needs. Even with a large Community of several millions, would it make sense to expend considerable effort chasing a disproportionately small (even though it might be several thousand) number of additional members? On the other hand, if a critical mass of members is needed to make the community work effectively, then growth would be a priority.
Why not have growth?
There might be several reasons to not grow the community:
Member desires and balance – Most groups are actually quite happy as they are. A sudden influx in growth can throw off the balance of a Community. (Of course, for communities that have become complacent, this might be a good thing!)
Impact on Community spirit – Growth can actually hurt a Community’s spirit. Imagine having been a member and part of a Community for several years. You have carefully crafted solid relationships with other Community members, which helped create a sense of trust and safety: you feel you can open up with the Community and talk about anything, sharing both successes and failures with equal confidence. Suddenly, 200 new people join. You don’t recognize who is participating, and you no longer feel like you’re an integral part of the group, one of the very reasons you joined. With an influx in growth, communities can grow beyond the point where the people in the community still feel that they have a strong sense of community with each other.
Heavy focus on growth emphasizes the wrong metrics – An overly strong emphasis on growth tends to place a focus on the wrong metrics. This misplaced focus can come at the expense of activity levels, content quality, and the sense of community amongst members, which can ultimately affect the impact your community can have on the organization’s goals.
Why have growth?
On the other hand, if the intermediate and ultimate goals of the community would be satisfied by growing the community, then there are a number of areas to consider including:
Sustainability (early-stage communities)
Regeneration (fading/struggling communities)
New opportunities (mature communities)
Tackle potential problems (data-driven)
Replenishment (mature communities)
If the community does not satisfy any of these five criteria, then questions should be raised about whether or not it needs to grow.
Sustainability (early-stage communities) – You might be working on an early stage community, and you need to grow to reach sustainability, or, critical mass. A community needs a certain level of active members to maintain its momentum, otherwise it’s at a greater risk of failing.
Regeneration (fading/struggling communities) – You might be working on a fading or struggling community that you want to regenerate and reinvigorate. Communities struggle for different reasons , however, growth is one way out of a struggling community. With regeneration, incoming new members bring new ideas, new experiences, and new relationships, the lifeblood of any community.
New opportunities (mature communities) – You might have a mature community that is looking to expand into new opportunities. People’s interests grow and change, and new innovations and techniques are often introduced to communities. In this situation, growth positions the community to be able to take advantage of new opportunities. If you maintain your current size and overlook an opportunity, you risk losing part of your community or the entire community if an innovation then becomes mainstream but your community is focussed on out-of-date technology and tools, or outdated thinking.
Tackle potential problems (data-driven) – You might notice potential problems in your community based on your internal data. For example, perhaps you’ve exhausted all the possible members in your sector, or the average age of your members begins to increase significantly, then you’ll want to start to increase the appeal of your community to a new audience to prevent it from declining or even failing.
Replenishment (mature communities) – If you have a mature community, you will want to replenish the membership regularly. Mature communities need a steady flow of new members joining. Over a long period of time, you’ll notice that many of the members in your community leave. They’ll lose interest in the topic, their priorities change, or perhaps they take a new job that takes them away from the community. Whatever the reason, community members will move on, so you need to replace them with a steady stream of new members.
How do you grow a Community of Practice?
Having decided to grow the community, you now can consider how to grow it. There are four approaches you can use:
Direct growth
Word-of-mouth growth
Growth promotion
Growth through search
Direct Growth – Direct growth is an easy and reliable form of growth, and it happens when you are appealing to an audience that you already have access to. This can be done via direct invitations, mailing lists, and related partnerships.
Word-of-Mouth Growth – Word-of-mouth growth can happen when community members share content with their connections, and when they individually refer someone to the community. It can happen at an event where there is a hashtag related to the community, or where someone such as a stakeholder who is invested in the community pushes people towards the community. Word-of-mouth growth also happens when you host more interactive activities in your community. The more community members interact with other members in the community, the more likely they are to feel invested and involved, and the more likely they are to recommend the community to their friends and peers.
Promotion – Growth by promotion happens when you reach out to audiences that you don’t already have access to. There are several different promotional channels you can use to appeal to external audiences, for example, events and competitions, newsletters, and in the World Bank, Yammer groups and the Collaboration For Development (C4D) platform.
Search – Growth by search is simply what happens when an audience organically finds your community through online searches using Google or other search engines, or if you are part of the World Bank, internal World Bank mechanisms such as Search, the CoP Inventory, and the Open Learning Campus (OLC).
Blog » Achieving Smart Growth of a Community of Practice
Achieving Smart Growth of a Community of Practice
Summary:
What is Smart Growth?
Questions are often asked such as “How big is the Community?” or “How many members are there in the Community?” The implication is that bigger is better and that the Community always needs to be growing. However, not all communities need to grow. Smart growth means that you make a conscious decision as to whether or not you should grow your Community, when you grow it and at what pace. This decision should be driven by the Core Team, the Core Group, and ultimately, the community itself.
Why is it important to be smart about whether or not to grow your Community?
It is important to make intelligent decisions about whether or not there is a need to grow a Community. For example, if the Community has a limited membership - such as a group of volunteer trainers within a division, where only between 15-20 volunteers are needed to satisfy the division’s training needs - there is no need for the Community to grow beyond these needs. Even with a large Community of several millions, would it make sense to expend considerable effort chasing a disproportionately small (even though it might be several thousand) number of additional members? On the other hand, if a critical mass of members is needed to make the community work effectively, then growth would be a priority.
Why not have growth?
There might be several reasons to not grow the community:
Member desires and balance – Most groups are actually quite happy as they are. A sudden influx in growth can throw off the balance of a Community. (Of course, for communities that have become complacent, this might be a good thing!)
Impact on Community spirit – Growth can actually hurt a Community’s spirit. Imagine having been a member and part of a Community for several years. You have carefully crafted solid relationships with other Community members, which helped create a sense of trust and safety: you feel you can open up with the Community and talk about anything, sharing both successes and failures with equal confidence. Suddenly, 200 new people join. You don’t recognize who is participating, and you no longer feel like you’re an integral part of the group, one of the very reasons you joined. With an influx in growth, communities can grow beyond the point where the people in the community still feel that they have a strong sense of community with each other.
Heavy focus on growth emphasizes the wrong metrics – An overly strong emphasis on growth tends to place a focus on the wrong metrics. This misplaced focus can come at the expense of activity levels, content quality, and the sense of community amongst members, which can ultimately affect the impact your community can have on the organization’s goals.
Why have growth?
On the other hand, if the intermediate and ultimate goals of the community would be satisfied by growing the community, then there are a number of areas to consider including:
If the community does not satisfy any of these five criteria, then questions should be raised about whether or not it needs to grow.
Sustainability (early-stage communities) – You might be working on an early stage community, and you need to grow to reach sustainability, or, critical mass. A community needs a certain level of active members to maintain its momentum, otherwise it’s at a greater risk of failing.
Regeneration (fading/struggling communities) – You might be working on a fading or struggling community that you want to regenerate and reinvigorate. Communities struggle for different reasons , however, growth is one way out of a struggling community. With regeneration, incoming new members bring new ideas, new experiences, and new relationships, the lifeblood of any community.
New opportunities (mature communities) – You might have a mature community that is looking to expand into new opportunities. People’s interests grow and change, and new innovations and techniques are often introduced to communities. In this situation, growth positions the community to be able to take advantage of new opportunities. If you maintain your current size and overlook an opportunity, you risk losing part of your community or the entire community if an innovation then becomes mainstream but your community is focussed on out-of-date technology and tools, or outdated thinking.
Tackle potential problems (data-driven) – You might notice potential problems in your community based on your internal data. For example, perhaps you’ve exhausted all the possible members in your sector, or the average age of your members begins to increase significantly, then you’ll want to start to increase the appeal of your community to a new audience to prevent it from declining or even failing.
Replenishment (mature communities) – If you have a mature community, you will want to replenish the membership regularly. Mature communities need a steady flow of new members joining. Over a long period of time, you’ll notice that many of the members in your community leave. They’ll lose interest in the topic, their priorities change, or perhaps they take a new job that takes them away from the community. Whatever the reason, community members will move on, so you need to replace them with a steady stream of new members.
How do you grow a Community of Practice?
Having decided to grow the community, you now can consider how to grow it. There are four approaches you can use:
Direct Growth – Direct growth is an easy and reliable form of growth, and it happens when you are appealing to an audience that you already have access to. This can be done via direct invitations, mailing lists, and related partnerships.
Word-of-Mouth Growth – Word-of-mouth growth can happen when community members share content with their connections, and when they individually refer someone to the community. It can happen at an event where there is a hashtag related to the community, or where someone such as a stakeholder who is invested in the community pushes people towards the community. Word-of-mouth growth also happens when you host more interactive activities in your community. The more community members interact with other members in the community, the more likely they are to feel invested and involved, and the more likely they are to recommend the community to their friends and peers.
Promotion – Growth by promotion happens when you reach out to audiences that you don’t already have access to. There are several different promotional channels you can use to appeal to external audiences, for example, events and competitions, newsletters, and in the World Bank, Yammer groups and the Collaboration For Development (C4D) platform.
Search – Growth by search is simply what happens when an audience organically finds your community through online searches using Google or other search engines, or if you are part of the World Bank, internal World Bank mechanisms such as Search, the CoP Inventory, and the Open Learning Campus (OLC).
This article is part of the WBG Communities of Practice Toolkit licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The toolkit features practical resources to help you develop impactful Communities of Practice. 📖 Learn more about the Toolkit. ▶ Access the Toolkit.