Culture & Navigating Change in Community with a Work + Pup Update!

It's that time of the week again! I actually have some good/interesting updates for you here this week beyond community, but before we get into those let's dive into what I said we'd cover this week as I always do at the top of the newsletter. This week we're talking all things...

• Culture in Community ??
• Navigating Change in Community ??
• What I'm Working on Before I Hit the Road ????
• Pupdate with Rory, Asta, and Moe! ??

Culture in Community

Culture is the special sauce in what makes our community feel safe, cozy, and invigorating. Last week, I mentioned a conversation I had with one of my friends, colleagues, and confidantes, Rion Robinson , where we talked a little bit about what it means to be a part of a community. Our culture at COhatch continues to elevate as we add more individuals to the team and we continue to see how our community evolves inside and outside of work at COhatch because we are not only a home to our team but to many other businesses and teams with cultures of their own.

Because we're so big into community, we take an interest in how culture plays out inside of small, large, and even our own teams day to day. Rion and I are always interested in the lessons that our culture and other teams' cultures that we get to witness every day. There are dozens of lessons we've learned being in an active culture who focuses on community that I think are worth sharing. Here are a few of the lessons we've learned since we've been talking community:

• Culture gives us a way into a community, but can also be a barrier to entry. Most culture, if you fit into it right away, feels like home. But some cultures can provide a bit of friction when you jump in without knowing everything, too. In a way, culture is developed in community as a way to keep everyone safe and create safe spaces.
• Culture lives and breathes. Just as your community and its members fluctuate, so will your culture. Culture provides a bridge to allow your community to grow with intention and gives you the opportunity to make changes that fit the community and its members' journeys in work and life.
• Culture can outgrow the community or vice versa. It's easy to let culture take over your community or vice versa. There has to be a fine balance between what you're trying to achieve, how you achieve it, and who you achieve it with. If something is askew, you'll find culture or community drift.
• You shape and mould community with culture, not grow it. One of the hardest things to do is grow a community with culture. There will always be one or two things that don't jive with everything. The idea of creating a culture is to bring people together once they've arrived, but there will always be some people who fall outside of the culture. The goal of creating a community with a good culture is not to have everyone fall in line beside you, but to offer up what you value and believe and hope that others out there like you have a place to land, too. Community isn't a catchall bucket.

All of these bullets are things I've experienced inside or outside of my current work. These are big lessons that have resulted in major change across teams, friend groups, and relationships I've managed over my 27+ years of life. With these changes, I've had to learn how to navigate my communities, both personally and professionally. Which brings me to my next brief.

Navigating Change in Community

Change is always hard. We are innately against it. Anything with friction, uphill climbing, and an overall feeling of "that's different" makes us cringe (or screech internally) a little. We like our day to day lull without speed bumps. That's who we are as humans.

But change is also inevitable in life. When change comes to a community, it often feels like a tidal wave hitting an island, even when the change is something very minimal. You'll find that most people are sounding the alarm when change first happens in a community with very few people who sit with the wave before declaring a tsunami. It can often feel like a daunting task to make a change as a community leader and feel even scarier as someone who actively participates in the community.

But there are some key ways to navigate change in community that I may or may not have learned until after making changes inside my community...

Think, Plan, Communicate, Get Feedback, Communicate Again...Then Make a Change.

One of the hardest lessons in making changes in a community for me has been getting people onboard with change. I've done it a lot of different ways, many in which have not resulted in the change or result I wanted. Here's how I approach change in my communities based on my experiences:

1. Think and really think of how this change will affect everyone in the community. From top to bottom and bottom to top. Think about how the change will affect people before communicating it. The last thing you want to do is impose or communicate a change when you aren't sure how it will generally affect everyone in the community change.
2. Plan ahead of communicating a change. Ensure there aren't any loopholes that can be jumped through. Get key decision makers and key individuals who would be affected by the change involved as you plan to avoid missing any key pieces that will make or break your proposal.
3. Communicate an upcoming change before making it. Instead of making a change from the top down, be sure to communicate the change before it happens. Be open for feedback and be willing to talk with individuals who are concerned about the change. If you can convert someone who is against the change, you know you are on the right track.
4. Take the feedback and actually make changes. If you hear the same feedback more than once, it's time to take a deeper look at it. You missed something and need to re-evaluate before pushing forward. Pressure test your change before making it a reality.
5. Communicate the change again. Be sure people are aware it's coming and ask for them to reciprocate communication to ensure you aren't catching anyone by surprise.
6. Make a change, but stay open for feedback as the change goes into place. If you close the door on feedback, the change you made may not drive the results you're looking for. You can't make a change in a community and expect your change to be driven by one or two people. Buy-in is integral to community changes.

I'm not saying I know everything about navigating change in communities, but this is now my go-to platform for proposing change and navigating the effects of it as a leader in the community space.

Now that you've had your community tips for the day, let's dive into what I'm working on before I leave for vacation!

What I'm Working on Before Vacation

As I prepare to head out on vacation, I'm working on project management for my team. As someone who used to spend two days a week without enough to do at previous jobs, I like to make sure my team is ready and has everything they need while I'm out. This means I'm focusing on creating my "to-do's" for each of my team members, as well as prepping any structure for my projects including designs for our new features inside of COhatch+ .

This week and next, I'm focusing on creating a "small features" list for my development team to continue to create new ways for our members to engage on our new member platform. This means reviewing all of our notifications currently setup, as well as creating a new list of small UI/UX features that could help drive more community interaction on the site. Things like email notifications, in-platform notifications, and fun ways to achieve new levels/badges are a few of the things I'm taking into consideration.

The goal with COhatch+ is to create new ways for members to engage across our cities and use our physical spaces for collaboration and community-focused projects. I'm hoping these new features will help drive more engagement inside our locations and out!

Outside of designing new features, I'll hand over my daily to-do's and get ready for my adventure :)

Pupdate with the pups!

My pups are resting up after last week's vet visit. Moe, our newest addition, got spayed and Rory, my oldest, got her teeth cleaned. Asta managed to weasel her way out of the visit so she is just living her best nap life. Our last week or so in a house for a while has been relatively quiet and full of funny photos as everyone has been lounging while I've been hard at work...

That's All Folks!

Before you head out of today's newsletter, I said this would be my last newsletter before vacation. In both good and bad news, the van is going into the shop for one last fix before I hit the road so we will have another week of newsletter before I head out on our adventure. We'll see what I have cooked up for you next week :) I think it's going to be a special edition of the newsletter!

Thank you as always for reading and we'll see you back here next week. Feel free to email me at [email protected] to connect or chat about all things digital, community, marketing, and more.