of belonging purpose and community every
time we need what if we could truly live
in purposeful community we can begin in
the smallest of ways most mornings I
make breakfast for my daughters and one
of my favorite breakfasts for them is an
omelet and beat up the eggs on a hot
skillet and then serve it to them and we
have this moment where they look at the
omelet and there is it runny is it
cooked enough is it overdone and we
experience this shared connection in
this wonderful breakfast moment that
takes two minutes but reinforces all the
love that we’ve ever had for one another
and creates an opportunity for us to
connect and that’s really at the heart
of the purposeful community I think a
good deal of this came from my mother
she grew up on a small Caribbean island
and was part of a very large family and
had family gatherings even the smallest
of kids played a meaningful role in
helping the community to stay strong and
connected each time there was a
gathering we would have appetizers and
the smallest of children would come and
offer appetizers to each adult before
serving themselves that sense of
community has stayed with me when I went
on to my first working role I helped to
produce the television broadcast for the
1983 march on Washington commemorating
Martin Luther King’s historic 1963 I
have a dream speech and we gathered
together 300,000 strong sharing in a
renewal of our commitment to the dream
and for the first time we were able to
broadcast that live globally and so
communications tools were starting to
play a role in extending the reach of
even this massive gathering and so I
took this in my into my rest of
worklife coming here to Seattle and
working in the nonprofit sector with
corporations and nonprofits and
government and developing a strong sense
of how our communities can thrive and
grow so what do I mean by purposeful
community because we’ve all been in
different kinds of communities and some
are certainly more purposeful than
others and other purposes or more
community filled than others what I’m
really talking about is how purposeful
community unifies people to act on
shared values a community that doesn’t
have a strong sense of purpose
underperforms and doesn’t live up to its
promise and purpose that doesn’t have a
the shape of belonging the community can
provide tends to be passionate gets
frittered away so bringing these two
things together is critical for me in
having a shared sense of belonging that
can extend over time so I think this is
particularly important for three reasons
today first we now can work in
deliberately developmental organizations
in and everyone culture by Bob Keegan
from Harvard he talks about how it
better me plus a better you leads to a
better us I mean the point is obvious
but a historical perspective suggests
that once we reach a peak after
finishing school we stop developing for
the rest of our lives in flatline but
it’s not the way it is we continue to
develop and grow throughout our lives
and our workplaces are now understanding
this and so we’re creating meaningful
ways for people to develop as
individuals as well as for the good of
the organization or company and this has
a positive impact on the bottom line as
well on satisfaction levels of
individuals second we’re living in the
social era where we’re connected via
social media and many other ways and in
fact the borders of our organizations
and companies don’t end at the walls of
our offices they extend out into the
world of our customers and for all the
people that we can serve and connect in
fact nilla for merchant goes so far as
to say that purpose and community are
the
to defining attributes that determine a
key advantage that companies can have
today and third we have new structures
for engaging community in what we do
these are a few companies that deeply
include community and their practices
but many smaller companies and certainly
organizations government agencies and
nonprofits use these as well so what I
want to do is give you an example of
what it’s like to engage in how this
community is expressed in work I wanted
to go on a vacation and when I looked at
the opportunities available typically
hotels give a fairly transactional offer
but my purpose was to have a rustic get
getaway in nature and I couldn’t find
that in the traditional transactional
hotel world so I turn to Airbnb where I
could connect with someone who had a
shared purpose of providing exactly that
kind of a rest to get away and so I had
a wonderful few days in this beautiful
setting and it’s because Airbnb thought
of this vision to connect anyone so that
they could belong anywhere that we were
able to connect in that way and we’re
gathered here in another form of
community and bringing this experience
of an event into our lives of something
more and more organizations and
businesses are doing and here in our
small group or in a large group we can
create a strong sense of scaled
experience and community that can extend
to hundreds even thousands of people and
at the same time we can still maintain a
strong sense of closeness to those we
care most about and hopefully we can
develop those relationships with the
people we get to meet today so in a
sense this takes us on a kind of
community journey where we go from a
first encounter of knowledge to some
kind of a communication or transaction
and becoming some kind of a member but
it doesn’t need to stop there we can
develop ways for us to contribute
advocate and even lead within our
communities and not only that it gives
us a sense that it’s our belonging that
deepens with
step along our community journey and
that we experience rewards along the way
that help us stay engaged and that we
can provide those opportunities for our
organizations and for our companies so
how does this work how do we design our
community strategies first you have to
ask what is the vision now most
organizations and companies have a
vision already for two of the ones I’ve
already mentioned Airbnb has the vision
that anyone can belong anywhere and
Ted’s vision is of ideas worth spreading
those are clear and broad visions that
many people can participate in so having
that is a wonderful aspect of your
organization’s vision is very valuable
next identifying the community’s first
in the large sense but also it’s really
worth looking closer and thinking about
what are the sub communities within the
people that we connect with and serve
and how can we make sure that we include
them for larger organizations this maybe
even looking at smaller communities and
considering what is the community
journey they could or should be on and
then for each community there’s an
emergent process of setting the vision
that typically comes from within that
community to identify where it wants to
go and often this can align with and
needs to align with in successful cases
with the broader vision of the
organization setting clear inspiring
vivid visions of where what can be is
vital in that process next because
community doesn’t just happen in a
single moment it happens over time we
want to map the storyline and organize
there are a number of different common
storylines that communities can go
through the development storyline is one
that’s typical from learning where you
gradually begin the process and then
increase the difficulty level and then
reach a plateau that can last for a long
time or ready the organization or
community for a next journey it’s a
great format for those that want to
reach those kinds of stable plateaus
second there’s the aspiration or moon
storyline where you’re aiming for an
idealistic vision or goal a lot of
startups and other kinds of moonshot
type projects tend to focus in this
method and compress the timeline to
reach a very ambitious commitment and
third is a transition storyline which
tends to help us be ready for a change
or a difficulty that we know is coming
ahead anticipating that can help people
take that change in stride and lead us
towards a better outcome next we have to
organize the the individuals who all
have their own individual relationship
with the purpose and connect also in
their shared connection around what that
purpose is and how they want to be
engaged and there’s an interesting thing
that happens in leadership in
communities which is in a sense that
everyone owns each member owns the
community as well as all members
together own it and their leadership can
emerge in a sense a member is a leader
waiting to emerge or a leader is a
person who simply knows how to take
turns and that is the kind of good
leader you want in communities because
they know how to free members to lead
organizing often involves bringing
leadership to a group dynamic where a
group can go on a quest to generate a
project and develop dynamics that
produce results but these can scale
especially when members are empowered to
lead groups in their own directions this
can create a scaled sense of sustainable
community and this model grew out of
community organizing and was used very
effectively by the Obama campaign and
numerous other businesses and
organizations use this to spawn and
generate communities Google’s developer
community self emerged in this form and
then the organization of Google decided
well we want to create the space to
foster and nourish that community so
self-sustaining communities can be
supported through this and then third we
want to design the experiences
because as I said the community is on a
journey and so you can create a series
of events and experiences that takes
people through the invitation and the
initial belonging through sharing
knowledge learning teaching and
ultimately leading and of course there
are many different forms that you can
add to make it appropriate for the
journey you want to invite your
community on setting the place for your
community events matters when we were
going to plan for a year of future
engagement with a community we went to
this wonderful retreat center in on
Cortez island in the Canadian islands
and we gathered there and were able to
have a very fresh view about where we
could go because we were in this unique
and special environment and in that
spirit of remembering how important it
is to create the future remember every
time we meet is an opportunity to create
a shared future so think about how you
want to share knowledge what is the most
compelling form that will work for your
community or your organization to create
shared knowledge that is meaningfully
impactful a memorable there are many
ways that this can happen from workshops
to retreats to off sites and so on
leverage online platforms this is from a
series of Google Hangouts that we did
including 10 different languages over
the course of several days where we
involve people from many different
countries there truly are many different
forms that you can use online today from
Facebook live too many other to extend
the reach and opportunities to
contribute for your community members
and then when it comes to coming to
getting the work done make sure you have
a good facilitated opportunity for
people to contribute their best thoughts
so one of the things i found and i hope
you will too is that a community can
grow to be larger than you initially
imagined it possibly could and as you go
remember to measure the process remember
the progress as you go along
one of the key reasons people drop out
of groups is a sense of not making the
kind of progress that’s necessary but we
can measure how many goals are achieved
how many people are participating how
much work is getting done and we can
keep track of that and at the same time
we can honor one another and honor the
engagement that people are giving
because there are no small gifts so to
sum to create personal and purposeful
community set the shared vision map the
storyline design the experiences and
measure and honor one another as you go
along so welcome welcome to the
purposeful community I can’t wait to see
what you can create how you will decide
who can come to your table how you can
grow the offerings that you make
available to people how you can design
experiences that will enrich and liven
and empower people to contribute and
make the vision that you have for
yourself your organization and for your
world real thank you [Applause]