I thought this was an excellent quote by Yihong Ding, found in this RWW post about the value of Community Managers:

“As we know, most of the Web 2.0 companies are built upon user generated content. Philosophically, User Generated Content is embodied human mind. This embodied mind is generally the fundamental asset for the company. Maintaining a proper community so that users may embody their mind with high quality is thus a central issue for the growth of the company. The duty of community managers is to supervise and maintain the high-quality production of the fundamental mind asset used by the company. Therefore, I would say that community manager is a critical job title for most of the Web 2.0 companies.”

This holds true for any company, not just Web 2.0 companies.

Every company today needs to recognize this.  While user generated content may be a core component of many Web 2.0 companies’ business models, the conversation and “content” provided by a company’s users/customers is of the utmost value to all businesses.

Therefore, ensuring that it is sought after, provoked, nurtured and communicated appropriately and applied correctly is of immense importance.

Still not satisfied?

• Jeremiah Owyang created a score card that you can use to help you determine your need for a community manager.

• Connie Bensen also lists some good questions that you can ask yourself, to gauge your readiness to take the plunge.

I’ll give you one question: Who in YOUR company is responsible for listening and engaging your community?

If you have to think about it, you’re in trouble.  It’s time.

Yesterday, I came across this amazing series by Jonathan Fields entitled: CEO’s Secret Weapon: little-known tactics that fuel visionary thinking.

The Three A’s that Jonathan talks about in the series are:

Get Away
Train Your Attention
Time To Get Active

I won’t even give a quick summary here.  Read the whole three part series. When reading it, think about the people you know that really seem to stand out as visionaries and top performers.  The people that consistently excel in most everything they do.  Maybe that’s you?  You are probably doing these things in some form or another.

Here’s a great exercise to help re-energize your team:

Tell every member of your team that you want each of them to forget about everything that they are currently working on, and take the time to come up with what THEY think they should be working on. What THEY think should be their highest priority.

In addition, ask them to look at what every other member of the team is currently working on, and come up with what THEY think each person’s highest priority item should be.

Then, have a meeting to discuss all of these things, brainstorm and re-align your priorities.

Sometimes a terrible thing can happen to a team. Team dynamics become what I call team “dynumbics”.

People become numb. They become lulled to sleep, not willing to participate in the overall team effort aside from doing their individual tasks and calling it a day. They no longer have a drive to disagree, to be creative or to voice their opinions and ideas.

Why does this happen? In thinking about it, I’ve come up with the 5 dysfunctions of a team as I see them. (I know of Patrick Lencioni’s book with the same title, though I’ve never read it.)

1) Poor Leadership - Poor leadership causes everyone else to suffer. In reality, poor leadership is really the only thing to blame for poor team dynamics.  Leadership needs to recognize the signs of the remaining four dysfunctions, and fix them quickly.

2) Poor Process - Poor process will quickly lull people to sleep and drive teams apart. A poor process can be defined as: no process, a process that is clearly broken, or a process that changes all the time. A process changing and improving from time to time is one thing. However, if you have a fire drill every time a certain task needs to be completed, you have a poor process and you need to spend the time needed to fix it. A poor process just frustrates people.

3) Poor Relationships - Strong professional relationships are key. This needs to be fostered by leadership as well. One simple way to foster strong professional relationships amongst team members is to stress their importance frequently. Like most things, just bring it up. Tell your team that it’s important that they all have good relationships with one another, and that they feel comfortable providing constructive criticism and asking each other for help/input.

4) Lack of Shared Vision - If your team doesn’t have a shared vision for what you are trying to accomplish, how do you expect to accomplish it? Don’t expect that everyone will have the shared vision because you mention it once a year. It needs to be reinforced, brought up frequently, and you need to be evaluating the things that your team is doing to make sure they are furthering that shared vision. Without a shared vision, people can easily become disengaged and feel like they are doing busy work.

5) Lack of Ownership - This is vital for two reasons:

• Ownership motivates people to do their best. If you tell someone that something is “theirs” and that they “own it”, most people are going to do the best they can.  If no one owns it, it’s going to be mediocre.

• If no one owns it, there is no one to hold accountable when it doesn’t get done.  This also means that people will feel like someone else should have done something, which weakens relationships between team members.

Don’t let your team become numb.