We understand a community as a space of social interaction, deliberately designed and managed in its instrumental elements (environment, information, interactions) in order to generate a positive impact for both people and organizations.
When it comes to research on what communities are and how they function, the most important legacy left to us by the Weconomy UFO (Unidentified Future Organizations) issue lies, in my view, in the concept of ritual as incomplete instruction – something that creates a space for action and initiative for individuals. The subsequent issue, A Completely Different Vision, invites us instead to reflect on the generative power of communities and on the different levels of interaction through which they can be observed, adding a further insight: the broader the transformative impact we aim to achieve, the more extensive the collective dimension we need to act upon.
So: is it enough for people to become active, or do you want to orient that activation toward a meaningful impact for individuals and organizations? Is it sufficient to provide environments, tools, and content, or do you want to give a coherent and improving direction that makes those elements meaningful? Have you achieved your goals when you see an “energetic” community, or do you eventually want to decide where that energy should go – and what it should produce?
Cybernetics (whose etymology refers to steering and governing) is the science that studies how mechanisms of self-regulation in living, conscious organisms are reproduced in complex systems. If we apply it to a social organism such as a community, we can think of it as the study of the different social levels at which energy is generated and regulated. In The Social System, Talcott Parsons, a key figure in the Chicago school of sociology, developed a model for studying individual social action, in which the sociology of culture acts as a regulatory mechanism for that action.
As community managers, we are also, inevitably, a bit sociologists. We have to be, because the material we work with is social by nature. It is a “social business,” just as business organizations have always been. So once again: what can I hope to achieve through a community? It depends on the organizational culture into which it is embedded. What do I want to achieve through a community? It depends on how I intend to orient innovation within that culture. How do I measure progress? It depends on what you want to see and on what you are willing to give. And by “what you are willing to give,” we do not mean the individual participants in a community, but the management that shapes and steers culture within organizations. People and culture finally belong together – strategically.
A community is not a conversational trick to revive a dead intranet. It is not a gimmick to improve perceived employee wellbeing. It is not a celebratory stage for results achieved after the fact – whether in business, innovation, or reputation. A community is a social organism that intrinsically and strategically contributes to producing those results.
But only if we are willing to design it – and observe it – through the lens of its mechanisms of energetic self-regulation.
Going back to the rituals discussed in Weconomy UFO and to the interpretive models that are useful for our reasoning, this time through the lens of Robert Merton: designing a community means designing the rituals through which social tension is generated, circulated, and regulated. Let’s make an example related to AI adoption, a topic currently on many organizational agendas. To design the manifest function of a ritual, I might, for instance, create workshops in which a group of people collaborate to define how a particular AI can improve their work. That is the action. If we then consider the latent function of that ritual (its unintended by-product) I can narrate and highlight what that workshop has generated. Latently, I am communicating that it is acceptable to experiment collaboratively with AI; that AI will change our professions; that I am helping you navigate that change; that we are doing it together; and that, sooner or later, it will concern you as well. That is culture. Hoping to achieve AI adoption simply by providing tools to people, or by communicating how AI is strategically embedded in corporate innovation plans and the results it enables, is naïve from a design perspective. Something is missing. Action and culture must go hand in hand, and the community is the instrument that allows this to happen. Staying with this example: everyone says that AI is transforming organizations and professions. If we want that transformation to be positive, we need to build a narrative that holds together what individuals think, what they do, and the artifacts they produce. In other words, we need to create a mediation system between organizations and individuals, in which new practices and actions emerge and, by sedimenting over time, innovate the culture, making the actions we seek both desirable and attainable. This is a complex process that requires time; it must be observed and understood in its spontaneous dynamics, while also introducing elements and rituals that can govern and orient it.
If I want AI culture to be participatory, if I want to keep everyone on board, or at least give everyone a chance to come on board, I need to make AI a social fact. Social facts are transformative instances that emerge from cooperation among people; they are external to the individual; they are collective representations that shape and direct thoughts, actions, and behaviors. And precisely because they are social facts, they can be studied and oriented in positive ways. Who are the people I can rely on to make a given innovation social – in terms of thought, action, and artifact? Individual charisma has always been a driver of social innovation in our species. It is not only about leaders who decide, but also about people who act. Through a community, we can identify these individuals, involve them, recognize them, and give them a specific role in the impact we want to achieve. Not by formal appointment, but precisely because of their charisma and the resonance they gain within the social network through practice. They help establish the interaction and dialectic that make new behaviors both desirable and achievable. They are “attractive poles” (super users, power users, change agents, key users…the label does not matter) whom we can and must involve in distinct ways.
Every change requires energy. Whether we are talking about spreading AI adoption, launching a new commercial offering, or supporting internationalization (just to broaden the field of application) we need to understand where this energy is generated, how it circulates, and how it can be oriented. Through a community, we can design, guide, and regulate the different energetic levels of a social system:
- we design rituals that create spaces for initiative, where new behaviors can emerge and help people thrive in their context;
- we support those who, within these rituals, attempt to innovate actions and behaviors;
- we generate integration, fostering cohesion and solidarity among individuals through an authentic and comprehensive narrative;
- we value the culture that emerges, which provides motivation and meaning to action (norms, values, and ideas).
People and culture. Culture gives meaning to human action. We need it because we are animals marked by a lack of innate institutional organization, and only through sociality can we compensate for this gap that nature has given us. A gap that is, in reality, the evolutionary strategy of our species: a social species.
