The Latest blog posts from Dachis Group

Planning a Community Is Like Planning a Wedding

I tweeted recently that all of the details of planning an online community reminded me of planning a wedding. I submitted the tweet at the very moment I felt overwhelmed by the details of coordinating so many moving pieces weeks before launching the community. In this blog post, I share the lessons I have learned so far in community planning to avoid losing your cool over the details before launch.

Dachis Group Summer Reading: Gamestorming

One of our colleagues at Dachis Group, X-Plane Founder Dave Gray, recently co-authored and published an incredibly valuable collection of techniques for the use of games to help individuals collaborate and make decisions in a business setting. The book is called Gamestorming and a group of us here at Dachis Group North America though we would inaugurate our first Summer Reading session by reading it. We all got a lot out of it and thought we’d write up a few of our thoughts for any curious passers by.

Start with Training

The idea of becoming a truly social business isn’t as “blue sky” as it was a year ago – the market is starting to shift. More people are talking about the benefits of engaging with consumers and collaborating internally. We’ve even heard of corporate mandates from the C-suite: “Social is happening; get the company up to speed.”

The Risk And Reward Of Collaboration

Yes, collaboration has risks. There. I said it.

As my colleague Kate Rush Sheehy pointed out recently, forming a company’s social business strategy and resources requires speed and scale — and for some organizations these two qualities don’t come naturally. Many employees fear the departmental silos they don’t understand. The complex processes that don’t always work. And the colleagues they don’t know — constantly concerned these people will object to their ideas, plans, or points of view. This sometimes irrational worry can frustrate employees, but inactivity typically persists within their organizations anyway. Some companies refuse to let these concerns constrain them, and are trying to do things a little differently.