How We Learn and Grow as a Community

Our community is a living system. It comprises individuals, sub-groups, and technology. We are all working together towards the same goal of creating the global emotional support system.

Here are some thoughts to further flesh this out:

1. All kinds of species work together to accomplish seemingly impossible things. They establish simple rules at the beginning and then collaborate to accomplish things that were previously unimaginable. There are lots of examples, but one relevant to our work might be Wikipedia.

2. Having a clear mission is critical, because it empowers all of the people in the community to work towards that mission in whatever way makes the most sense for them. There doesnt have to be a lot of top-down management, because people see the mission themselves and they know how to work towards it in a way that makes sense in their life. For example, working on your personal growth is likely a key way to help us reach our mission. Listening to someone is another way. Coming up with different ideas or recommendations is yet another way. Each of us has a different set of skills and a different way of seeing world. When we take the next step in front of us, and use our talents, we help realize our overall mission.

3. Leydesdorff observed that self-organization can be seen in Kuhns concept of a change in a scientific paradigm or an agreed upon way of looking at things. A scientific field will believe something for a while, then someone new will explain things differently. People will ignore what the new person says and maybe even ridicule them. Then, gradually, as the evidence mounts people transition to the new way of seeing things. The old way of seeing things is let go and the new way is embraced. The old way is increasingly seen as less relevant and the new increases in relevance. Once the new way is accepted, people then look back at it and say it was completely obvious :).

4. Communities develop their own sense of identity just like a person does. Broadly, kids start off kind of amorphous. Then, gradually, they develop a sense of self. The childs identity is really fluid at the start, but, over time, it becomes more solid. The child knows who they are - they understand where they came from, where they are now, and where they are going. Some kids struggle because they never really develop a firm identity. These kids, and later adults, adopt each new thing or tend to do what people in their lives demand that they do. On the other hand, some people develop too rigid of an identity. If something isnt exactly as they want it, then they cannot really tolerate looking at it or accepting it into their lives. The healthy child moves towards a place that Erickson called identity achievement where the sense of self is both strong and flexible. They have a core strength that keeps them on track and also able to integrate new things into their identity when it makes sense..

Communities are the same way and we have gone through a similar process. In the beginning we had a basic idea of who we were, but we were not yet that strong. Then, as we grew up, our sense of self became more solid. We outlined our goals, established rules, and set up processes. We are still developing, but we have achieved a solid identity in that we now operate in a manner that is both strong and flexible.

5. Great, but how will we continue to grow and learn? Sub-groups or individuals recommend different ideas to help our community better reach its goals. Some ideas will be too far out there. Theyll be too removed from the band that is feasible for the overall identity of the community to handle. For example, we, as a community, integrated the idea of the feed, because it wasnt too far off from how we see ourselves. However, if we wanted to start a classifieds section like craigslist, then that would be seen as outside of our identity – or outside of the band of activities/objectives that we hold to be most important.

A number of ideas will emerge from our community. Some will be good and will work. Others will look good, but not work. Some ideas will look bad, but be very good (these are the tricky ones). Others ideas will just not be very good. We have limited resources so we have to bet – or put resources behind – the ideas that we think will best help us reach our objectives. The variation or variability of ideas and our ability to choose and execute on the best ones will help our community grow and flourish. If we choose ideas that dont work (and this will happen), then well make less progress. If we choose ideas that do work, then well make much more progress.

Pragmatically, what does this process of choosing ideas look like? Well, it is very much what weve been doing. Someone from our community recommends an idea. That person writes it up and posts it in the forum. People share their perspectives on whether or not they think it is a good idea. Some offer feedback and further shape the idea. Then, we build the idea/feature/tool and people provide more feedback. We then keep iterating on it until we feel like we have it in a good place. This is what we do over and over and over again. All the while – we, as a community – are learning how to better reach our mission and support one another.

5. Communication tools are critical for the community to learn and grow. Different people and groups gravitate towards different tools. Some people are more comfortable with chat, others with the forums and still other people prefer the feed. Also, different tools are used for different tasks. For example, the forums are a really great place to have a longer conversation and refine an idea. This is much harder to do in the feed and cant really be done effectively in chat. All of these are tools are needed to help us better reach our goals.

6. Our community has evolved to include teams that play key roles. Teams or sub-groups have formed to take on very specific tasks. For example, we had a need for quality so the quality team emerged. We then needed a way to moderate group support, so the mod team emerged. The forum team keeps the forums humming. The welcoming team helps other people join the community. Each of these teams – and there are many – play critical roles in the overall functioning of the community. You can almost think of them as separate organs in the body. Each organ plays a key role in keeping the overall functioning of the body on track.

The teams and the overall community have to be aligned. Communication between groups has to be open and trusting. If communication is blocked or if harmful behaviors exist in a group, then itll hurt the functioning of that team and also negatively impact the overall community.

7. Another thinker, Wilfred Bion, differentiated between different levels of group behavior. When a group is functioning well – focusing on their objectives and working in a healthy manner – he called them a working group. When a group isnt functioning well, then he viewed it as unhealthy group. He categorized unhealthy groups into 3 different categories: dependent, fight or flight, and sexual. When groups dont do a good job of managing themselves – or they get too unhealthy – they can get stuck in one of these 3 loops. The dependent group may fall into the trap of elevating a leader or leadership group and minimizing their own power. The fight or flight group focuses on an external enemy (think of nations at war) and they spend their time reacting to that enemy instead of reaching their objectives. The third group basically gets overly focused on sexual activity. These traps keep them from focusing on the actual work that they need to do in order to reach their goals.

I think weve done a pretty good job of keeping our community out of these traps. My sense is that we, in general, all feel very empowered to ‘own 7 cups and realize that we all play real and important roles in making it great. We help each other problem solve and grow stronger (dependent trap). We dont spend a lot of time demonizing external enemies (fight or flight trap). Finally, weve done a good job – and have more work to do – to create a safe atmosphere where sexuality is appropriately celebrated without allowing us turning into a sex chat or sexting site (sexual trap).

In short, our community here at 7 cups is a living, adaptive, system. We have grown quite a bit over the 2 years that we have been alive. Through hard work weve established an identity that is both strong and flexible. We continue to try new things and work together to fulfill our mission. Im proud of the community that weve become and I look very forward to seeing where we are 1, 3, 5, 10 years from now. Im sure in many ways well be very much the same; however, in other ways, Im sure well also be quite a bit different. Thank you for being a part of this community with me.