So to kick things off, here’s a starter for 10!
What have:
Putting a human on the moon, creating vaccines for smallpox to Covid, and Michael Jackson, The Eagles and Adele all got in common?
and nope, the answer isn’t that Neil Armstrong or Edward Jenner are releasing a top 10 album any time soon..or as far as I know…
go on, any ideas, any thoughts, any clues needed?
Well, the answer is that they’re all in the ‘lifetime hall of fame’ for achieving incredible things that will stand the test of time for many more hundreds of years to come!
Let’s break it down:
Walking on the moon – pretty impressive!
Moving the human race forward by conquering many diseases at once – yep, that’s up there!
Together selling almost 150m albums and having your songs remembered by people all over the globe – now, that’s what I call success…dodgy pun intended…
Of course, if you were asked to name the person who achieved these feats in a pub quiz then it would be pretty obvious to name Neil, Ed, MJ, The Eagles (well I can name a few Dons…) Adele is a giveaway too…
But what’s really worth remembering is that:
400,000 people worked on the Apollo project moon landing
172 countries worked together to support the research into a C-19 jab
All these albums had countless producers, writers, musicians, marketers and promoters helping to get a vinyl, tape, CD, download in people’s hands all over the world…
So although we rightly remember the star of the show, no man/woman is an island and it takes a lot of collaboration to make real magic happen.
Because…when people come together and are focused on a common goal, then they can achieve great things that are more than likely out of reach of one person working truly on their own.
I’m sure it was incredibly hard work to make these milestones come to life, but I bet for those people who were involved, the sense of camaraderie, mission and dopamine release was second to none in playing a major role in fulfilling the main human driver of needing purpose in our lives!
Bringing similar people together to achieve things together is what community building is all about. It doesn’t matter if you run a local voluntary group, a business, a service or something else…
…giving people an opportunity to work together on something big, small or in the middle will far outweigh the effort you think it may take to structure a community program.
Get inspired to do great things together:
Your mini-moon landing could be an innovative new product, service or solution that you launch after bringing your biggest fans together to brainstorm new ways forward.
Your global collaboration network could be educating or uniting common voices around a topic of interest that will give you true diversity of thought and offer new ways forward to distribute your brand.
Your ‘Top 10 selling album of all time’ could be leveraging your top customers and external industry fans to put on great events, develop great content and get ideas for marketing campaigns that hit the spot with your target group…
No matter the size of your team, bringing 5, 10, 50 or 500 people together will transform what you do, why you do it, how you operate – and of course the impact it has on you in the short, medium and long term…
I can’t wait to see (Enter your company/project name here) being a future leader in innovation due to you building a community program – all it takes is you, and a few others getting together to get the ball rolling!