Qlubb recently sponsored a survey to gain a better understanding of clubs and organizations trying to get online. The survey was conducted over the last 2 months and targeted random people who at least had email addresses. Given that this is somewhat of a self-selected audience, the results should not be viewed as indicative of the sentiment of the general population, however note that 2007 statistics show that over 70% of the United States are Internet users according to Nielsen/Netratings.
The results are as follows:
Group Participation – We’re Active
When asked what type of groups or clubs that people have been a part of, the most common answers were in “hobby or special interest group”, “charitable/volunteering and civic organizations”, “sports teams” and in a “school-related club (either as a child or parent)”. Each of these four areas had 52% to 55% of responses. The next tier of groups was in “online-only social networks” and “professional development association” at around 43%.
Surprisingly, religious and spiritual was low at 22% which contradicts some general research on groups where in the United States, religious groups are the most common of real world clubs/groups/organizations.
Of the people who responded, 51% are either serving or have served as an organizer, leader, officer or manager of a club. People in general do take on leadership roles in groups and it seems unlikely that a small group of people are the only ones starting and leading groups. A significant percentage of people are taking or have taken a leadership role.
When asked how many clubs they are currently a part of, the largest response was “two”, with 23%. The graph followed a bit of a bell curve with “one” and “three” being the next highest. 25% of respondents were currently part of five or more clubs.
Technology Usage among Groups – It’s High
Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents are using email for group communication (84%). Interpolating from the data, 70% of these are using a group email list such as Yahoogroups to communicate.
52% of groups are using personal productivity tools like Microsoft Word and Excel for planning, documentation, etc. And 30% of respondents have a private website for their members only.
Only 6% of respondents are not using any technology at all.
Satisfaction Level – Moderately Satisfied
When asked their level of satisfaction with the technology solution(s) they are using, the majority of respondents (51%) said that technology was sufficient but with it could do more. 29% said that technology was sufficient with no future need desired and 15% were very satisfied with technology and that it has helped them be very productive. Only 5% were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.
When asked what they wished the technology solutions could do better at, 45% responded that they wish the solutions wouldn’t cost money and 38% said they wish it didn’t require technical resources to set up or manage. Only 21% wanted more functionality. 38% wanted their group technology to be more easy to use.
When asked what they wish technology could be used to help them, the largest response (32%) was to communicate better. To communicate better meant a variety of things, such as keeping everyone informed and up to date and keeping everybody on the “same page”. Ease of use and scheduling (at 19% each) was the next, with the most frequent concern that some members of the club were not computer fluent.
Not surprisingly when asked what their three most pressing concerns were the need to get members of the club better connected at 48%. A close second was to increase participation at 45%. A tie for third place was the need to plan events and other such activities better as well as the need to share information better so that members know what’s going on.
In Summary:
At least among the Internet user population, the use of technology for helping groups is high. There are a broad range of point solutions that help groups be more productive and organized. Technology is doing mostly a sufficient job but more than half don’t feel it is meeting their needs and wish it could do more. The most common ways to improve were to offer a lower cost (or free) solution that was easier to use. Improved communication and improved organization were the most often cited desires for technology to help them with. They hope that this helps their most pressing concerns of increased connectedness within the group and improved information sharing and planning within groups.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
10 Tips for Leading Your Group to Success
There’s a group or club for just about everything. There are groups formed to drive a particular political agenda, to perform civic activities, to play sports, to advocate a cause, to further research and understanding of a particular interest or to even to make money through investment clubs. Clubs don’t just form and operate on their own – often they need leaders to both start and to drive the club agendas forward. There are tens of millions of groups in the US alone. That’s a lot of leaders needed. But, leaders come from all walks of life and nearly everyone has the potential within them to be an effective leader. All it requires is some interest, effort and a little direction.
Why Do it?
Being one of the leaders of a club, group or organization can be one of the most rewarding activities you’ll ever do. It’s a great chance for you to improve your leadership skills while simultaneously working towards a goal that you likely feel very passionate about. There are an endless source of great resources that describe how to be a great leader in general – this article is not going to duplicate those works. In this article, we’ll discuss what practical tips there are to help you specifically be an effective club/group leader and a few ideas to get you started on your way.
Poor leadership?
Not everybody can strive to be a great leader – however being a good leader is important for the success of your club. Poor leadership can often result in the death of your club. Some results of poorly run clubs include:
• disconnection – members don’t feel they know what’s going on, what activities they can participate in or know how to even help. Some feel powerless to help affect change.
• exclusion – members don’t feel a part of the group/club either in decision-making or activities. Many groups by necessity need to be run by a vocal minority, however if people aren’t being heard, the majority end up leaving
• failure – poorly run meetings, activities and events mean you aren’t accomplishing your goals. People don’t want to be in an inefficient environment – many are there with limited free time – they don’t want to see it wasted.
• lack of purpose – every group has a purpose – it’s just not necessarily well articulated. Sometimes a goal is known but it is not well communicated to the members. Without a common goal, you end up wasting time with diversions.
The leader has the opportunity to not only prevent these club-killers from occurring but really lead and inspire the group to accomplish their goals.
Why can it be hard?
For some, being a group leader comes naturally and requires seemingly little effort. For many, it can be a chore and can be awkward and uncomfortable. Being a good group leader takes some investment in time. Most leaders have only their spare time to devote sandwiched between family, work and many other obligations. Since you can’t increase the amount of spare time you have without some cost (e.g. less sleep, less time with family, etc.), you have to use your time as efficiently as possible.
Clearly as you become better at something, you do it more efficiently and better each time. Most group leaders have never had the opportunity to serve as a leader in their past lives – so they are in new territory. Someone nominated to manage fundraising or help market the club or help drive membership may have never had the experience of doing it before. Also, just because someone has been nominated to be treasurer in a club, doesn’t mean that he/she are good at math and at managing money and budgets. They do have to have the skills and interest to be good at it though.
Still, the harsh reality is also one of the great things about clubs. It’s a chance for people to flex their brain into other areas they haven’t had experience in and to improve their skills sets. If you have the right attitude and are willing to learn, performing these activities can be even more rewarding than expected.
How to be a Great Group Leader
There’s no recipe that guarantees success and there’s no single recipe that will help you be successful. Below are just a few of the many things you should consider if you want to be an effective leader.
#1 Nail the Goal
Nearly all great leaders create a goal that is well understood and unambiguous. By having a goal, it provides clarity on where you want to go and what types of things you want to do – it helps reduce wasted time and effort. Crafting a good goal is not necessarily easy but once you have a good goal or set of goals established, it will help you carry your group forward more efficiently.
#2 Hear and Listen
People need to be heard. People often voluntarily join – heck, people even pay to join (membership dues, etc.) so you better understand why they are joining and what they hope to get out of the experience. People’s needs change and so it’s a constant job to always listen and understand what the groups motivations are. Some do this more formally by having information sessions and town hall type meetings. Others do this more informally by simply talking to people often and asking them questions. Others run periodic surveys and polls to collect the data. It’s tempting to operate a club thinking that all members are like you. This type of in-bred thinking rarely creates a lasting environment.
#3 Communicate and communicate
Members can quickly feel disconnected, particularly if your group is run by a vocal minority. The more disconnected people feel, the less likely they will participate. Many clubs and organizations have regular meetings. Others use newsletters, email groups, website etc. to keep in touch with members and to let them know what is going on and what is planned.
#4 Give credit to where credit is due
People don’t necessarily pick the highest paying job they have offered to them. What most people prioritize the highest is to feel useful and valued. In a club, most of the activities taken on by members are voluntary in nature. While they aren’t getting paid money, they can get “paid” by the experience they have as well as the praise for a job well done by the leadership. While you might think it’s silly to create a plaque or a trophy or to have them stand up and receive an ovation at the next meeting, it goes a long way to encouraging further good works and helps to build the all-important emotional glue that binds groups together.
#5 Decide on Decision-making
Figure out the decision-making process early. Some groups are very formal and create a constitution, bylaws, amendments, etc. If it’s a small group it may be just simply that the president decides everything – just be clear about it so that when the inevitable disagreement comes along you have a clear way of driving it to resolution rather than wasting cycles bickering about how it should get decided. If you wait for a conflict to occur, then inevitably, political forces arise which can cause damage. Some different ways that decision making can be made are the following:
• autocratic – the leader makes all final decisions
• leadership team – the leadership makes democratic decisions with the president breaking all ties
• democracy – everyone who is present votes to make decisions
There are many variations of the above, like for instance, some groups perform a majority vote of all members present for a meeting and if it meets certain minimum thresholds.
#6 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Clubs are often a collection of people tied together by a common interest. The variety of people who have these interests can vary greatly. You might find in your midst people who have real talent in areas that you can leverage. For instance you might have a lawyer in your group who can help with a contract, a PR person who can help with marketing your group, a software developer who can help get your club online or someone who has skill with fundraising that can help with your next event. A good leader should figure out what assets they have available to them and how they can be leveraged. Leverageable expertise can easily come from outside of the group, such as through advisors or just through your personal connections. Nearly everyone you know is or has been a part of a club and many have served in some leadership capacity. If you just ask around you can often find a person who has performed a similar role and be able to learn from them.
#7 Lead by Example
The leader often sets the tone for the group. By making decisions, interacting with people, even showing up to meetings on-time, the leader is setting the tone for how things are expected to run. Unlike the dynamics of a company, where a leader often has hiring and firing authority, in clubs and groups, it’s different. The leader may not have that level of authority – this means that leading by example is even more important.
#8 Think Two Steps Ahead
A group leader needs to think about the big picture and drive the group forward. A group leader often needs to delegate tasks to others in order to get the job done, get the job done well and to free up the time for the group leader to think about how to propel the club forward. A group leader needs to understand the dynamics of the situation and understand at a high level what is needed – is the club properly financed or will they run out of money? Has new membership rates been increasing or decreasing and why? Is the group accomplishing their goals? What are the goals for the next 12 months? Are members happy and fulfilled? What is the membership retention? The leader also needs to understand the softer dynamics of the group – for instance, are the old guard of members inflexible to change? Are the new members trying to create change too strongly? Are there troublemakers in the group that are unproductive? Understanding these issues enables the leader to fix these problems.
#9 Get Organized
Nothing kills a group faster than disorganization. If nobody knows what they are doing, when they are supposed to do it, where to get the information, things start to get out of hand. Worse yet, members start to lose confidence in the leader and their focus starts to wander. When planning projects, committees, make sure that it is organized and that there are clear owners and a central place to get the information when people want it. Getting the group online with a website and an email list is a great way to start providing some organization. It’s always easier to know if there’s one person, one website, or one thing to go to. Where I work, at Qlubb, there are a set of very easy to use tools for groups to get organized and online. Other tools like Yahoogroups can also help you to easily get started.
#10 Be Creative and Fun
It’s easy to say be creative but it’s very difficult to think of something original and creative. To be creative often requires you to think out of the box. Helping to draw creativity from your team is critically important. You’ll find that the pool of ideas to draw from will improve dramatically. In addition, there’s no better way to get people excited about an idea if they come up with it themselves. Giving people ownership from idea to execution will often give you the best results. Look to the outside world too by networking with others to get ideas.
And add a little bit of fun to the mix too. If the leader isn’t having fun, then probably nobody’s going to have fun either. Roll with the punches a bit – everybody wants to have fun in their life, why not help them?
Summary: Ten Tips for Leading Your Group to Success
#1 Nail the Goal
#2 Hear and Listen
#3 Communicate and communicate
#4 Give credit to where credit is due
#5 Decide on Decision-making
#6 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
#7 Lead by Example
#8 Think Two Steps Ahead
#9 Get Organized
#10 Be Creative and Fun
Why Do it?
Being one of the leaders of a club, group or organization can be one of the most rewarding activities you’ll ever do. It’s a great chance for you to improve your leadership skills while simultaneously working towards a goal that you likely feel very passionate about. There are an endless source of great resources that describe how to be a great leader in general – this article is not going to duplicate those works. In this article, we’ll discuss what practical tips there are to help you specifically be an effective club/group leader and a few ideas to get you started on your way.
Poor leadership?
Not everybody can strive to be a great leader – however being a good leader is important for the success of your club. Poor leadership can often result in the death of your club. Some results of poorly run clubs include:
• disconnection – members don’t feel they know what’s going on, what activities they can participate in or know how to even help. Some feel powerless to help affect change.
• exclusion – members don’t feel a part of the group/club either in decision-making or activities. Many groups by necessity need to be run by a vocal minority, however if people aren’t being heard, the majority end up leaving
• failure – poorly run meetings, activities and events mean you aren’t accomplishing your goals. People don’t want to be in an inefficient environment – many are there with limited free time – they don’t want to see it wasted.
• lack of purpose – every group has a purpose – it’s just not necessarily well articulated. Sometimes a goal is known but it is not well communicated to the members. Without a common goal, you end up wasting time with diversions.
The leader has the opportunity to not only prevent these club-killers from occurring but really lead and inspire the group to accomplish their goals.
Why can it be hard?
For some, being a group leader comes naturally and requires seemingly little effort. For many, it can be a chore and can be awkward and uncomfortable. Being a good group leader takes some investment in time. Most leaders have only their spare time to devote sandwiched between family, work and many other obligations. Since you can’t increase the amount of spare time you have without some cost (e.g. less sleep, less time with family, etc.), you have to use your time as efficiently as possible.
Clearly as you become better at something, you do it more efficiently and better each time. Most group leaders have never had the opportunity to serve as a leader in their past lives – so they are in new territory. Someone nominated to manage fundraising or help market the club or help drive membership may have never had the experience of doing it before. Also, just because someone has been nominated to be treasurer in a club, doesn’t mean that he/she are good at math and at managing money and budgets. They do have to have the skills and interest to be good at it though.
Still, the harsh reality is also one of the great things about clubs. It’s a chance for people to flex their brain into other areas they haven’t had experience in and to improve their skills sets. If you have the right attitude and are willing to learn, performing these activities can be even more rewarding than expected.
How to be a Great Group Leader
There’s no recipe that guarantees success and there’s no single recipe that will help you be successful. Below are just a few of the many things you should consider if you want to be an effective leader.
#1 Nail the Goal
Nearly all great leaders create a goal that is well understood and unambiguous. By having a goal, it provides clarity on where you want to go and what types of things you want to do – it helps reduce wasted time and effort. Crafting a good goal is not necessarily easy but once you have a good goal or set of goals established, it will help you carry your group forward more efficiently.
#2 Hear and Listen
People need to be heard. People often voluntarily join – heck, people even pay to join (membership dues, etc.) so you better understand why they are joining and what they hope to get out of the experience. People’s needs change and so it’s a constant job to always listen and understand what the groups motivations are. Some do this more formally by having information sessions and town hall type meetings. Others do this more informally by simply talking to people often and asking them questions. Others run periodic surveys and polls to collect the data. It’s tempting to operate a club thinking that all members are like you. This type of in-bred thinking rarely creates a lasting environment.
#3 Communicate and communicate
Members can quickly feel disconnected, particularly if your group is run by a vocal minority. The more disconnected people feel, the less likely they will participate. Many clubs and organizations have regular meetings. Others use newsletters, email groups, website etc. to keep in touch with members and to let them know what is going on and what is planned.
#4 Give credit to where credit is due
People don’t necessarily pick the highest paying job they have offered to them. What most people prioritize the highest is to feel useful and valued. In a club, most of the activities taken on by members are voluntary in nature. While they aren’t getting paid money, they can get “paid” by the experience they have as well as the praise for a job well done by the leadership. While you might think it’s silly to create a plaque or a trophy or to have them stand up and receive an ovation at the next meeting, it goes a long way to encouraging further good works and helps to build the all-important emotional glue that binds groups together.
#5 Decide on Decision-making
Figure out the decision-making process early. Some groups are very formal and create a constitution, bylaws, amendments, etc. If it’s a small group it may be just simply that the president decides everything – just be clear about it so that when the inevitable disagreement comes along you have a clear way of driving it to resolution rather than wasting cycles bickering about how it should get decided. If you wait for a conflict to occur, then inevitably, political forces arise which can cause damage. Some different ways that decision making can be made are the following:
• autocratic – the leader makes all final decisions
• leadership team – the leadership makes democratic decisions with the president breaking all ties
• democracy – everyone who is present votes to make decisions
There are many variations of the above, like for instance, some groups perform a majority vote of all members present for a meeting and if it meets certain minimum thresholds.
#6 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Clubs are often a collection of people tied together by a common interest. The variety of people who have these interests can vary greatly. You might find in your midst people who have real talent in areas that you can leverage. For instance you might have a lawyer in your group who can help with a contract, a PR person who can help with marketing your group, a software developer who can help get your club online or someone who has skill with fundraising that can help with your next event. A good leader should figure out what assets they have available to them and how they can be leveraged. Leverageable expertise can easily come from outside of the group, such as through advisors or just through your personal connections. Nearly everyone you know is or has been a part of a club and many have served in some leadership capacity. If you just ask around you can often find a person who has performed a similar role and be able to learn from them.
#7 Lead by Example
The leader often sets the tone for the group. By making decisions, interacting with people, even showing up to meetings on-time, the leader is setting the tone for how things are expected to run. Unlike the dynamics of a company, where a leader often has hiring and firing authority, in clubs and groups, it’s different. The leader may not have that level of authority – this means that leading by example is even more important.
#8 Think Two Steps Ahead
A group leader needs to think about the big picture and drive the group forward. A group leader often needs to delegate tasks to others in order to get the job done, get the job done well and to free up the time for the group leader to think about how to propel the club forward. A group leader needs to understand the dynamics of the situation and understand at a high level what is needed – is the club properly financed or will they run out of money? Has new membership rates been increasing or decreasing and why? Is the group accomplishing their goals? What are the goals for the next 12 months? Are members happy and fulfilled? What is the membership retention? The leader also needs to understand the softer dynamics of the group – for instance, are the old guard of members inflexible to change? Are the new members trying to create change too strongly? Are there troublemakers in the group that are unproductive? Understanding these issues enables the leader to fix these problems.
#9 Get Organized
Nothing kills a group faster than disorganization. If nobody knows what they are doing, when they are supposed to do it, where to get the information, things start to get out of hand. Worse yet, members start to lose confidence in the leader and their focus starts to wander. When planning projects, committees, make sure that it is organized and that there are clear owners and a central place to get the information when people want it. Getting the group online with a website and an email list is a great way to start providing some organization. It’s always easier to know if there’s one person, one website, or one thing to go to. Where I work, at Qlubb, there are a set of very easy to use tools for groups to get organized and online. Other tools like Yahoogroups can also help you to easily get started.
#10 Be Creative and Fun
It’s easy to say be creative but it’s very difficult to think of something original and creative. To be creative often requires you to think out of the box. Helping to draw creativity from your team is critically important. You’ll find that the pool of ideas to draw from will improve dramatically. In addition, there’s no better way to get people excited about an idea if they come up with it themselves. Giving people ownership from idea to execution will often give you the best results. Look to the outside world too by networking with others to get ideas.
And add a little bit of fun to the mix too. If the leader isn’t having fun, then probably nobody’s going to have fun either. Roll with the punches a bit – everybody wants to have fun in their life, why not help them?
Summary: Ten Tips for Leading Your Group to Success
#1 Nail the Goal
#2 Hear and Listen
#3 Communicate and communicate
#4 Give credit to where credit is due
#5 Decide on Decision-making
#6 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
#7 Lead by Example
#8 Think Two Steps Ahead
#9 Get Organized
#10 Be Creative and Fun
Friday, April 11, 2008
Getting Your Club or Group Online
There are a lot of resources available for groups to use to help them become online. However, while most of the US population is online and increasingly Internet savvy, the difficulty in using these available resources either as a leader or as a member make them prohibitive. Some of the resources available are both easy and free or at least cost a nominal amount. In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Qlubb which is geared specifically towards helping clubs and groups get online. I discuss getting online in general, some of which overlaps with what Qlubb does and some which does not. In the rest of this article, I don’t specifically mention Qlubb and I also will list some vendors and suggestions so hopefully this will be useful for any club member or leader to help them get online.
Why go online?
There’s no question that the Internet has done wonders for just about anything. Businesses are more productive, individuals are more productive. Groups and clubs can also similarly be more productive by finding the right solutions based upon their needs. Getting online can not only help promote your club but also help you save significant time – allowing you to focus on the aspects of the club that need you the most or the ones that you find most enjoyable.
Groups need to collaborate, they need to communicate, they need to inform, they need to share – these are all things that can be done well by the computer. There are many “virtual groups” that are doing this already – by connecting people with disparate interests so that they can broadcast information to each other. A quick peruse of Yahoo Groups or social sites like Ning have tools for virtual groups. There are a huge number of startup companies that are trying to address the virtual group needs.
Real World Groups
For real world groups, they have a different need. While clearly they have some of the same needs as virtual groups – such as the need to communicate, inform, share, etc. they also need to accomplish real world tasks. These include:
-- Coordinating real world activities (like events, activities, etc.). Solutions range from Evite for invitations and managing RSVP’s to 37signals for lightweight project management.
-- Maintaining a roster or members (unlike virtual and anonymous avatars from virtual groups). There are very solutions in this range, presumably due to privacy. Most often, this is done through a password protected web page, or through a spreadsheet. Using a spreadsheet is not the ideal solution because it can get out of date quickly. If you pass around the spreadsheet, you have to know who has the “master copy”. Otherwise you can quickly have multiple versions of the roster floating around each with a different set of names.
-- Publishing a public website (for informational and recruitment purposes). There are many startup companies that will help you publish a public web page. While these solutions are easy to use for technical savvy people, they require some effort for those who are not used to putting together a user interface.
-- Maintain a central place for private information (calendar of events, resource page, etc.) so that members can “pull” the information and publish them when they want to. An increasingly popular form of technology used here are “wiki’s” which essentially allow anybody within the group to edit the pages. It provides the ultimate in self-management since everybody can edit anything to their desire. Archived copies of pages are stored so that you can always get back to a previous copy of the site in case somebody accidentally deletes something or made a comment they shouldn’t have. Sites like Pbwiki have nice wiki solutions however, note that for groups that don’t have much technical expertise, it might be a leap. The concept of editing pages for web publishing is foreign to many people but once they get the hang of it, it’s easy.
-- Managing finances (for accounting and tax reasons). Often this is done with standard, off-the-shelf accounting software, such as Quickbooks.
-- Collecting money either from members or donors. There are a few startup vendors that are providing solutions directly in this space. Paypal is a common payment system solution but does have a significant fee for each transaction.
There are a number of other solutions needed for some groups like chat, bulletin boards, classifieds, document hosting, etc. There are many resources on the web that discuss the best solutions in these areas.
Determining the Right Solution
Club members historically don’t have much time or patience to even evaluate new solutions. Clubs typically don’t have budget for solutions to help them get the job done.
If you are lucky, you have a webmaster or a software developer in your group who can help put the group online. The difficulty though is the maintenance of the solution, which in most cases far exceeds the cost of putting it online. In addition, the webmaster then becomes the bottleneck for all further updates to the site. Most groups do not have that skill set in their group (or the person may not have the time to devote to putting something together).
The new SaaS (software as a service) models are great for many groups and clubs because it requires no computers to “host” or install the software. Everything can be accessible from a browser anywhere in the world – which significantly reduces cost, time and overhead. There are software solutions that can be purchased that address the above needs, however, the cost of purchasing and installing, hosting in a datacenter and maintaining the software must be considered.
Finding an easy to use solution that is either free or costs very little is critical for many groups. Understanding not only the upfront costs (in money, time to evaluate, etc) but the ongoing costs (configuration costs, maintenance costs, etc.) are just as important if not more important. In many cases, the upfront cost is just the tip of the proverbial iceburg.
Keep in mind there is also a “user cost” as well that must be considered. Just because there’s a solution you have rolled out doesn’t mean people will use it. In general you can “push” or “pull” members to use new technologies. The best strategy for most people is a combination of both – just enough imperiousness to force the solution on members while providing clear benefits for members to accomplish their motivations. A little social engineering is always needed to effect change.
In summary
Getting online can really help the group flourish, be more efficient and be more effective. Almost every group starts off with an email group which is a smart and easy thing to do to get communicating. Yahoo Groups and Google Groups provide some good functionality in this area. Most groups stay at this level. Look at some of the features of YahooGroups and Google Groups – some of this might be interesting but do require an investment of time to learn them and make them work for you.
As the group’s needs increase, easy solutions such as the ones listed above are available to help you scale your group to get a private and public website and to use it to help inform, coordinate and even collaborate. As in the business and personal world, technology can be used to not only help remove barriers and pave increased efficiency but also to help enrich the group experience.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)