My American friends will certainly assume that I am referring to locations like, say, those towns that allow only residents above 50 years of age.
And this is a partially correct assumption.
But my focus in this blog is social impacts, with a marginally larger part of the material devoted to startups and other business (profit or non-profit) organizations.
As I wrote in the bits and pieces of my “ideagraphy” (i.e. biography of an idea- see some creative writing, “The Method”), I have been studying closed groups for a long time, first informally, then in a more structured way, and finally applied it, first in politics, then in other environments, before starting to work.
Table of contents
Introduction
… in life
… on the workplace
Do you belong?
XXI Century gated communities
The good, the bad, the ugly
Bibliography
Introduction
Of course, I am referring to “virtual gates”- the typical “us vs. them” approach.
Why “virtual gated community” instead of “social network”?
Because, generally, a social network is relatively open to communication with outsiders, while the social networks I am referring to are defined more by deciding who is excluded than by the shared elements of who is included.
It is quite normal: if you work, say, 8 hours a day in the same office, you end up building links with people that you meet everyday (see … on the workplace).
I am not considering just positive links, e.g. people that you actually then continue to meet outside the office, or would like to, but also negative links- people that you do not like to meet, unless required.
Because, in the end, your interaction with them defines part of how you react to interaction with people that you do not meet everyday (see Do you belong?).
A typical example is a married couple: after few years, some couples can have the same reaction to a news item, also if they are hundred of km apart, and no way of communicating (see … in life).
Let s call “virtual gated community” this connecting of people, that does not necessarily have a legal or formal organization.
A first, typical sign of “virtual gated community” forming up is the creation of a shared “lingo”, a series of verbal shortcuts that are meaningful only to people who interact with other members.
In recent years, the Internet technology allowed the creation of “virtual gated communities” joining people that never met (and probably never will; see XXI Century gated communities).
And of, course, as any social phenomenon and organization, the structure of the “virtual gated communities” can have both positive and negative side-effects (see The good, the bad, the ugly).
The convergence of communication technologies, low-cost personal mobility, new social organizations, few languages shared across large trans-national communities can have some interesting side-effects on both the social and business organization.
And, as usual, some book reference (see Bibliography).
… in life
You have a family.
You belong to a club.
You attended certain schools.
This is what most of use would assume are “virtual gated communities” in our life.
But if you go often to shop somewhere, or attend a certain pub, eventually you will start sharing some words, or stories, or shared jokes with other people attending the same location.
And this, de facto, creates another “virtual gated community”.
Because people coming by chance in your location, will not understand what you are talking about.
And, sometimes, they will need to come again often, before finally they are allowed to contribute a story or joke, that then becomes part of the community.
And, after this first step, they are allowed to understand pre-existing jokes and stories- the first sign of temporary membership.
Sometimes, membership is possible only if you share some experience or background with the people that belong to the “virtual gated community”, e.g. you all studied in the same school, and meet by chance somewhere else.
Anyway, the new community will create its own environment.
Eventually, also people with the same background, but who weren t part of the community when it started, will be considered outsiders.
… on the workplace
Most companies have a corporate handbook, explaining to employees what they should and should not do.
For example, when I started working, we were given a “Personnel Reference Binder”, and we were required to sign it.
But, in a large organization, as soon as people start working together, they build their own “virtual gated communities”- and this is one of the reasons why, whenever I coached managers, project leaders, or technical experts, I advocated the “split presence” approach, i.e. having the coached person work in at least two different sites.
An interesting side-effect is when you see the typical “permanent temporary”, i.e. somebody sent from a company to “temporarily” work somewhere, and then year after year belongs part of the environment.
Eventually, the person will feel more attachment to the people he is working with day after day, and their company, than to the company paying the salary.
The flip side of the coin was described by an associated few years ago.
A consultant, working for over 10 years in the same office, eventually built a personal relationship.
Once, he stretched that over the Saturday, claiming to be at work.
Somebody answered the office phone, and told his wife that they had not seen him.
The result? On Monday, he called everybody in the office (mainly employees of the customer! and he had no leadership role), and gave everybody a dressing-down for not covering for him.
The final result? The customer decided that he had stayed too long in the environment.
The reason of this story is to explain something simple: as we spend the central and probably most active part of our life working, it is quite common that a social dynamic that is completely unrelated with the work activities will start developing- and that could interfere with the purpose of the activities.
To remove this issue, some organization (private and public) have a long history of sending some of their employees as “wanderers”, in different locations, so that they attachment to the working team and the work is stronger than any social arrangment.
Why? Because they know that the social arrangement is temporary.
If you believe that it is too far fetched… it was the common human resource management approach for many Big-8 companies already over 20 years ago.
Obviously, it is difficult (also for the people involved) to work according to this approach, but if the social dynamic of “virtual gated communities” is considered, it can be used to generate a positive effect on the activities.
For example, if you need to create a cross-”community” team, identifying the way to communicate with each “community” (or its “gate keepers”) will simplify the management and coordination- sometimes creating a healthy competition.
Often this will produce a new “virtual gated community”, built by shared experience.
Whenever this approach was useful, I suggested to identify a new physical shared location for the new team.
Using technologies is the obvious option- but it requires considering some issues, as discussed later in this posting (see XXI Century gated communities).
Do you belong?
“Virtual gated communities” have a flip-side, that should not be ignored.
Often, they define themselves as the “non-other”, i.e. the seed that creates the community is that its members considers themselves different from whoever is outside the community.
Most people at this point will think about political, religious, racist communities.
But, unfortunately, that would be a short-sighted assumption.
All across Europe, I often heard people from the business side complaining about ICT people- and vice-versa.
For reasons that are and will be explained elsewhere (search < a href="http://www.robertolofaro.com/blog/tag/draugiem">here), I have been a “bridge” between different communities for longer than I remember- and certainly well before late 1980s, when I started working.
The basic lesson that I learned over and over is: you need to have somebody in the communities that you need to cooperate, somebody who will act as an interpreter and bridge and facilitator.
The more one of the two groups appeals to authority (e.g. budget, hierarchy) to steer activities, the more resistance it builds, to the point that the other community will close up, and a micro-managing approach will be needed to steer and control.
This is not to say that authority can be removed: the concept is much simpler.
If you identify that a “virtual gated community” exists in your environment, focus on the gate keepers, understand the way to get the community work with your community, and how to make it happen.
Just forcing through the gates will increase the costs required to produce a result.
If you are in a location short-term, the gate-keepers are the only resources that you can spent time on- this will, incidentally, be beneficial to them, as they will see their own role reaffirmed.
XXI Century gated communities
If you read the previous sections (please do before reading any further, at least Introduction and Do you belong?), you might think that it is, in the end, really simple.
And that technology further simplifies the issue.
Unfortunately, Internet and the like are a nice booster if you have already a “virtual gated community” in place- but not if you try to create one directly online (e.g. a corporate social network; more about this in the future).
My usual suggestion to startups and companies is to create human connections and team- before moving them online.
The first time that I advocated using an Internet-like technology to build a “virtual gated community” was in early 1990s, while I was developing and delivering the methodology for a banking outsourcing company.
My role included coaching, and therefore, jointly with the customer, I selected external suppliers to deliver the “soft skills” knowledge, to embed into the curriculum that I was building.
I took care of the business analysis, project management, design, quality control, and all the other non-psych skills.
Eventually, one issue came up: in a complex system, few people had all the vertical knowledge of their own area- and, in this company, this people were also the key project managers.
Involving this people in business analysis meetings meant that, for some of them, few days a month were fully devoted to their own teams and activities- and time was spent spinning around meetings.
In early 1990s, Internet wasn’t avaialable in Italy. But the customer had started using Lotus Notes for the internal and customer-link e-mail.
Lotus Notes wasn’t simply an e-mail platform. It was also a “workgroup”.
The approach I created was simple: create a database do discuss issues, allowing each “subject leader” to share his/her expertise without leaving the office, and explain to use it to build critical mass and organize a meeting only when it made sense.
The key point wasn’t the technology. The key points were:
- the people involved where given responsibility not to waste other people’s time
- instead of talking and forgetting (writing memos is not a ICT habit), a log was available for free
- anybody could search
- last but not least: people already knew each other, and the experts were acknowledged experts
Building a “virtual gated community” should start from the last point of this list.
And I am not referring just to the business environment: I saw some ludicrous announces from so-called “bloggers” who are looking for people to write their “personal” blog on their behalf.
My idea of technology-based “virtual gated communities” is probably a mix between Meetup and Facebook, notably the “fan pages” and “groups” of the latter.
Why? Because Meetup represents the last link of what I suggested to do with Lotus Notes, while Facebook groups are much simpler than other online tools, but allow to create discussion threads, and are de-facto becoming, through the “events” feature, a way of organizing ad-hoc events, once a critical mass of communication is available.
My suggestion? Start building the community with people, move then on Facebook, with a “secret” (i.e. not visible, and by invitation only) group, then add a first event in each location you want to reach, and finally, once you know that there is critical mass of people interested, add a Meetup in each affected location.
Something is missing from this technological picture: the website.
And this is on purpose.
Because a dedicated website is useless for a “virtual gated community”, built around specific teams on specific issues, and not interested in being visible outside its membership.
And what if you then decide to be visible, also without allowing everybody to join the community?
Create a website- but have somebody to add content.
Social network, I hear? No. Unless you have a critical mass of contributing people.
Nothing is more sad than a social network with just one person writing, and that adds members in the first month, and then freezes (I get some 10-20 invitations each month…).
I did create a social network for my company PartnershipIncubator- but just as a showcase, to allow others to see that you can create the technical side of a corporate social network without any ICT investment or expertise, and using just few minutes of your time, not to use it.
The various technologies listed above (and few others- Twitter, YouTube, etc: more about this later) could be really useful.
But only if properly integrated with your business processes (for companies) and your daily activities (for your private life).
Otherwise: save resources, and spend more time on that “community” newsletter that did not produce an update of the last six months…
The good, the bad, the ugly
If you read so far this post, you understand my approach.
And probably you have more than an hint of what could be my commentary under this section.
My last three years of reseach generated some interesting ideas on what I saw as “patterns” in the use of “virtual gated communities”.
While these have been with us probably since humans were hunter-gatherers, but joining forces to hunt for larger preys, the technological developments after WWII opened a Pandora’s box of opportunities and threats.
I will not delve into details- because this information could be used as both a warning and a guideline.
But the main issue is simple: if you read the section XXI Century gated communities, you see that I advocate the creation of a physical community before moving online.
The good, the bad, and the ugly are all linked to the same point: most “virtual gated communities” that live just online are quite manipulative, using a XXI century version of the “Hidden Persuaders” of Vance Packard as their guidelines.
But as the technology is still too recent, most people associate “online” with “publication”.
And whatever you think about the press, the issue is that, frankly, there are too many sites who are simply built around an agenda, and that due to the lack of budget or laziness of professional writers, became “reference” news sites on specific subjects- with no oversight.
I enrolled in many of them, and I was quite appalled to see some of the commentary that they posted about, say, international politics- not for what they wrote, but for the superficiality of the use of the sources.
Unfortunately, once online, and being quoted by mainstream media, they were able to attract to their boards or as panelists reputable people.
And became mainstream themselves.
I saw startups developing their “market assessment” figures on some ludicrous statistics, that were not only blatantly distorted, but also incoherent.
There are some interesting and at times obnoxious books.
Obnoxious: because, despite being interesting in their approach, the writer themselves quite often fell in the same trap that they assume other fell in.
Overall, they are worth reading: also if once in while you feel like tossing the book in the trashbin, it is a good exercise to make up your own mind on the mindset of closed communities, and how to read behind the supposedly “neutral” reporting.
Bibliography
And now, the book references.
A Theory of Justice: building a company means building a corporate culture. before your first meeting with the lawyer to define the contracts with your partners, read this book.
A Theory of Justice: Original Edition
Flat Earth News: a review on how the post-1990s news industry works
Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
Convergence culture: old & new media
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (Revised with a New Afterword)
sale of the century another way of privatizing gives an interesting lesson in closed communities
Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution
stat-spotting or: mind your statistics
Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data
Tags: communities, community, draugiem, facebook, gated, ibm, lotus, meetup, method, network, notes, social, virtual, xxi, youtube