Creating a cool committee
Leveraging community behavior
One of the few things both of us do to keep being cool is being on Reddit. While going through the hilarious comments of a boring post, we stumbled upon this one:
And the top comment: Whoa, this girl just Pavlov’d herself [Statement rephrased to remove expletives]. So basically, she associated clicking with happiness, and then whenever she would be sad, she would just click to make herself happy. Can’t say if the clicker made her smile, but this post certainly did make me snort a laugh.
Well that is what makes Reddit what it is: Where the thing that originates from a creator isn't finished until the audience comes in and add their own interpretation. From there the piece evolves, gets sampled and remixed in ways that the creator couldn't have possibly imagined. Just like how it is going on in The Bored Ape Yacht Club.
We can't help but think about what has been happening with NFTs and community tokens lately. New users are interacting with web3 applications for the first time by beautiful pieces of art, music, NBA clips, games that earn them money, community ownership, and a general sense of belonging.
Basically web3 is about decentralizing and giving ownership back to the community. Where else do we see such behavior?
Organizational Citizenship Behavior
“These mangers are just temporary, they come and go, we are here since this plant started, we are the organization, not these guys”
This was my conversation with a line operator, when I visited the plant of a big Indian FMCG. Unions are crazy. The sense of belonging they have is astounding. Meet any auto-driver in Mumbai, Chennai or Bangalore and they will tell you it is their city.
In fact, this is the group that is most concerned about development, as it is a big part of their identity as people. Organ (1988) defines Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) as "individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization" a.k.a the good soldier syndrome.
It is this behavior that executes changes. Imagine if all taxi and auto drivers decide to take onus of obeying the traffic rules, the entire city will default to it. Systems entirely dependent on transactions and formal reward systems fail, even in the digital world. If all of us worked strictly according to our reward systems, nothing would ever get done.
Should we incentivize OCB? Some companies include their employees’ OCB in their performance management process and appraisals as a way to formally encourage, measure, and reward this. But rewards are infamous for reducing the intrinsic motivation people have towards certain tasks.
A 2007 research that looked at both the positive and negative effects of incorporating a formal way of dealing with OCB.
Positive Consequences included:
• Increased occurrence of OCBs in extrinsically motivated employees
• Decreased role ambiguity
• Improved self-efficacy
• Improved LMX
Negative Consequences included
• Decreased occurrence of OCBs in intrinsically motivated employees
• Emotional dissonance leading to emotional exhaustion and burnout
• Increased role conflict and overload
• Less accurate organizational diagnosis
• Greater legal risk
• Impeded employee development
How do we, then, encourage OCB? Many a times, it is fostered by a sense of social identity - based on geography, caste or religion. But for other aspects, we have a hack.
Steps to create a community
Whether you are creating a new committee, a union, an organization or a DAO, we need to leverage on the sense of community to keep it thriving.
Here are 3 steps:
Articulate a timeless aspiration. Think about how your community can continue to meet customers’ needs even as technologies and markets evolve. Disney, for example, strives “to entertain, inform, and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.” This is far more inspiring and ambitious than, say, making animated movies and amusement parks. [Lunch is on us, if you can find our declared timeless aspiration]
Involve: Welcome collaboration, comments, modifications and reactions. While the crowd may not enthrall always, it might surprise you. The founders go from being an aloof entity behind a veil of personal interests to an active participant in their own community. The Beatles, for instance came up with an absolutely meaningless song “I am the Walrus” ; Lennon wrote the song to confound listeners who had been affording serious scholarly interpretations of the Beatles' lyrics. We take this opportunity to welcome all your crazy ideas, wildest imaginations and theories to the Ideal Gas world - just reach out to us.
Govern: If you have made it till this part, you are certainly into Worldbuilding. When you create something of value, there is a requirement to manage it. Ground rules are essential to keep checks and build trust. NFTs have decentralized governance, unions have councils. Decide on some ground rules, and declare them.
None of us is smarter than all of us
Leave you with a thought:
Remember even Rick [Smartest man in the universe] had to build a community to collate all 5 Gotrons to make the GoGotron, and 25 for the GoGoGotron. He set the rules, he collaborated with multiverses and had a burning aspiration.