What is Digital Engagement?

So what’s a Focus Rhythm?  

Basically… it’s the natural rhythm of your organization and your cycles.  For example, some organizations have an annual event that would have a one-year-long Focus Rhythm.  Other organizations might have a weekly gathering that gives you a weekly Focus Rhythm.  There is something in your organization that gives you a natural (or adopted) Focus Rhythm.  I want to spend some time talking about what to do with these.

I find that most organizations place 90% of their energy toward their #1 Focus Rhythm.  This often leaves a great opportunity in another Focus Rhythm stride.  

Before we dive into how to manage and leverage these, I want to challenge all of us to identify our natural rhythm and to explore how else we could engage our audience.  Just because we have a rhythm doesn’t mean it’s the best rhythm or it can’t change.  

Step 1: Know Your Rhythm

The first big thing to tackle here is just knowing your rhythm.  I’ve seen it most common where there is a primary rhythm and then a few secondary rhythms.  But rarely is there a competing primary rhythm.  Be honest with yourself here.  There’s a temptation to want to fight this and be something you’re not.  For example, most weekly rhythm organizations don’t have strong long-range cycles of engagement (or intentional pathways of engagement).  That’s okay… we just need to know our baseline here.  

Step 2: Explore Opportunities

You could spend some time mapping out all of the things you do in your natural rhythm, but here I want to focus on what other opportunities you have.  The goal here is to find a presence where you may not be actively engaging.  For example, an annual conference might have great engagement once a year but are there opportunities for monthly engagement and having a new rhythm for more ongoing engagement?  Or, for weekly rhythms, is there an opportunity for quarterly focuses or annual themes?

Step 3: Try Things

This might not be easy.  Most organizations have an engine around their primary Focus Rhythm so building something else takes effort.  May I encourage you to think about beta testing?  Get out and try seeing what other rhythms might work with your community. You might stumble on finding a huge need from your community and untapped potential.  

Cause Machine Solutions

The Cause Machine platform allows you to engage in multiple engagement rhythms and the opportunity to try others.  The foundation here is your strategy… Cause Machine is a means to help you bring your vision and strategy to life… no matter your Focus Rhythm.   Schedule a demo today!

I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of our ebooks here in a blog post to make sure you’re aware of some great resources we’ve created.  One thing we’ve learned over the years is that engaging a community well is equally about your strategy as it is about your technology platform.  Don’t believe the myth that it’s all about having the right technology.  Remember the movie Field of Dreams and the “build it and they will come” line.  Well… it doesn’t work like that.  That’s why we work diligently to create resources to better equip you to build an excellent strategy.  Here are just a few of these resources.  

How to Take Your Community Digital

This ebook walks you through a step-by-step process to think out and transform your community into a digital community and leverage key resources to make that happen.  This is a great resource for initially considering how to move and expand a purely physical community into the physical + digital space.  Explore Cause Machine eBooks

How to Monetize Your Community

This ebook helps map out many ways that you can monetize your community - through means like memberships, events, products, courses, donations, and more.  This resource is helpful to dig into your revenue and business model for sustainable growth.  You’ll find many creative ideas and actionable strategies.  Explore Cause Machine eBooks

Running a Great Virtual Event

COVID brought on an acceleration of virtual events that in many ways are here to stay.  And while we believe all digital should be driving to in-person connections, there’s a strategic place for virtual events.  But virtual events do take a lot of planning and management.  This resource dives deep into how to build your virtual event strategy and how to bring that to life with detailed processes, checklists, and more.  Explore Cause Machine eBooks

Transforming Events into Movements

Many times events are the epicenter for a community to connect - and those events are such a great opportunity to keep people engaged long after the event.  That also takes a strategy and intentionality.  This resource helps you build a map to leverage your events and turn them into catalysts for your community.  Explore Cause Machine eBooks

All of these resources are FREE and can help you no matter where you decide to build your online community.  Our desire is to see you do that well and engage your community well.  

Explore Cause Machine eBooks

Want a Coach?  Explore Cause Machine Community Coaching

Cause Machine Solutions

One of the most significant pieces of what sets Cause Machine apart from other technology platforms is where we start… with a community engagement strategy.  We begin all of our work on the foundation of engaging a community well and then begin mapping out the technology to help support that strategy.  We’re certain that you’ll find some great resources and powerful tools in Cause Machine to better engage your community as well.   Schedule a demo today!

So this is one of the most fun exercises I’ve enjoyed walking groups through over the years as it reveals a lot about what we’re encouraging people to do and where we are guiding them.  This process helps to identify what core needs your constituents have and how you meet those needs… but it also will challenge you in what you bring to the table to them and may result in you having to step up your game.

The best way to think about this is to see five zone areas - I’ll explain the order in a moment and what each zone means.  

Zone 4        Zone 2        Zone 1        Zone 3        Zone 4

The exercise begins by plotting out two core areas… what do you have to bring to offer to your constituents and what do they need.  Often we focus on what we have to offer without thinking about what people actually want or need.  This exercise helps you separate those two thoughts so we can learn best how to then bring them back together.  

Once you’ve brainstormed out these two lists, then start to plot them in the various zones to see where they land.  HINT: what you’re looking for is how much of a constituent need is what you have to offer.  Use this key to help guide you:

Zone 4: All constituent need and nothing you have to offer OR all your resources and nothing of need/want for your constituent.  These are the most difficult things to promote and convince people they need or for you to create. 

Zone 2: These are the areas where you’re stretched yourself to meet a constituent’s need but it’s certainly stretched you to think outside the box and beyond what you currently had in your arsenal of resources.  

Zone 1: This is the most natural intersection of what you have to offer and what people need.  This was probably your first great success point and the simplest place for explaining your value proposition.  

Zone 3: This is where you want to lead people BUT it’s not where you can guide them to early in your relationship with them… it’s going to take time and most likely, it’s going to come from creating great resources that keep matching the needs of your constituents.  

More often than not, there are many items in the Zone 3 column and very few in the Zone 2 column.  That’s normal and to be expected.  We all have things we believe our constituents need… but they don’t quite see they have the need quite yet.  

Core Principle

Building trust and guiding constituents to a greater success always come by first meeting them where they are and then guiding them into resources they may not have known they need.  This is how you build trust and what helps built long-lasting value.  

Your Task

Spent time working on how you could be creating resources that meet constituents where they are - it’s going to take some work and time but it’s worth it.  

Cause Machine Solutions

Meeting constituents where they are is a challenge and a discipline.  It takes time to map this out and understand their basic needs.  Cause Machine helps provide the environments to deliver these Zone 1,2,3,&4 resources, experiences, connections, and content to help create your strong value proposition.  The asset creation is on you but Cause Machine will help you deliver that in meaningful ways and help you meet your constituents where they are.   Schedule a demo today!

Many times we think of innovation as a gifting that certain people have.  We think of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Einstein, and others… which just leads most of us to think we don’t have that special “gene”.  While there are some people who are exceptionally gifted to innovate and think outside the box, there’s also a process that all of us can use to solve problems and innovate toward a better solution.  

In the past several decades, several pioneers have navigated a path to build processes that have helped countless people work through an innovation process.  This largely began with David Kelley, the founder of IDEO.  Since those early years, others have adopted the process, changed pieces, and renamed things (ex: Stanford University, Google, etc.), but all the while continued the legacy of leading innovation.

Key Principle: Innovation is far more a process than a personal gifting.

So what does that mean for me on a practical level?  Do you ever find yourself working on a project feeling stuck?  Do you ever feel like a project should have more input from others?  Do you have projects that just feel so epic that you’re intimidated by them?  If yes for any of those questions then there’s a good chance an innovation can help you.  Look at this process as a good friend who is going to help you navigate a path to a better solution.  And the amazing part of running an innovation… you’re basically guaranteed a better solution on the other side of the process.  So let’s take a moment to talk through the stages of the innovation process.

Scope

The first stage is setting the foundations for your project.  You start by building your scope which includes things like your problem statement, defined WIN, the team to participate, how long of an innovation, what Discovery voices to invite, and general logistics.  Strong scope development helps set up the innovation event for success.  

Discovery

The innovation session begins with what we call Discovery.  This is where you look outside the world of what’s common for you and your team.  Here you explore what others are doing that are outside your industry but who have enough crossover to make you scratch your head and consider ideas from outside.

Brainstorming

Here we move to more internal thoughts and perspectives on how to address the core problem/project.  This stage walks a group through 12+ “buckets” of strategic thought that are helping to equip the working group to help solve the problem.  This interactive stage allows for mass contribution to specific points of your future plan.

Sketching

Next we move into a phase where you allow each participant to sketch out a few models for how they would see solving this project.  We’re always working toward tangible models and visual representations of the strategy.  This stage allows individuals to express and share ideas and then presents an opportunity for group members to vote on which bring the most clarity and direction to the project.  

Prototyping

The final major stage is where the whole group is broken into two core teams to build prototype projects.  Think arts and crafts projects with supplies from Hobby Lobby and Office Depot… seriously.  The goal here is to create some solution to the core problem that’s a creative approach to the problem statement.  

Presentations

Once prototypes are complete, the two teams give a short presentation of their prototype and field questions from the other team.  This phase helps flush out the two proposed solutions and gives the innovation owner two working models that could be used to solve their core problem (the owner leaves the innovation with the task to compile those two models and create the blended solution that meets their core problem).  

And that’s it… it’s really that simple!  Now there are all sorts of nuances to the process and how to facilitate these sessions well but this is the basic construct for what an innovation looks like.  These sessions are excellent to help you dig into those more complex problems, seek the council of others, and come up with solutions better than you probably could construct on your own… or at the least, put a lot more “meat on the bones” of what you’ve already created.

Cause Machine Solutions

Cause Machine is a platform created to help you better engage your audience.  We share blog posts like this to encourage community leaders to work through processes like an innovation to discover how better to engage community members.  One of our core principles at Cause Machine is that your strategy should always drive your technology.  Our hope is that you have great rhythms to better engage your audience, like hosting innovation sessions.  And then we would love to see you bring those engagement plans to life on Cause Machine.   Schedule a demo today!

So why do we innovate?

I believe we innovate because it’s part of our design and in some ways, why we were created.  Now, I don’t know where you land on the origin of man, but I believe there is an undeniable divine imprint on all of us.  And that divine imprint is from a Creator who has instilled the same characteristics in each of us.  That’s my reason for believing we should all create and innovate.  What’s yours?  We all need our reasons for why we exist and why we engage as we do.  

1. We innovate to make things better

There is nothing around us that couldn’t use to be bettered in some way.  Regardless if you see yourself as a creative or innovative person, we all believe and see that things have this mandate to get better as time moves along… health, healthcare, technology, mechanics, transportation, and so much more.  Innovation helps make things better and creates an intentional process and/or time to seek to make things better.

2. We innovate to try new things

Many times innovations fail… that’s okay.  It’s the trial and effort that count the most.  Innovation is a means to try new things, test them, adjust, and retest.  Have you seen any of the stories of SpaceX and how they built rockets?  While Boeing was spending multiple times the expense of SpaceX to run computer simulations, SpaceX was testing real rockets over and over… with many failures.  In the end, SpaceX created the rocket faster, spent less money, and sent people to space.  Innovation is all about trying new things.

3. We innovate because it’s a burn within us

There’s a burn within almost all of us to innovate, try new things, or at least, consume new things.  Yes, there’s that whole bell curve of product consumption, but for the most part, most people have a burn within them for “the new”.  That burn is just part of who we are and part of what sets humans apart… the sleepless nights spent thinking about what could be.  This is true of products, experiences, programs, and much more.

4. We innovate because things become stale

Let’s face it… things get old.  They always do.  It’s like gravity… as soon as something is created, it’s getting old.  I heard something say one time about technology if you wait to launch until it’s perfect you’ve launched too late.  It’s true… and we need to be focused well on how and when to cycle out the old and bring in the new.  Now, a caveat here, is that make sure that the foundational principles remain the same… it’s the methodologies that change.  Read more about this principle here.

5. We innovate because it allows us to work together

Innovation is a collective/collaborative process that allows us to work together to build better solutions.  Innovation brings us together and allows us giftings to sing in harmony with each other to see a solution created that no individual could create on their own.  It’s a magical way to see a group bond together around a common goal and challenge.  

There are countless reasons why we innovate.  What are your reasons?
 

Cause Machine Solutions

Innovation is in our DNA at Cause Machine.  We are continually refining our platform and working to design innovative solutions for you and your community engagement.  Schedule a demo today!