At the heart of every successful business lies two great communities: its internal community (its business culture) and its customer community.

Thanks to the work of Simon Sinek, the role of a strong common purpose in building communities has been well documented.  

What is equally important, and more often overlooked, is the role of process in the development, nurturing and protection of these communities.

Below, we comment more on the power of connecting purpose, people and process to the success of a business.

If you would like to discuss the way in which your business can implement better processes please contact us at [email protected] and arrange a time when it is convenient for us to speak. 

When fuelled by a common purpose, people inter-face with their colleagues much more positively and customers become advocates. 

So, purpose helps get the most out of people.

When people are organised into communities with a strong common purpose they become more engaged, energised and loyal.  Your people are more positive representatives of your business and your customers become advocates.  

The role of process

Once it is accepted that communities are an essential asset of a modern business, then it follows that they should be processed like any other asset in order to ensure that they remain strong, dynamic and enduring.

In recent years, recognising the value of a strong business culture, many UK businesses have commissioned company wide exercises to understand, formulate, and communicate their culture.  

What they have often failed to do, however, is to design and implement ongoing processes to enable their culture to be properly measured, managed and protected. 

This means that, as their business grows, their culture and the competitive advantage which it gives them, will be at risk and, in many cases, become slowly diluted until the vital dynamic is eventually lost.  

The very same principles apply to customer communities.  A dynamic customer community is a huge asset.   The way in which it is developed, managed and protected will be much more effective with the right processes.

Managing these communities

Like any asset, measuring outcome is not sufficient.  Lead indicators that tell you about the underlying health of the asset also need to be measured.

Process is required to do this.  

For example, staff turnover tells you about the health of your business culture or parts within it.   But there are many other lead indictors including: the success of your recruitment strategy; the relative performance of teams with the business; the ongoing mindset of your employees; feedback from customers inter-facing with various parts of your business.

To manage your culture properly your processes need to be measuring and monitoring the lead indicators.

Today, technology is readily available to help collect this information in a fun, seamless and inexpensive way.  However, the processes to map out, collect and analyse this data are often missing and that omission is undoubtedly holding businesses back.

The above principles also apply to managing customer communities.  The community will be more effectively managed – and produce better revenue streams – if processes are built to measure, monitor and manage many of the lead indicators that give an important, early insight into the health of that community. 

The data produced by these processes will also provide a vital insight into how the customer base can be expanded in a very cost effective way.  

Conclusion

How one attracts and deals with people, whether in the form of employees or customers, lies at the heart of every business and, in most cases, will dictate the degree of its success.

Today, business leaders readily appreciate the value of purpose in building a better business.    In many cases, though, the right processes are not being used to communicate that purpose and to get the most from the communities it helps to build.