How to Monitor and Manage the Health of Your Membership Program
Alexandra Suchman and Peter Williamson, co-founders of BarometerXP - a team building company - get a system to monitor and manage the health of their membership program.
Get involved or stay in touch with Alex and Peter!
Transcript
Alaina Szlachta:
I’m here Alex Schumann and Peter Williamson of Barometer XP who are so excited to share a really cool challenge that they are facing around measurement and evaluation. And I want to first introduce them and their company because what they do is really awesome. And then we'll just dive right into the challenge and the opportunity and get started. So Alex, if you don't mind, tell us just a little bit about yourself. Maybe why barometer, why you're up to this amazing work that you're doing, and then we'll turn it over to Peter.
Alex Suchman:
Yeah, so I'm Alex. I am one of the co-founders and CEO of Barometer. The last 10 years of my career, I was in organizational development, so doing consulting and trying to help companies and organizations become more efficient and focusing a lot on the process piece. But what I realized is if the people aren't getting along, if you don't have a solid culture, if you don't have trust and connection and a solid understanding of where each piece fits into the broader puzzle, you really can't get very far in terms of process improvement and getting organized.
Alaina Szlachta:
Hmm.
Alex Suchman:
So that's where the idea from Barometer came on my end, is how do you bring some sort of activities and games to create experiential learning, to build those relationships and build those interpersonal skills.
Alaina Szlachta:
Awesome. Yeah. And I love on barometers when you search barometer XP on Google, it says like a team development company. And I just want to say that you're using games and activities as a way to build awesome teams to make organizations better. And I just love that those connections are all there. And part of what we're doing in this case study is helping you to measure and monitor how well is that mission being fulfilled. And I'm so excited. Peter, tell us. Why barometer for you? Why did you get involved in this startup
Peter Williamson:
Sure.
Alaina Szlachta:
company?
Peter Williamson:
And for the Monty Python fans out there, now for something completely different. I don't have an organizational development background. I come from a family of educators. And so naturally I'm interested and passionate about kind of helping people become their best self. I was a professional athlete for about six years after my college. And, you know, high performing athletes look a lot like high performing teams, you know, setting up spaces for people to learn and grow this kind of falls right in that wheelhouse of education and kind of creating social good. As I come from the athlete world, games are naturally kind of a driving factor of a lot of the things that I do. I'm hyper competitive but love a good collaborative game too and Alex and I got together a number of years ago now and started thinking about how games and play could intersect with organizational development and so thus Barometer was born.
Alaina Szlachta:
love it. And I have had the pleasure of being involved in barometer just kind of on the sidelines as an advisor and a friend and colleague. And I'm just so happy to have you all here and have this conversation. So what we're talking about today, just to give a little bit more context and feel free, Alex and Peter to direct me if what I'm sharing is inaccurate or has changed since we last spoke. But barometer is offering a membership. And so there's a couple of different things that are included in the membership. Of course, the games an amazing assessment tool that helps field people to the right game with the instructions and the why and the how it can help with their larger mission of improving teams and then therefore organizations. And another piece of the membership is the community. And so what we're focusing on measuring specifically today is the health of the community part of that membership. Because as we know, just buying a product, in your case, a game, knowing how to use it and even being able to track how effective that game was implemented and what it did for the team development. That's all awesome, but the community piece is really magical. All of the facilitators and the people who are using your games and having different levels of success or challenges, bringing them together is the sticky part, I think, of your membership. And we want to make sure, or you've told me, you want to make sure that that is really healthy. And so our challenge and also opportunity today is to figure out... Well, what are those indicators of health? And then how do we realistically, with the systems, tools, time, knowledge, and expertise that you have, and just timeline, how do you set up a minimum viable system to start tracking the health of your community? Knowing all the while, and I'll say this in every case study, that when we make measurement easier, which is the goal of these case studies, We start simple, small, do a stepwise process because we can always add more complexity later. And the reality is we don't need to be so complex in the beginning because taking baby steps actually allows us to figure out what's the next best layer of complexity to add in versus trying to do the whole shebang all at once. And so our goal, and I think you both will agree, is let's get those indicators of health clear, and then we'll talk about the systems piece.
Alex Suchman:
Yep.
Alaina Szlachta:
And so... The first question, and Alex or Peter, whoever wants to jump in to respond, but I'd love to hear from you both, is if our goal is to manage and monitor a healthy community as part of your membership offering, tell me what healthy looks like to you. And as you're sharing, I'm gonna make some notes. So, I'm gonna start with a question. What is the healthiest way to manage your membership? And I'm gonna answer that question. So, I'm gonna start with a question. What is the healthiest way to manage your membership?
Peter Williamson:
Sure. So I kind of think about this from a couple of different lenses. Obviously, you sort of introduced some of the other work that we do at Barometer, which is to help gauge where teams are. If you think about what a barometer is in science, it measures pressure. We're doing the same thing in a culture. And so we have some evaluation tools that can help us measure what a community of people that know each other are like. So thinking about, oh, I have a colleague you know, I love, you know, their encouragement when I'm working on projects, I feel like I belong in this organization. We can ask questions to of people that know each other, but when you think about a community of practitioners, the group of folks that are using this membership product, it's people that don't necessarily know each other, nor do they have the touch points, kind of on a regular daily basis like a team would, you know, to think about how that community forms. different angles, that first one being a group that knows each other versus a group that doesn't know each other, we're focused on sort of the latter, right? And to me, I feel like there's got to be a certain level of trust in the group to be able to share best practices, right? I feel like in order to really learn, there needs to be sort of that complete engagement. We call it flow in game design, right? You almost forget that time is passing because you're so engaged in something.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
A lot about like perspectives, diverse perspectives, right? Whether that's where people are coming from, age and their careers and kind of what they've seen in the world or kind of where they come from demographically. I think just diversity of perspective is really important when it comes to just seeing teams for where they are. And then I always think about like when you see a team that's engaged and they trust and they have that kind of diversity, there's this sense of inquiry. to ask questions and just sort of probe the group. And so I think of health being just active and engaged.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Awesome. Alex, anything else that you wanna add to that sort of vision of health for your community?
Alex Suchman:
Yeah, I think the community that we are trying to build are other practitioners who work with teams, who do culture work and learning and development and coaching. And, you know, there's a lot of different philosophies, a lot of different approaches to that. And at least initially, as we're just getting this community started, we want people who... Like, you know, how Peter and I first met, we were really excited to share ideas with each other because we knew that whatever we created by the sharing of ideas was going to be better than what we could come up with on our own. And that's something, since spirometers started as a baby idea to what it is now, at every step it's been ideas that came from other people who are now collaborators. I'm sure some of your ideas have directly contributed. In fact, I get to give a few examples. So we want to create an environment where people feel inspired to give and share their and share their own ideas and their feedback because they know it's going to be creating something better and bigger than any of us could do on our own. And really are trying to elevate this field of game-based experiential learning in the professional development
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Alex Suchman:
space. And so people who feel
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Alex Suchman:
not only are they trying to benefit their own career, but they're trying to grow this field as well.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, awesome. So what I hear, and I think it's important to share too that we also, when we set up a measurement system, we wanna be measuring something that's actually being delivered or facilitated. And so I know that you're still working to build the community offering. And so I know that a lot of, why I love having measurement conversations is they actually directly influence what you deliver and develop as a product. and your community is, of course, a product. And so if we wanna, for example, track how much knowledge is being shared within the community, there has to be a delivery mechanism or a system in place to make sure that that's happening. So for anyone listening, we're going to assume that Alex and Peter have facilitated a community that enables all of the best practice and knowledge sharing, that enables curiosity inquiry and that what we're doing is figuring out how do we sit a system on top of all of that product to track that those things are happening. So that being said,
Alex Suchman:
Thanks for watching!
Alaina Szlachta:
um, we've got a couple of things I wrote down from both of what you've shared that could be, and I think of this as like a values based way of picking metrics. I think we could pick metrics that are, um, more about dollars and cents and we could pick metrics that, you know, really anything, but I want to highlight too why we're starting with what does healthy look like and letting you share from like your heart and the mission of your company is that that's what's going to make the data that we get the most meaningful for you. Cause there's best practices out there that might say, oh, the health of your community is based on these five things, but none of them align with your values. So I like to lead with what makes the most sense to you for your company, because that's a key differentiator.
Peter Williamson:
Yeah. And I love that Elena,
Alaina Szlachta:
All that being
Peter Williamson:
yeah,
Alaina Szlachta:
said,
Peter Williamson:
just jumping in
Alaina Szlachta:
yeah,
Peter Williamson:
and
Alaina Szlachta:
go ahead.
Peter Williamson:
saying like barometer
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah.
Peter Williamson:
is very much positioned as sort of a public benefit corporation. So thinking about values is, you know, this is a triple bottom line kind of organization. It's people, planet profit.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
And so, you
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah.
Peter Williamson:
know, I love that approach and thinking about values instead of, you know, values may include economic success, but it also will include
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
kind of the people and culture around
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
it. So that's really
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah.
Peter Williamson:
helpful.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah. Speaking of that, one thing that we haven't written down here, and if I was asking this question to another company, somebody might immediately say that my community is healthy if I'm making this much revenue. And so I love that you've clearly started with what's the dynamic that we want to see happening in the community? Because I'm going to put these words out there. I think I'm right. We all probably believe that if these things are happening, the revenue
Peter Williamson:
Mm-hmm.
Alaina Szlachta:
will come, because people will want to be a part of something like that, because it's just really magical. Obviously, tracking revenue is something that's important. But what we really want to know is the health from that values-based lens, because it's the stickiness. It's what keeps people engaged with you versus the dollars and cents and even money that people might be making by using your games, et cetera.
Alex Suchman:
Yeah, and I think.
Alaina Szlachta:
Although,
Alex Suchman:
A really
Alaina Szlachta:
that can
Alex Suchman:
good
Alaina Szlachta:
also be
Alex Suchman:
point
Alaina Szlachta:
easily
Alex Suchman:
to
Alaina Szlachta:
tracked.
Alex Suchman:
expand on a little bit is at least when you're starting with a community there's an element of fit. Not that we're trying to be exclusive, but in order to create
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Alex Suchman:
something you need people who have certain shared values. And that idea of contributing towards a greater good is really central not just to the community that we're building, but to the company as a whole. If we were purely motivated by maximizing revenue, I think from day one we would have made probably every single decision we've made very differently. See you next time. Bye.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I hear a couple of different things. And what I want us to do next is we don't need to measure everything. We need to figure out what's the most important thing. Because oftentimes, those most important things, if those are moving along in a healthy way, they're influencing other things also. And so I hear belonging is important. Trust. engagement and then I heard a couple sub examples of engagement which is best practice sharing, sharing diverse perspectives and then just something as simple as asking questions or being curious and showing up with that inquiry based mindset. Did I capture those? Is there any big thing that's missing that I should have on this list?
Peter Williamson:
I would say just sort of leaning into some of the assessment that we've created kind of on the front half of working with teams that know each other. We often talk about kind of the legacy and impact that you're making, right? And so if you're a member of a community, being able to give to the community and feel like you're making an impact in it is a really nice, you know, it's a nice kind of warm feeling that you're like, oh, you know, I have meaning here. And people
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
often
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
when they find a community that they really gel with, you hear that a lot, right? You're giving and receiving from that community.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if we had to, so there's a couple of ways to think about this. One is what's the easiest metrics to track, but then the other is what's the most important? Like if there was a domino that I knocked over that would then have a ripple effect for all these other things, is there one or two of these things that we could prioritize? Because remember, our goal is to get you started, minimum viable health check system. such that you can learn from the implementation of that and add more as we learn what works, what's not working, what's realistic, what's overwhelming. So I think engagement is probably the easiest because pretty much any tool that you adopt to host your membership community is gonna give you baked in analytics just from the sense of who's showing up, how frequently, et cetera. And I think we can add on to that a lens of what's being how is engagement
Peter Williamson:
Okay.
Alaina Szlachta:
happening? So my vote would be to like dig into the engagement piece, but then also, because we've had a little bit of a pre-conversation, trust was something that was very important. And from what you've shared, it seems to me to make sense that it might be that domino. If trust exists, then belonging might also be there. Best practice sharing might also be there. Sharing diverse perspectives, et cetera. So how do you feel about prioritizing in our minimum viable measurement system, engagement and trust?
Peter Williamson:
I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, very much sort of relationship heavy, right? Which is, it feels values aligned to me at least in thinking about. If you think about any community that you're a part of, family, right, friends groups, you know, social things that you do in the city, if you came across a scenario where you were maybe less excited to do it, but you really like the people in your group, there's a much better chance that you're going to engage, right? And so really thinking about if you can build those strong relationships, they're a lot more resilient. And I think from a community standpoint and a place a lot of virtual engagement, not a lot of touch points in person. If people are feeling that, that's a pretty amazing yield for a community.
Alaina Szlachta:
anything from you before we dive into indicators, which is our next step in making this system happen.
Alex Suchman:
No, I think you nailed it. When I hear trust in this context, I think of symbiosis. And I think that's really where we're getting at is the sharing and giving and receiving and feeling like value is moving in all directions.
Alaina Szlachta:
Hmm, yeah, awesome. Good, well, I'm glad we got to a place where what we're doing is we've agreed upon that high level, like what's most important to be monitoring and tracking. Now the question becomes, how do we do it? And so the first question to think about the how do we measure and trust, I love that we're picking something that's so, what's the word? It's like, so how do you measure
Alex Suchman:
Haha
Alaina Szlachta:
trust? Because it's a great example of trying to figure out, like we can measure it. It's not going to be perfect exactly, but just giving you some indicators of to what degree are people feeling like there's trust in this community? We can do that. So the question, and I will start with trust because engagement, I think is a little bit easier. What do you, from the top of your mind or from your experience? What are the indicators? And I would suggest like think back to communities that you've been a part of, even like you mentioned, Peter, relationships that you've been in where trust has been there. What are indicators that trust is present?
Peter Williamson:
I think the first thing that comes to mind is some level of accountability. Like if you know, if you have either something that you're doing or something someone else is doing in a community and they've elected to do it or you've elected to do it, if you follow through with that thing, you're starting to build that kind of unit of trust. People know that if they come to you for something, your word is good. or from a relationship building perspective, if people know they can come to you and what you say is true, that's kind of level one, right? At least in terms of trust. If you don't have that, it's hard to know if something actually is gonna happen. Then you might start micromanaging the situation and then you start losing control of what it means to like
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
offer yourself as a person who can help or an idea.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm. And what I want to ask Peter is, and remember back to what I said a few minutes ago about, there are things that we can measure that would be a reflection of what you're delivering. And so in some ways, I hear that the accountability and follow through is something that barometer could set up. And like leading by example, there could be this way of showing up in the community as the team that manages the community that facilitates that. I'm wondering if maybe the accountability and the follow through is more like if we had two buckets of like indicators that we measure versus things we deliver and do as part of the product, if maybe the accountability and follow through is the bucket of we're gonna deliver this as the team barometer XP, because we know it's gonna facilitate the trust, but not necessarily be something that would be an indicator of the health from that higher level, looking at what's happening in the
Peter Williamson:
Sure.
Alaina Szlachta:
community.
Peter Williamson:
There may be a question
Alaina Szlachta:
So
Peter Williamson:
or two,
Alaina Szlachta:
I'm gonna
Peter Williamson:
right?
Alaina Szlachta:
put
Peter Williamson:
That kind
Alaina Szlachta:
like,
Peter Williamson:
of dives into it. But
Alaina Szlachta:
mm-hmm,
Peter Williamson:
yeah, I agree. It's
Alaina Szlachta:
mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
more of an outcome. Like you think about sort of the, as an organization that's trying to bring facilitators together and support them, you're sort of like the tide that lifts all boats. We speak in a lot of metaphors, right?
Alaina Szlachta:
That's right. Yeah,
Peter Williamson:
And so,
Alaina Szlachta:
yeah,
Peter Williamson:
you know, thinking
Alaina Szlachta:
yeah.
Peter Williamson:
about, you know, how can we gauge that if someone has, you think about any time in your life, you have a bunch of priorities, right? The higher something is on your priority list, likely you're going to engage with it, right, if something pops up.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
So you think families probably at the
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah.
Peter Williamson:
top of those lists, right, for a lot of people. Communities are a little bit trickier because sometimes they're sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth on the priority list. And so if you send something out, you may not get a response right away. It may be a busy time for someone. And so I think from kind of a measurement perspective, I'm a big believer in pulses and understanding trends over time, instead of maybe one big survey that goes out at a particular time of year that just so happens to be next to a holiday that everyone celebrates so that no one does it.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
Just thinking about how to measure or how to take the pulse of the group on how high of a priority is
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
this for you? What are you getting out of
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
it? What relationships
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
have you made?
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
move to the next step in your career? Like those are starting to get at a little bit more of that probing question that could give us some insight.
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm. And one thing that I heard you say that is measurable and it's, it's sort of putting us in a hypothesis, like a, so the thing is timely communication and it's an easy thing for someone on your team. Like, let's say you have five team members who are all managing the community and one of your policies or procedures is that anything that gets shared in the community, if there's no response organically, that a team member will come in and offer a response within 24 hours. And so something that we could track is, is that happening? Or how much time does it take with, get anyone that shares something in the community, what's the time to respond? And that the goal is less than 24 hours, because I think that's realistic. And that that's the hypothesis is that if you believe accountability and follow through, And the way you deliver that is by a timely communication standard. And then what we could track and measure is, is that happening consistently? And then it's not necessarily like an impact from the community, but it's more we're measuring the delivery of something we believe collectively is going to facilitate trust, which is when we think about collecting data, it's okay for us to collect data from a variety of perspectives. So one is like. the operations data, are we doing the things that we believe we need to be doing to deliver a certain kind of experience because that's a health indicator. Because if that's not happening, then there's an operations challenge that we should be addressing, but that's not necessarily like impact to your community. So maybe that's a starting place is like, we know we need to deliver timely communication and facilitate that so people can have those expectations. What's another indicator? that trust is present in the community.
Alex Suchman:
people willingly sharing their own knowledge. I think us putting stuff out on a regular basis and making sure it's high quality and staying accountable to that is really important. And then for us an indicator is when we ask for things or when there is an opportunity for people to share ideas that they're sharing and we're receiving. And that takes, you know, on other practitioners part that some people might say, oh I don't want to share my ideas because then other people might use them and they'll take them. And that's a fine mindset but that's not really conducive for the community that we're building. So people that are willingly sharing their tools and sharing their ideas.
Peter Williamson:
Yeah, there's like a quantitative and a qualitative metric to that, right? Like if you're, you could, you could measure the number of things people are posting in the community and you could also try to start measuring the quality of those things, right? You know, how many other people are using them or referring them or looking things up. Um, so engagement with the content that's being shared between people feels like
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
if, if more people are sharing and there are more unique users on the feels like you're building a community that people are spending time on, right? At the end of the day,
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
if they're willing to spend time on something, they probably trust it enough.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah, yeah. And what I love about the idea sharing and the tool sharing is it actually gets us a metric that spans both of the overarching things that we want to monitor, which is engagement and then trust. So the idea is if people are sharing ideas and tools freely and even giving feedback, that might be another thing, is how much feedback are people giving? um, when it's requested or even requests for feedback, that kind of stuff. Um, there's gotta be trust for the question that we put out there and trust for the feedback to also be given, which gives us both the trust and the engagement.
Alex Suchman:
Mm-hmm.
Alaina Szlachta:
So I'd say that let's start with these
Peter Williamson:
Thank you.
Alaina Szlachta:
things because you know, you're going to get engagement analytics. broadly speaking, you'll know from whatever tool you adopt for your community, you're going to see the percent of people who are logging in and frequencies that just comes baked in to whatever tool you adopt. But what becomes a bit more complex then is how do you facilitate systematically, because the way that we set up the community will also inform how we measure and track it. So for example, if we just wanted to set up idea and tool sharing and feedback, it would be easy for us to have a Slack channel or something equivalent, but it's a designated space that people go and share ideas and get feedback or test stuff, like a testing lab zone, something like that. And if you have a designated channel, then it's really easy to track, like what percent of people are engaged in that specific idea sharing. thought leadership space compared to other sections of the membership and that the idea being if that's high or highest, then it's a really healthy space and trust is taking place. The limitation to that, forcing people into sharing ideas in a specific space is that, well, what if they want to share it in a different way? And so part of building measurement systems is understanding that if we choose to... set up a specific channel or a specific zone for something, and people aren't engaging,
Alex Suchman:
Mm-hmm.
Alaina Szlachta:
well, then why is that happening? So for now, we can maybe choose to go in a direction like that or another one, because it's easy to measure. But then when we start to monitor the health as we're seeing engagement, keep in the back of our mind that maybe if there's not a lot of engagement, is it because of how we're creating that space
Peter Williamson:
Okay.
Alaina Szlachta:
versus the space that we're creating? that there's a lack of trust. But that's something that we don't know, which is hence like creating a minimum viable system. It gives us a starting place to then inform, are we delivering the product in the right ways? And also are we seeing healthy engagement? So I'll stop talking for now and just turn it back to you and say, because we do wanna at least give you some steps to systematically build this out. So what feels good for you in terms of If we wanted to track idea sharing and feedback, what feels good knowing the kind of space that you're going to have for people to engage in?
Peter Williamson:
It's an interesting question. I, um, you, you mentioned Slack, which is like our current form of communication, right? Both internal as our own team, but also it's a platform that I think a lot of people are pretty familiar with in the space, at least, you know, through our various beta tests and kind of. asking questions within the community of practice that we have. Um, and so I think using a tool that's accessible is really important, right? Like you don't want to create some cumbersome tool that people have to like go find in the recess of their, of their email inbox
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
or, you know, corner of
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
their 345 tabs on Chrome, like whatever, you know, they're trying to, whenever they're thinking about how can I participate in this community, it's gotta be accessible. It's gotta be a sort of an instinct. And so there's a part of this that's... It's almost, there's a referral aspect of idea sharing, right? It's, it's both like what's happening in the community, but also like, are they bringing in other people? Right? If I think of like really
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
strong communities, at some point you're going to hit a, you're going to hit a moment where you're like, you know what? This may not be as useful for me, but I just met another person and they would love this
Alaina Szlachta:
Okay. Okay.
Peter Williamson:
and if, if one of the first thing that comes to mind in the community is I would want to share this with someone else, you've got such a greater reach of that community and it's something that's self-sustaining. Whereas if it's always on
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
barometer to go and bring in new people, that's going to be a very linear growth of a community, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it, it doesn't have necessarily the same kind of level of impact and, and idea sharing. So I
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
just wanted to throw that in as kind of another
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah.
Peter Williamson:
piece of this, right? It's, it's kind of like there's idea sharing within the community, but there's also idea sharing and referring
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
outside of the community.
Alaina Szlachta:
Outside.
Peter Williamson:
Yeah.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yep. Yep. And I wrote that down. And so I think when we start to look at what are some of those indicators and then how do we measure, the easiest one for engagement, and whatever tool it is, so let's just call it Slack, it's the total number of members that are sharing anything and engaged and showing up versus the number of total members who are in the community. So that's a super easy one. But it doesn't really give us a lot the level of depth that we're looking for, but at least it's a great starting
Peter Williamson:
Yep.
Alaina Szlachta:
place. Because it's like, again, the domino effect. If you start there and you see that only 50% of people are engaging, then, Peter, you mentioned surveys. Yes, we can absolutely do pulse checks, but what we really are trying to build is like an evergreen system that you're monitoring all the time. And then a pulse check survey is a reaction to the insights that we're getting, that people aren't engaging. So you know. First, very simple thing is, what's our percent of total engagement? How is that going? The next thing that I think is looking at what's being shared. And so then you could, if you have a special space and you're pushing people and encouraging them to share ideas and give each other feedback, and you're doing the work to respond timely and to encourage people to do that, you could then check a subset. total number of people who are in our community, and then the number of people who are sharing in that space. It's simple, it doesn't do the qualitative in terms of the quality, but at least it's a starting place. Then I think I love the external ideas. So it requires yet another system. So there's referrals. So how many people within the community are bringing in other people? And that's, you know, there's a million ways to track that, but. that referral system I think is a great indicator of health of the community. And then the other one is content sharing. So I know a lot of times communities are posting really good stuff and then they're sharing it on social media or other places. So again, it's a system to normalize sharing of content and ideas and then making it easy. So maybe Slack does that or maybe other things do that, but monitoring. how much of the content shared internally is being shared externally. And I think that's an easy metric for you to check on the health of your engagement. And then a little bit of the trust piece, which is the idea sharing and the feedback. So how does that feel as like a minimum viable starting place for y'all?
Alex Suchman:
I think
Peter Williamson:
Yeah.
Alex Suchman:
that makes a lot of sense. The one thing with referral-based metrics that I just want to be aware of is pyramid schemes.
Peter Williamson:
Yeah.
Alex Suchman:
And so that network marketing model, where it's like people's value to the community is determined by how many people they bring in. And that's not at all what we're trying to go for.
Peter Williamson:
Right,
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah.
Peter Williamson:
right.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah. But I also think it's worth sharing that organic, when you really love something, you can't help but share it. When I have an amazing protein powder, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is changing my life, and I want to share it with everybody because I love it so much. So I think there's an organic, when you have love and trust and value, you want to share it. And so maybe it's not through a formal referral system, but could it be through some other way that you're tracking? who's coming in. So maybe Alex, if you have a form when somebody joins your membership, how did you hear about us? And then if there's an option that's just like a member told me about it or raved about you or I heard about you on social media, that's an easy way to track referrals without instituting an official affiliate link and all.
Peter Williamson:
Yep.
Alex Suchman:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Peter Williamson:
the other, you know, if it's a wrinkle or just a sort of factor to think about is if you're creating a community of best practice or experts in the space or people that want to share ideas and they've built a level of trust. Sharing things may not be in the best interest of the group, right? Like the group may be coming together to be sharing inside that kind of magic circle and saying like, we would love you to share that this has been meaningful for you, but not necessarily take an idea and just run, right?
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
And, you know, promote it to the world because for someone that might be their secret sauce, and they trust the people in the group to kind of keep it within their own bounds, but if they take it
Alaina Szlachta:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Williamson:
out to everyone else, now it starts to dilute their own work. So there's a balance there to strike, but I think from a starting point, it makes sense. And onboarding surveys are great ways to think about it.
Alaina Szlachta:
Yeah, awesome. Well, for the sake of time, I think we have a great, simple system to set up. And so for those who are listening and for the two of you, the next step will be I will create a Google document and I'll document what we came up with. If you don't mind, we can do a little bit of back and forth to just agree upon what you're going to implement. And we can use comments and whatever. that Google Doc will be made available to the viewing audience because the value of this is literally showing, how are we thinking about measurement? How are we doing the work to set up a minimum viable system? Only we, our little internal team, will be able to make comments and changes, but anyone who wants to observe our process and thinking. And then when we come back after you've implemented these first few steps and seeing some data and learn from the experience, then we'll have that Google Doc to look back to and go, ooh, how would we change things differently for anybody that wants to do this same kind of minimum viable health check for their community programming. So thank you. I wanna wrap up and just take a few minutes or seconds and just say, clearly what you're doing at Barometer is awesome and you're up to some wickedly cool things. And so if people want to learn more about you, if they wanna get involved, Where should they go? What should they do? And we'll of course include any links in our notes for this particular recording.
Alex Suchman:
Yeah, I would say our, the first thing would be our website which is barometerxp.com. And we have all kinds of stuff on there, our pressure matrix, you can read about some of the offerings we do in our philosophy, we have a great blog. We're on social media, both individually and as Barometer, we're on LinkedIn and Instagram. Sign up for our newsletter because we do all sorts of game sessions and demos that are very interactive, people participate, get to play the games themselves and that's a really great way to see our approach. and understand how what we're doing is different. So those are the big pieces.
Alaina Szlachta:
Awesome, fantastic. Well, I appreciate Alex and Peter, you taking the time to just let us go behind the scenes with you and create some systems or start thinking about systematic ways to measure and evaluate and do it in an easy, accessible, realistic way for the benefit of anyone who happens to be viewing this at any time in the future. So you know what's happening next. We'll get our Google Doc together. We look forward to talking about you in another recording about how everything went. I can't wait to hear. And just thank you again for your time.
Alex Suchman:
Thank you.
Peter Williamson:
Thanks so much, Alaina.