Thanks for signing up to all the new readers! Here are some nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community to help you actively cultivate yours.
Wellbeing
How does stress impact how we engage with our networks? In Bulls, bears and turtles: How a hedge fund firm’s social network reacts to market swings, they describe the findings of a fascinating study where they looked at the communication pattterns of employee during market swings.
“The results suggest that social networks in the face of stress broadly exhibit features associated with ‘turtling up’ rather than opening up…We saw that personnel tended to draw inward to their closest and perhaps most trusted contacts, during these stressful periods. As a result, they were probably not gathering new information, when they could potentially have gained new and more helpful information by going outside their normal networks”
Relationships
Of course, our relationships with our significant others are incredibly impactful. These two episodes from Season 3 of The Reliants Project podcast look at how those relationships shape us when we make the commitment and if we lose them. When Max decided to propose to his girlfriend, he was confronted with the question of who among his friends would serve as best man. This triggered him to reflect on is close friendships and compare how he cultivated his relationships in comparison to his future wife. Pat had two, long, loving marriages, the first for more than 30 years and the second one just shy of 30. Unfortunately, she had to experience both of her husbands passing away, as well as several other people that were near and dear to her. Hope you enjoy the conversations:
Community
In The Rise of the Community Department, Lisa Xu describes a function and team that she believes is increasingly core to a successful business. She anticipates that this department is going to need a set of tools to do their job well, many of which don’t exist yet. Here’s what she thinks are the key features of great Community SaaS platforms:
System of record for community data and daily operating platform for the community team
Community “CRM” — should integrate across the entire community tech stack to provide a single (“360 degree”) view of every community member, including granular activity history from third party platforms, internal systems, etc.
Member segmentation — should consolidate community member data and make it easy to segment members along various dimension (e.g., engagement type, influence, etc.)
Growth — should provide tools to measure and increase community growth, including self-service tools for different community entry points, as well as analytics on community “funnels” (i.e., where are new members coming from?)
Engagement — should surface insights on engagement levels of the community across different platforms and provide answers to detailed questions like “who are my most engaged community members?”
Workflow automation to help scale actions across day-to-day initiative and activities (e.g., events, communications, member management, incentives, etc.)
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About The Reliants Project
Reliant is my word for a person that someone depends on, an essential component of our social networks. With each edition, I’ll share useful nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community to help you actively cultivate yours. Whether you want to cultivate your relationships, make better introductions, or activate networks to make an impact in the world, let me help you reach your goals.
You can find more about The Reliants Project here.