Bottlenecks and Leadership

The quickest way to scale is when you remove yourself as the bottleneck.

So much of leadership is setting vision and bringing clarity.

The quickest way to scale is when you remove yourself as the bottleneck.

Say you’re encouraging your community members to get stuck into the forums and help those joining to feel welcome. If you single-handedly mention it, it will quickly sound like a nagging parent.

However, if you build a culture where ‘welcoming new folk’ is standard, others will see this.

I’ve held various community-focused leadership positions in the past. Since I was a late teen, I’ve been routinely leading communities where folk physically meet, and we would see this time and time again.

Build the culture of engagement you want to see, not the process.

Culture Layering.

Remember the game of Chinese whispers? Where would you whisper a message to someone around a circle? It will inevitably get lost along the way.

Culture is just like this.

Our job as leaders is to set the culture as solid and clear as possible with the folk higher up the participation ladder (Creators, leaders, mentors, influencers, ambassadors and so on) and give them space to pass the culture down.

It will get diluted; however, you can’t scale if you’re the bottleneck.

Your team and most involved members must understand crystal clear what the mission, purpose and values are.

If they don’t understand, how can those joining have a chance of catching the culture?