Herding Cats

Herding Cats

Leading an online community can drive you crazy. You do everything you can just to get people to join, but then you have to get them active. You finally get them active, but they're doing it wrong! Content is getting flagged and things are disorganized and they won't use the categories properly. It's maddening.

But before you pull your hair out take a deep breath. Remember that trying to control an online community is a bit like herding cats. Cats do their own thing. Sheep, on the other hand, are docile creatures that will happily go where you want them to go. The difference is that sheep are kind of dumb.

As you're getting your church onto the Table and getting people using it, remember that they're more like cats than sheep. Your people won't just bleat pathetically and do whatever you ask. Some people will do their own thing. Others will stop and look at you funny. Still others will sniff the air and move on.

And that's OK. You can't force community. It has to develop naturally. We can help it along, but trying harder and creating more rules and systems isn't going to make herding those cats any easier. At some point you have to go with it and let the community develop the way it wants to.

Here are some tips for cat herding:

• Lead by example. We've offered a lot of suggestions for how to encourage conversation on the discussion board, what kind of prayers to post and how your church can use the Serve App. Often showing people how to do something by way of example is a lot more effective than telling them how to do it.
• Be flexible. You may have some specific ways you expect people to use the Table. More than likely, they'll upset those expectations. People will come up with their own way of doing things. Sometimes that can be good. Be flexible enough to recognize and encourage a better way of doing things, even if it wasn't your idea.
• Fewer rules. Nobody likes to keep track of a lot rules. If you want to have success with an online community, you need to minimize the rules. Have some basic, obvious ones to cover safety and respect, but don't create a lot of complicated rules. They just serve as barriers to interaction. Remember that creating more rules creates more work.
• Just ask. If someone is using the Table in a way that's not ideal, the best you can do is gently suggest a better way to do it. Don't be confrontational, but suggest that this other approach might work better. A suggestion often works better than a reprimand.

Building community isn't easy, but it works best when it develops naturally. You can't force it, but you can tend it as it grows. Thankfully people respond better than cats.

(Photo by Luca Masters)