Community Is Not An Outcome
So what is?
✨ Thank you for joining the community craft conga line that is GROUP HUG. So glad you are here. ✨
Sometimes I get an itchy feeling when I notice a word that has meant one thing to me for years suddenly breaks into the zeitgeist and is everywhere: in Target commercials, in loopy script on a wooden sign for the home, or on the side of a knockoff organic brand of Frosted Flakes.
What I’m saying is that my knockoff Frosted Flakes promised me community the other day and it made me wonder if now might be a great opportunity to get more specific about what we really mean when we talk about community.
It makes sense that community is everywhere! We are very lonely! Our social institutions have collapsed and now all we have is Dunkin Donuts and Reddit as our third spaces! We are conflict averse and cancellation obsessed and these qualities make it impossible to remain in relationship with each other!
And the cruel twist is that the very institutions that played some part in isolating us – big brands, the more algorithmic corners of the internet, the workplace – are the ones now promising that in fact, yes, they can help you feel more connected again. All you need to do is keep buying this type of knockoff Frosted Flakes and sit back in warm delight knowing that you are not alone, that other people in your Frosted Flake Community are enjoying the very same bowl right alongside you.
If we aren’t intentional about what makes actual communities feel so magical and essential, community itself loses power. If everything is community but somehow you don’t feel like you belong anywhere, what does this word even mean anymore?
I’m technically part of the problem; my actual job is to create the conditions for community at IDEO, a global design company. But what is the purpose of community at work? Is community really the right word, or is it a fancy way to say “team”? Does everything need to feel like a community to be successful, or can we just do our work and occasionally make a joke about our weekend to someone we like?
One frame I find helpful is to think of community as a tactic. A shape. A helpful umbrella for describing what it means to bring a group of people together to do something. But it’s not the ultimate outcome. We can get more specific than that.
If, at the highest level, community is about bringing people together for some reason, the question becomes: what is our reason?
What can we only do together that is impossible – or much less delightful – to do alone?
Maybe the reasons are: Rejuvenation. Learning. Inspiration. Trade. Spirituality. Practice. Networking. Feedback. Visibility. Safety. Fun. Chaos. Play. Connectedness.
The folks behind the Get Together project –
, Kevin Huynh ( ) and Kai Elmer Sotto – developed an amazing framework for finding your community’s why, which groups them into eight themes ranging from Skill Development to Emotional Support.
What I love about finding our whys, these outcomes, is that suddenly, we have a beautiful constraint. Community isn’t the end. We don’t stop there. Community doesn’t happen just because we are near each other (though so much magic naturally occurs when we do); it’s our intention on the path to a collective activity, purpose, and practice.
For example: if one outcome for your community is learning together – maybe it’s a teen program, a DIY workshop, a birdwatching club – you get to look at your community activities through this lens of learning. Do you practice new tools together? Are there easy pathways to grow from a beginner to a more advanced practitioner? How often are you getting a one-way lecture instead of getting hands-on together? This isn’t to say that every activity has to be explicitly productive; getting together just to be together is vital, too.
But I’ve found that when a community I’m supporting feels a little disconnected, a little wayward, or when the people in the community start asking “What’s the point of this again?”, it’s a fantastic chance to squint at how you actually spend your time together. To realign your community in service of a collective outcome. To pull it back from the drift away from your community’s original intention.
This isn’t meant to be prescriptive, but provocational: what gets revealed to us about our communities when we get deliciously specific?
Consider sharing this with someone who you want to get more specific with!