Podcasts Business Community Signal The Pros and Cons of Community Reporting to Product

The Pros and Cons of Community Reporting to Product

Published: Aug. 15, 2022, 9:30 a.m.

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Which team or leader does your community organization report into? And which would you like it to? Community teams can be successful as independent pillars or as part of other verticals, like product, ops, or marketing. In this episode of Community Signal, Danielle Maveal, the CCO (chief community officer) at\\xa0Burb, shares how community professionals can be successful within a team\\u2019s product organization.

All reporting structures have their pros and cons, but product and community share the job of \\u201cdeeply understand[ing] what the user wants and what their motivations are, and how to get them from point A to point B (2:17).\\u201d With a shared mandate, community and product teams that effectively partner can expand each other\\u2019s influence and success.

No matter what team you report into, creating a foundation in which all teams have respect for each other\\u2019s knowledge, experience, and processes is critical to every team, the business, and the community itself. Tune in to hear how Patrick and Danielle have fostered product relationships at Burb, CNN, Lyft, and more.

Danielle and Patrick also discuss:

  • The value that community pros can bring to product teams
  • Learning and leveraging product\\u2019s processes
  • How the OKR (objectives and key results) goal structure can be adapted by community pros

Big Quotes

Community can be very repetitive (7:37):\\xa0\\u201c[Product] structures don\\u2019t always work for a community team. Sometimes product teams are very much into launching features \\u2026 and then feature usage. Community is a lot of repetitive tasks or maintenance. These things are important. It\\u2019s hard to fit under almost any team actually because we do have this kind of work where mostly, especially in tech, everyone\\u2019s trying to launch something and get awesome feedback on it. That\\u2019s not always the case in community.\\u201d \\u2013@daniellexo

Product and community can partner to expand each org\\u2019s influence and success (18:16):\\xa0\\u201cHaving community in your product team is an opportunity for product leaders to increase their mandate and increase their influence. It\\u2019s not just one way. It\\u2019s not just community influencing product. It\\u2019s increasing the influence of product within the wider org, too.\\u201d \\u2013@patrickokeefe

Approaching your product team with community feedback (22:35):\\xa0\\u201cIt\\u2019s really important to bring problems. Bring as much data as you can, make partners with other teams who are also getting this feedback and data. \\u2026 Have as much support as you can around this problem. You can even tell stories from the community about this problem, but just don\\u2019t barge in with the solution that the community wants because it\\u2019s never going to get people on your side. It\\u2019s not going to motivate them to want to work on that project.\\u201d \\u2013@daniellexo

Maintain a bird\\u2019s eye view of issues impacting your community (25:14):\\xa0\\u201cFires are burning. People are fighting. People are upset. \\u2026 There\\u2019s a little community [forming] that\\u2019s making this thing look like an emergency, and it\\u2019s not always an emergency. [It\\u2019s] really important to have partnerships with other teams; data science, research, customer service, and make sure you have a really bird\\u2019s eye view of a story before you go to product or engineering, trust and safety, or legal with your requests.\\u201d \\u2013@daniellexo

Being on the defensive for product enhancements can rob you of creative opportunities (31:38):\\xa0\\u201cWhen you\\u2019re spending a lot of your energy, time, and mind thinking up all [the counterpoints to expected criticisms,] the defensive positions, and backing up everything you say, there\\u2019s little room to come to the table with someone and actually dream up something better. Usually, you\\u2019re just defending the bare minimum. If you can build that trust, and if you have a team that will trust you and work together to build that trust, you can use that time to be creative. Go leaps forward versus, \\u2018Ugh, we just need to maintain the status quo, so I need to fight for this one little thing.\'\\u201d \\u2013@daniellexo

Being a community person on a product team can make you better (32:16):\\xa0\\u201cUltimately, I think that being on a product team can make, with some exceptions, you a better community person, and a broader community person.\\u201d \\u2013@patrickokeefe

About Danielle Maveal

Danielle Maveal\\xa0is a serial founding team member. She\\u2019s been building community at Etsy, Airbnb, and Lyft for 15 years. She\\u2019s the chief community officer at\\xa0Burb, a messaging, automation, and CRM toolset for community builders. Danielle also coaches community professionals and runs multiple support groups for community builders.

Transcript

Your Thoughts

If you have any thoughts on this episode that you\\u2019d like to share, please leave me a comment,\\xa0send me an email\\xa0or a\\xa0tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported\\xa0Community Signal on Patreon.

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