Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

Hi there,

For those of you who have implemented Ideas, I'm curious to hear:

(a)  How are you staffing it?  I'm assuming the Community manager & moderators serve the same role, but who reviews the ideas, manages status updates, and oversees the actual idea implementation?

(b) Do you let employees submit their ideas in the same place?

I'm sure I'll be asking a ton more questions about Ideas, but let's start with that.

Cheers,

[#2]

Hi Roxy,

I believe for the Ideas here on the Lithosphere, our Product Managers review all incoming ideas for consideration. And as you have already mentioned, the administrators and moderators make sure that submitted Ideas are legitimate. As far as point b goes, employees are already open to submit tickets to improve our product internally, so it is not necessary for us to submit ideas here, but it may be useful to see if our customers/users agree whether it is a good idea or not. Employees often scour the Ideas to give out kudos for things we also agree with!

-Will

[#3]

Hi Will,

Thanks for the response and sharing how Lithium manages Ideas here in the Lithosphere.  That's very helpful, particularly the bit about how employees submit their ideas...probably helps that you can have an internal instance of Lithium Ideas.

Cheers,

[#4]

Roxy,

I can see a lot of complex situations develop if employees, especially those tagged with an employee rank label (XYZ company employee) contribute ideas in public concerning the company.  It might be one thing if the ideas were restricted to scope of the community itself, but if they are scoped to include all aspects of the company that might be challenging.  

Employee submission of ideas could be seen as "seeding" or having shills in the audience, or could potentially undermine the brand, and could create an expectation - why would the company not consider / implement something it's own people noted as a good idea?

I think it could vary based on what kind of business one has and what kind of community.   I would have to give it a lot of thought in our case were we to implement. 

Great topic!

Mark

[#5]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your reply and your thoughtful input.  All great points, especially the "ould potentially undermine the brand, and could create an expectation - why would the company not consider / implement something it's own people noted as a good idea?" part. 

At this point, I'm going with not allowing employees to post ideas, unless it's something that the moderators (e.g. Product Management) are thinking about building/offering and they're looking to get customer feedback. Employees will be encouraged to visit, review ideas, comment, and vote.  Since adding Lithium Ideas is going to replace our current enhancement request process (that employees currently submit their ideas too...since it goes into a report, not a public spot), I just have to figure out how/where employees should submit their ideas if they aren't allowed to post them on the community.

As a side note, I think it would it would be pretty cool to deploy Lithium Ideas internally. I think I'll go start another thread and see where it goes...

Cheers,

  

[#6]

Hi Roxy,

Something else you might want to consider is having a private Idea Exchange that's only open to employees. That way, employees could submit their ideas, comment, and vote without the rest of the community eavesdropping, so to speak. 

You could still allow employees to comment and vote on ideas submitted by community members. 

...Susan

[#7]

Thanks for your input, Susan! 

I was super interested in that option for awhile, but ultimately, I thought it would cause confusion for an organization of our size, because we don't want employees posting their questions to the forum (unless they're asking for customer feedback/input).  So we thought it would be confusing to tell employees they can post their ideas...but in a certain private section, not the public ideas section and then that they can't post their questions to the forum board.  People have so much info to remember these days, that I thought this was too contradictory and confusing for people that aren't regulary visiting the forum.

[#8]

Just anothe quick thought on having a private section that is dedicated to an Employee Idea section...

Since I own the Lithium implementation (business & technical side of things), I'm wary of adding a private section for employees to post & share their ideas, because it is going to complicate the ownership issues. 

Something like an internal Ideas solution needs to have a clear owner, so ideas can be moderated, it can be promoted internally, duplicate ideas are merged, ideas' status are updated, make sure teams are being informed of ideas that impact them, etc.  But if it's a private section within our public community, I'll end up being the business owner.  Don't get me wrong...it sounds like a fun job--see trends & ideas, get to know people--especially the innovators--from across the company, interact with managers/execs from across the company, and participate as a change agent in the company, but then there's the bandwidth issues, and this is more clearly an internal system.  Not sure who would own it...maybe HR?  Maybe someone in Marketing?

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone else considering this...