While there is no single accepted way to kick off a group in a collaborative process, my experience and the available research says you should start small with a specific, achievable goal, rather than trying to implement a full technology platform at the same time as you’re organizing the project.  Stewart Mader, author of the book Wikipatterns, says that you should focus on the work; help people see the value from the work and the rest will follow.

Organizational scholar Karl Weick wrote in 1984:

A small win is a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals. Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results.

This still holds true today. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer followed 238 professionals in 26 creative teams across seven companies and three industries, gathering over 12,000 person/days of data. They report their results in the forthcoming book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. In a recent talk I attended, Prof. Amabile described how progress in meaningful work is the most important factor in people’s engagement. This progress doesn’t have to include a breakthrough — just maintain forward momentum.

Keep these ideas in mind when you start your next collaboration project. Go for the small wins, rather than the stretch goal, and focus on the work rather than the tools. Follow Georgina‘s advice and take a “tools last” approach to collaboration. She says, “tools are not the process, nor are they the work. Tools are there to make complex tasks easier or more efficient for your team.” Get the team’s work started, then see what tools will be most helpful.

What is your experience?  Do you agree that small wins beat out stretch goals for kicking off a new collaborative project?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Snap.

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MemberHub provides places for group members to connect and communicate, as well as tools for managing those members. It offers more features than such services as Convos and Tgethr, which we’ve looked at in the past.

Its core features are focused on easily sharing information and working collaboratively within groups, whether working online or via email. It is built around discussions and messaging, integrated file management and calendar functionality.

MemberHub is not a project management system, but it has functions not found in other group communication systems, like the ability to send out text messages from the app. This could be tremendously useful for both reminders and emergency notifications.

Thanks to the recent upgrade, administrators can now add members to a group without users needing to pre-register.

For larger groups, the process of managing members and hubs (or groups) within a business or organization has been simplified. Improvements to this area make working with the product much easier. MemberHub can manage members individually and as a part of multiple groups, which is one of the key differences between MemberHub and other collaboration tools I have seen.

As a user, I can now add multiple email addresses to my profile, to better facilitate being a part of multiple hubs or groups. Administrators can add members to the larger organization, and assign them later to individual sub-groups like Finance or Membership. Administrators can create subdomains with custom branding for each hub.

An organization of any size should see many benefits from implementing MemberHub. In my first review, I was impressed with its functionality as a communication platform. I still think that MemberHub is a great option for businesses, schools, non-profits, and churches. It’s now an even better option for larger groups.

MemberHub remains one of my favorite and most-recommended web services. I’m not aware of any other service that combines member management and online communications features as well.

MemberHub offers a free single-hub plan, and paid options ranging from $5 per month for 3 hubs and 30 people, to $149 per month for 1,000 people and unlimited hubs.

How are you keeping your group connected?

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