The importance of signals, symbols, and rules in successful communities
Reciprocity is one of the key factors that allows communities to work. As science has shown, humans developed reciprocity as a reflex to become the only hyper-social species without all being brothers and sisters.
In small tribes and groups, reciprocity is often based on face-to-faceness – you physically help someone care for a child, or you help them move their stuff, and expect them to help you back later on. But reciprocity seems to work on a much bigger scale than face-to-faceness could ever explain – think of people supporting the green movement in Iran (#iranelection) by traveling to NY and demonstrating at the UN, or think how even the French all felt like Americans after 9/11.
What is going on here, and how can reciprocity scale beyond face-to-faceness?
In his book “Us and Them, Understanding Your Tribal Mind,” David Berreby says:
My fellow feeling for the people of New York does not depend on everyone of us taking turns doing each other’s dishes… For a city or nation to exist, its members must be good at satisfying their need for reciprocity with symbols, not actions.
Bingo!
Symbols, signals, and rules are the key to scaling reciprocity, and by proxy, the key to making large communities work. If I read advice coming from a community of Firefighters (disclosure: Monster is a client of ours) I will trust that advice even if I do not know anyone in that community because in my mind I equate being a firefighter with a strong sense of duty and trust.
There are symbols and rules that are very strong in humans – race, religion, and language come to mind. But there are others that are much more artificial – think of people who have a shared experience based on attending one of the Burning Man events, people who enjoy the riding lifestyle by driving a Harley, or the importance of uniforms.
So when you think about communities, besides making sure to base them on a shared passion or pain among the members, think if there are other symbols or rules that you can leverage to make the bonds even deeper and the trust higher – which will then lead to decreasing transaction costs and increasing transactions.
And when you do leverage symbols and rules, make sure that they have a shared meaning among the people you want to engage with – Harley may be associated with the love of a riding lifestyle for most Harley owners, but may also be associated with gangs for people outside of that community.
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September 25th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Francois -
This rings very true for me – affinity is drive by something shared and often exclusive/different. I wrote a similar post about the language that tight groups form – http://www.thesocialorganization.com/2008/05/bring-me-my-wub.html – similarly to symbols it is an artifact that bonds members to each other.
I’ve recently been thinking about sports teams and universities that drive passionate fans…. and what artifacts they use to do that. Regular and predictable events, clothing, regional affiliation, competition, history. While those things can’t all be replicated in organizational communities, some things certainly can be.
Great post!
September 26th, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] The importance of signals, symbols, and rules in successful communities [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 4:24 am
François,
I couldn’t agree more with you. To the symbols-signals-rules trilogy, I would add a fourth component: myths. I used such a grid in my early qual marketing days to analyze output from consumers panels.
Myths (or archetypes) are what give most sense to your firefighters example, and often act as a glue inside comunities to help leverage the three other dimensions. Rules even take less importance, communities often arranging themselves around roles deeply coded into our cultures. This may also give a little clue about the fact that some communities never take off despite apparent common interests and focus, specially in the corporate world.
Thierry
September 29th, 2009 at 10:51 am
[...] game (and if you have it installed, you can see the message that I left for you on my home page!). Francois Gossieaux suggests that we should look more … [...]
October 9th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Nice article… It reminds me the use of flags and hymns by nations, the first tool to create a community feeling
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:16 am
[...] result of that is what I described in a recent blog post – people use the Jeep, the mini, the Fiskars scissors, or the Harley as symbols to associate [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 11:30 am
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September 25th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
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September 26th, 2009 at 5:37 am
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September 26th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
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