Part I: Guiding Principles to Community Hacking (in a nutshell)

This video covers:

Hacking Communities, Part I: Guiding Principles

1. Why Communities? Why Now?

2. Loneliness is an epidemic. Belonging still matters. We need to reinvent communities.

3. Defining: Community. Identity, Connectedness, Growth.

4. Community vs. Tribalism, Community Building vs. Traditional Marketing

5. The Core Values of Communities

6. The power of storytelling

About the Book:

The world needs a new approach to building communities—one based on relationships, trust, and belonging. Community building must be “hacked.” In Hacking Communities, Lais de Oliveira examines how we can renew our shared sense of belonging. Drawing on her own personal struggle with loneliness, as well as academic research and her professional experience in building communities with non-profits, startups, and public organizations, she provides frameworks and methodologies to build stronger and more diverse communities. Hacking Communities aims to empower anyone to start and grow a community, making the case that everyone is a potential community builder.

This book helps you start or grow a community, bringing to life any business, cause or physical space. It includes guiding principles and practical insights to community building. The book is organized in two parts: Part I, for key principles and Part II, for practical steps. It underlines building communities is a social responsibility. When loneliness is an epidemic, bringing people to belong together is an imperative. The book includes practical frameworks to community building, from design of experiences that enable true connections (engineering serendipity) to building long-lasting relationships in a collective (closeness circles).

Based on the author’s 13 years of experience from private to public sector across 4 continents.

Representation Matters. Here is Why.

Have you ever stumbled upon the unfortunate comments of the kind “so when is International Men’s Day?” on March 8th? Well, we all have. As November 19th marked the International Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, and the 20th we celebrate the “Black Awareness Day” in Brazil, I decided to share thoughts on representation. The fact we need special dates is merely illustrative here. Let’s talk about representation. 

Why does it matter? Because we are talking about historically oppressed minorities, yes. But even so, why does it matter? What is the impact of it? It matters for a myriad of reasons, but I’ll focus on 3.

Representation matters: 

1. To create possibilities of who we can become

2. To broaden perspectives and enhance fairness in our justice system

3. To enrich decision making, leading to solutions that embrace more people

Let’s talk about it.

image credit: pexels-rfstudio

1. Creating Possibilities

I learned that representation matters from a very personal perspective, which I shared in the Badass Times (The Ugly Duckling Road to Entrepreneurship): 

“There was an emerging number of people who looked like me being founders, which helped. Being around them reinforced the belief that I could be a successful founder. And look: I am privileged in a myriad of ways, let’s face it, just by the fact I am born white. In the process of researching the economic value of diverse communities – while writing Hacking Communities – I found that the influence of our surroundings is crucial in becoming the best version of ourselves.

Some of us need others who we can relate to. Sharing stories creates possibility and enhances the probability that we could do the same. As in the 4-minute mile (Roger Bannister’s historic deed which paved the way for many others to break a previously scientifically-impossible record).” 

Haven’t you heard about the 4-minute-mile? In short: 

As per Wikipedia, “A four-minute mile is the completion of a mile run (1.6 km) in four minutes or less. It was first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister, at age 25, in 3:59.4.”  Why was it any special? Because such a deed was deemed impossible by all means, scientists and experts up to the night before he broke the record. 

“When Bannister broke the mark, even his most ardent rivals breathed a sigh of relief. At last, somebody did it! And once they saw it could be done, they did it too. Just 46 days after Bannister’s feat, John Landy, an Australian runner, not only broke the barrier again, with a time of 3 minutes 58 seconds. Then, just a year later, three runners broke the four-minute barrier in a single race. Over the last half century, more than a thousand runners have conquered a barrier that had once been considered hopelessly out of reach.”
Source: What Breaking the 4-Minute Mile Taught Us About the Limits of Conventional Thinking

Wharton School professors Yoram Wind and Colin Crook dedicated a chapter to the 4-minute mile in their book, Power of Impossible Thinking. They wondered what led to Bannister’s record-breaking deed, and what happened since: 

“Was there a sudden growth spurt in human evolution? Was there a genetic engineering experiment that created a new race of super runners? No. What changed was the mental model.”
Source: The Power of Impossible Thinking

If Bannister allowed such wonders within a year, wonder what US Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris could do to a whole generation of little girls?

Representation matters. Dot.

2. To Enhance Fairness

This topic hurts, but let’s face it like adults. Our justice system is still led by people who look and think a lot like each other. While we’re growing in representation of people from diverse backgrounds, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation, we often see strong biases in the way others are treated - be it at the court, on the streets.

As we celebrate the Black Awareness Day in Brazil, November 20th 2020, we are hit with the news of another black life taken away violently, unfairly, in a cowardly way. João Alberto Silveira Freitas, 40, was murdered without committing a crime. The scene was caught by video, recorded on someone’s phone. According to Reuters  “Black Brazilians make up 64% of the country’s unemployed, die younger and are almost three times as likely to be victims of homicide, according to 2019 government data.”

Earlier in theme month, November 2nd 2020, a jury coined the term “culpable rape”: which means the rapist did not intend to rape. He reportedly “did not realise the victim was unable to consent”. While the rapist Andre Aranha probably preferred the new term and felt represented, the right opposite can be said about the victim, Mariana Ferrer, and millions of people who raged after watching the trial video online.

The world is not fair yet. But it is thanks to millions of voices that the #BlackLivesMatter movement is standing up and moving forward. It is thanks to millions of men and women supporting other women that we are likely not to accept rapists getting away with crime, a few years from now.  But screaming from the grassroots ain’t enough: representation means to have diverse people at the court, as national leaders, at the C-level in large companies. From my personal experience, I notice every day how women are still underrepresented  and underpaid in business and leadership positions. I am unfortunately used to (but not happy, nor proud of) being the exception in an all-male panel at tech conferences.

We need to make better decisions that include a wider range of people. To do so, we need more diversity in our company boards, meeting rooms and amongst public leaders.

How to increase representation?  We rise by lifting others who look different, and by standing up to represent ourselves and others with whom we can relate and empathise. 

3. To Enrich Decision Making

Diversity is good for business. A series of studies have proven it.

When different minds get together, we have richer discussions, broaden our perspectives, and make better decisions. These can result in more eloquent ways of presenting an idea or coming up with better solutions to a problem. The more representation, the more likely that we create products for a wider audience - bingo! That’s good for business.

More diverse tables make better decisions: as long as we have intelligent, open-minded individuals sitting on it. In this case, intelligence is defined by their willingness to learn and debate. Are our leaders looking forward to receive constructive feedback, have their ideas challenged and their minds changed?

In my upcoming book, Hacking Communities I share a framework to engineer serendipitous encounters between people from different backgrounds, which allows for richer conversations and interactions to take place, which often lead to innovation. I call this “serendipity engineering”, and can be read under a chapter under the same name. Here’s an excerpt from the very book (yet to be published, wait for it: December 2020):

“We must purposely design communities that welcome diversity. 

Through mixing crowds, we increase serendipitous encounters that spark creativity, which can in turn render positive financial results. “Why Diversity Matters,” a 2015 McKinsey study, reports that companies in the top quartile for diversity perform better than the rest. Racial and ethnic diversity can lead to 35 percent financial returns above the national average, while gender diversity leads to 15 percent. Another study by Startup Genome shows that 20 percent of the world’s top tech founders are immigrants, while this group represents only 4 percent of the world’s population. 

Only through diversity are we able to create something new from scratch. We can’t expect a series of unexpectedly positive outcomes from conversations when only discussing the same topics, with the same people, with the same thinking.”

source: Hacking Communities

Diversity is good for business. Again, representation mattes.

Mic drop.

Stand Up and Lift Someone By Your Side

Let’s see how narrow the diversity gap gets, until it disappears. Your fight is everyone’s fight - remember everyone who came before you and cleared the path for you to believe in who you could become.

Wrapping up with an eternal quote from the Notorious RBG:

'Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.'

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Winning Article from Badass Times: The Ugly Duckling Road to Badass Entrepreneurship

Hacking Communities’ author Lais de Oliveira published an award-winning article in the Badass Times, titled the The Ugly Duckling Road to Badass Entrepreneurship.

Lais at Web Summit 2019

Read an excerpt here and go to the Badass Times to read the full thing.

"I was 28, featured in a magazine with 3 other expat founders who chose Malaysia to start a company. People read about me going places and starting 8Spaces (and getting it acquired by FlySpaces) but missed the fact that I also:

The author proceeds to list the very unlikely and intense list of activities she engaged with, while starting her first business. And continues:

Entrepreneurs are like ducks 🦆: underneath the surface, we are paddling – non-stop. What you see beneath the surface of entrepreneurship is unglamorous, but I’d do it again. All of it. I miss those days when taking action wasn’t an option: it was the way to go. I’d just add a healthier lifestyle to it (and work from a farm 👩🏻‍🌾 raising chicken 🐔). I’m actually doing it. More specifically, I’m raising a couple of helmeted guineafowls, the most badass birds I’ve ever seen (like the honey badger of the Galliformes)

The author explains that representation matters, explaining that community was fundamental for her journey:

I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. Dad is a farmer, mom is a banker (for real). I’m glad the community around me inspired me to follow the ugly duckling path. 🦢

I probably wouldn’t have had the idea of the company I started, hadn’t I been surrounded by founders, companies, digital nomads, and other people whose problem I would solve. While laser focus works for some, but I needed to be surrounded by a community. Today, while I have a stronger network and way more focused relationships, I still thrive within a community – because sharing experiences with others accelerates everyone’s learning curve.

I learned most of what I know from the ecosystem, before learning from experience. Later I’d work on startup ecosystem development and validate the impact of local and global connectedness in accelerating growth (as defined by Startup Genome).

Another point is that representation matters. There was an emerging number of people who looked like me being founders, which helped. Being around them reinforced the belief that I could be a successful founder. And look: I am privileged in a myriad of ways, let’s face it, just by the fact I am born white. In the process of researching the economic value of diverse communities – while writing Hacking Communities – I found that the influence of our surroundings is crucial in becoming the best version of ourselves.

Read full article here: https://www.badasstimes.com/the-ugly-duckling-road-to-badass-entrepreneurship/

Interview with Brad Feld at CASE Startup Summit - The Startup Community Way

Interview with Brad Feld at Latam’s largest startup event: CASE & Startup Summit 2020. The interview covers his new book , The Startup Community Way (co-authored with Ian Hathaway), and all the learnings that led to it.

Why Community Building is about Finding the Way Home

There’s no place like home. The Wizard Of Oz. Photograph: Silver Screen/Getty

“Feels like home”. What does it mean?

Although our childhood experiences of home may differ, almost everyone can relate to an idealistic idea of home. Home is where your heart is. Home is wherever with you. Home is not a place, but a feeling. There’s no place like home. 

Home isn’t a place indeed, but a symbol: from ancient times, humans cultivated the idea of home as the original place where we feel safe. Our mother’s womb, from which departure is our first interaction with pain. Home is a feeling, not a place, which symbology is one of the oldest in human history, as seen in “The Book of Symbols”, curated Ami Ronnberg and Kathleen Martin:

“A house is one embodiment of home; “home is where the heart is,” a feeling state of belonging, safety and contentment. Physically, our earliest home is the maternal womb in which we are gestated, and like the animals who instinctively make their homes in nests, burrows in the earth, the hollows of trees, caves and clefts, many of the first homes of our devising were intimate, encompassing womblike structures. All over the world, cave drawings attest to our primordial presence. Mud huts in parts of Africa are still fashioned in the form of the female torso, with vaginalike slits as doors. (…) To be unhoused is not necessarily to be homeless. On woods, desert, the moon, a ship at the sea, a beloved friend, a particular city, a set of circumstances, is projected “home”. These correspond to, or contribute to something within, the experience of a vital center of both fixity and freedom, rest after striving, being fully oneself. “

In essence,  home is the dream of a place where we are safe. From the same book aforementioned, “Home is the goal of epic odysseys, spiritual quests and psychic transformations.”  Home is an internal state of mind which we crave for. To find this idealistic place, we often have to leave our original place of comfort in search of something which might lead us to a lifelong journey. 

Define: “at home”

1 : R E L A X E D  A N D  C O M F O R T A B L E : A T  E A S E

2 : I N  H A R M O N Y  W I T H  T H E  S U R R O U N D I N G S

3 : O N  F A M I L I A R  G R O U N D :  K N O W L E D G E A B L E]

We aim to find the place where “I belong”. That dream of belonging is home itself. A place where we are accepted as our most authentic selves. We crave this place for reasons larger than our lives - we are wired to belong as a means to survive, which we will explore in chapter 5. In a nutshell, the path of a community builder is that of someone building a home and welcoming others in to share, own and help expand it.

Do You Feel Home, Today?

The world configuration has changed tremendously in the past centuries, and exponentially in the last 20 years.

We’re mobile and connected. Technology transformed how we interact. It expanded our boundaries. We moved from being geographically or ethnically defined to having the freedom to belong anywhere. Information enabled us to find each other online and meet offline. Yet, we are the loneliest generation ever. Loneliness is the epidemic of our generation, which impacts our health in a myriad of ways. We’ll explore it in Chapter 4. For now, I’d like us to stick to the idea that if we are given the opportunity to redesign belonging, we must take it. For our own good - and for that of our peers and loved ones. 

Hacking communities is about building safer spaces for us and others to share in a world threatened by loneliness, the same in which we have the freedom to belong anywhere, expressing ourselves in more groundbreaking, authentic ways.

Things we Associate with Home

- Take off your shoes (Be authentic)

- Say what you want

- Be seen and heard 

- Be understood 

- Be fed 

- Be loved (cared for)

If feeling home is what you wish for, your first step to make others feel home is to create a space where you give them all the above. Noting that one of  the core values of a community builder can be phrased as to Give First (we will talk about core values in chapter 3).

It is about sharing your home with others. It’s not about you alone, but about the people you would like to host. By making people feel at home and safe, not only you cultivate their loyalty, you also do some good to the world by creating spaces (virtual or physical) where they can belong in a world threatened by loneliness.

There’s No Place Like Home

From the Ulysses’ odyssey to Alice in Wonderland and to Dorothy herself, home is the place we crave for, the desired destination that sets our North and defines our path.

Let’s go deeper in the rabbit hole to make sense of it.

In his book the “Hero of a Thousand Faces”, Joseph Campbell says the myth is an actual representation of our psychic journeys. What we aim to achieve, gain or get, is but a physical representation - a symbol - of what we think we’ll look like when we are our most authentic versions. We’re always walking towards ourselves.

At the end of the day,  we are searching for a state of being which feels peaceful, where we can take our shoes off and speak up our minds, knowing that - whatever we do - will be safe. Home is the dream place where you can be your most authentic self and know you won’t be harmed in doing that, but loved. 

While Maslow put “safety first”  in his hierarchy of needs, placing “love and belonging” right after it, our history shows there has been no literal safety to our kind unless we belonged to a group. Just picture yourself hanging out in a savannah around 300,000 years ago, when our species started showing up in the wild. If you were the kind who tried to live as a Lone Ranger, hunting, gathering and fighting lions with your bare hands, you probably would have left no descendants to tell your story.  

Other species may have wondered what’s wrong with this naked ape with a tuft on its head and random body hair. We had to organize ourselves collectively in order to simply survive. In chapter 5, we will dive deeper into the impact of belonging - and the absence of it - from a social and biological point of view.

For now, let’s just stick with the idea that safety implies belonging - at least our bodies understand that. Thus, being home and feeling safe, implies being in familiar surroundings where you feel comfortable to be without thinking, To exist without questioning yourself and to trust that others around you not only speak your language, but also listen to you, taking what you say and do into consideration. They see you, they listen to you.

Building a community is about finding your way home, or rather building a home where you can belong and be your truest self. In doing so, I came to find it is the journey that matters. While we dream of home as a destination, it is the path we walk which makes us find ourselves in it through the people we meet on the way, the obstacles that make us stronger and the stories we collect which build ourselves - as we know us. Yet, that north set by your idea of home gives us a sense of direction. 

Hacking communities is about belonging anywhere and finding that home is the inner journey to your truest self. 

The journey of being a community builder is, first, the journey of getting to know and embracing your truest version.To build a safe space where others feel safe to take their shoes off and open, one must first be courageous to be vulnerable as its host. As put by Brené Brown, courage means “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart” , going back to the source of the word. The word comes from Latin term “coraticum”, which merges “cor“ (“heart”) and the suffix “aticum” which implies action. Literally, the word meant “a heart act” or “an act from the heart”.  I call it “acting from your core”, which implies being vulnerable.

It is the way  home, like Dorothy’s journey through the typhoon, Alice’s down the rabbit hole and Bilbo’s “there and back again”. Our first step is to recognize and cultivate a sense of home. 

Being yourself, or better put, becoming yourself, is a journey, not a destination. 

The End defines The Path. But the Path is the End.

I know it sounds like something a white-bearded wizard would say before disappearing behind the same bushes it popped up from. And you’d stand there, puzzled and lost.

Let’s but it in common words: what you aim to achieve defines the steps you take.

When planning, you often starts from the end goal, the deadline, and walk back towards your current state to define your first steps. But, while the goal defines your steps, it is though walking each step that you grow as a person, or as a company, in order to achieve your goals.

While we usually do life in a more organic way, our desire guides the way by defining our choices, from smallest to the most epic decisions we make. 

Fran Baum painted it the best way in his book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I’ll take my favorite character, the Cowardly Lion. He lacks courage - or so he thinks. On the way to Oz (where they’ll walk towards together, expecting the Great Wizard to fulfill all their dreams at once), the journey presents challenges to all of them, which require different skills, but every time a challenge requires an act of courage, the Lion steps up to fulfill it, knowing he needs to practice it, for he’s coward. Which he doesn’t like. 

Being a coward makes the Lion feel uncomfortable, just like being heartless makes the Tin Man feel bad about himself. They all feel inadequate about lacking something, something which is essential to them. It is not about “not being enough” at the surface, needing to buy the latest car to feel better - which we will talk about eventually. Frank Baum’s characters share a vulnerable journey, aimed at finding something they deeply care for. 

They share inadequacies which define who they are, in other words: their own understanding of home. While Dorothy’s home is quite a physical place in Kansas, it is a symbol of what all characters are in search for.

As the Lion makes an effort to be courageous when it is required, so the Tin Man is overly concerned with being kind - afraid of hurting someone for being heartless - and the Scarecrow tries harder to solve logical problems.

Courage, heart, brain, home. We’re all in search of that sense of home, a place where we feel adequate. What’s interesting in Frank Baum’s metaphor is that the very thing which they find lacking, is the one each will practice the most throughout the way. And it’s that constant practice, the acting upon the inner version of who we believe we are which makes us become our most authentic selves. 

It is the path we walk towards becoming who we are which defines us.

Belonging to a community is about walking together.

Trust People to Talk about Your Brand

The world has changed - and so has marketing. Want it or not, people will speak about your brand (in fact, that should be your goal). Trusting people to speak on your behalf is the best way to reach a wider audience, today. Community building is about empowering people to represent your brand, while also creating space for conversations that go from Customer to Customer (C2C).

Talking about which, would you like to join our community of community builders? Join our 6-week programs to grow a community (from any stage of development) Co-Create Tribes. Starts on August 3rd.

Pill-Sized Tips: How NOT to Build a Community in 3 Steps

About failing at building communities and starting over. Based on a true story I am not proud of: my own.

Discover & share this Reaction GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

You know when you start something, then something else happens and you lose it. You lose touch, motivation, or simply don’t find the time to make it a priority. Well, that is the #1 dangerous thing when building a community: “losing it”.

Losing it is challenging, especially when your community is at a too-early stage. When it has not even started, it still needs you to feed it purpose, bring people around it and - finally - let them grow it as it should.

While I’m not here to talk excuses, I can share this happened to me more than once. For good or bad reasons. Last time, for both reasons. Bad first: I had one of those major life crisis which brought me from living in Malaysia to leaving everything for Bali, then San Francisco, Lisbon and now, finally, I am back in countryside of Brazil in what seems to be a timely resolution for the aforementioned crisis. The good reason, I started working more than full-time on exciting stuff, like consulting on economic development through innovation ecosystems for 70+ governments around the world. It was fun, but I couldn’t keep up with writing this book.

The thing is, losing touch is the #1 way to kill a relationship. And a community is a relationship (with a lot of people). Losing touch kills.

It is like meeting someone new at a coffee shop and giving them your number after a promising conversation, but never hearing back again. You might forget about it. Or you might wonder what happened to them, maybe you worry. But, most likely, you’ll soon forget about that fleeting moment when you thought someone was cool. Cutting to the chase, here you are! 3 steps to kill your own community, from scratch:

1. Give People Something to Believe

2. Get Them to Sign Up!

3. Disappear

The 3 Steps can be simplified as one: “Break Their Expectations”. And the 3rd Step (Disappear) can be broken down as various steps, potentially turning into a “vicious cycle” which might include one or many of the following steps:

1. Do not reach out (ever)

2. Feel bad about not reaching out

3. Reach out once 

4. Stop reaching out

5. Reach out inconsistently

6. Don’t stay in touch

7. Say nothing

8. Do nothing

9. Fake dead

In a nutshell. In building communities, cadence is fundamental (this I learned from Startup Grind’s Founder and CEO, Derek Andersen): keeping encounters certain, consistent, keeping up with the conversation, empowering people to continue it and so on.

Just don’t do not do things. I mean, do something. Feed it. Take care. Stay in touch.

And if you ever miss it, lose it because of anything, you maybe killed it forever, but… Forgive yourself. Start over. Learn from it. Move on. And remember: if there is one thing that can save your relationship, if anything, it is vulnerability. People often know when you f* up - it looks better when you own it.

Moving on, let’s do better.

Next Article: How to (Actually) Build a Community in 9 Steps

The only purpose to attract people is to engage them. The only reason to engage people is for them to stay.

But as in a relationship, you don’t simply meet a random person at a bar and, without any references, invite them to come live with you. Unless, of course, a) you’ve been searching for flat mates after months paying rent alone in San Francisco or b) or you are that adventurous. I don’t judge, but don’t advise either.

Enduring relationships are built over time, getting to know each other and sharing trust, from one to another.

Here’s a quick list on what to do, but this will require its own article… And, of course, a whole book on it.

9 Steps to Build a Community from Scratch

1. Start from Why

2. Reach Out, Make Friends

3. Respect Your Elders

4. Add Value First

5. Stay in Touch (aka Don’t Disappear)

6. Create Safe Spaces (Bring Them Together)

7. Engineer Serendipity (Make Magic Happen)

8. Grow Closer Ties (Closeness Levels)

9. Let it Grow

More detail on each step coming soon (like, within a week).

Pinky promise, this time.

Love,

Laís

PS: here’s a 2.30min video about the difference between Community Building and Traditional Marketing.

OK, But... What is Community Building?

How does community building differentiate from traditional ways of doing marketing? It is about adding value beyond the product, through the connections you generate. It is about making it a multi-directional conversation, not a monologue.

Talking about which, would you like to join our community of community builders? Join our 6-week programs to grow a community (from any stage of development): Co-Create Tribes.

Watch This List! Good Reads for Community Builders

Recommended Books (aka Bibliography)

BROWN, BRENE. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Avery. First Edition 2012.

BUSHE, Laura. Lean Branding. O'Reilly Media. September 2014.

CARRIER, James G. and GEWERTZ, Deborah B. (ed.). The Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology. Bloomsbury. 2013 (printed).

CLARK, Timothy. Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career. Wiley. First Edition 2012.

DIAMOND, Jerry. Guns, Germs & Steel: A Short History of Everybody For The Last 13,000 Years. Vintage. Published 2005.

DIAMANDIS, Peter. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Free Press. 2012 (reprint).

FELD, Brad. Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. Wiley. 2012.

FISHER, Helen (Ph.D.).  Why Him? Why Her?. St. Martin's Press. Reprint, 2010.

FRIEDMAN, Ron (Ph.D.). The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace. Perigee Book. First Edition, December 2014.

GEERTZ, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretative Anthropology. 3rd Edition, 1985.

GRAY, Dave, BROWN, Sunni and MACANUFO, James. Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. O'Reilly Media. 2010.

HARARI, Yuval Noah. A Brief History of Humankind. HarperCollins Publishers. 2014.

JOHNSON, Michael. Branding In 5 and a Half Steps. Thames & Hudson. First Edition, 2016.

KNOX, Paul (editor). Atlas of Cities. Princeton University Press. First edition, 2014.

LENCIONI, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass. 2002.

LEMER, Josh. Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed - and What to Do About It (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship). Princeton University Press. Reprint, 2019.

LIVINGSTON, Jessica. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days. Apress. First Edition, 2008.

LISCHETTI, Mirtha (ed.). La Antropología Como Disciplina Científica (Spanish Version). Eudeba, Universidad de Buenos Aires. 1998.

MARKOVA, Dawna (Ph.D.) and MCARTHUR, Angie. Collaborative Intelligence. Spiegel & Grau. First Edition, 2015.

MONTGOMERY, Charles. Happy City. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York, 2013.

OSTERWALDER, Alexander and PIGNEUR, Yves. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. Wiley. First Edition 2010.

SOLOMON, Robert C. and FLORES, Fernando. Building Trust in Business, Politics and Life. Oxford University Press. 2001.

ZIEGLER, Mel; ZIEGLER, Patricia and ROSENZWEIG, Bill. The Republic of Tea: How an Idea Becomes a Business.  The Republic of Tea, Inc. 3rd Edition, 2012.

This list is growing! Would you like to recommend a relevant book?

Building Communities is a Health Measure: See Why

Have you noticed the topic of every single American high school movie?

The new kid on the block trying to hang out with the cool squad or the socially-impaired in love with the popular one, who reciprocates secretly but can't afford losing popularity. Movies painted the the cool squads and nerds, songs played "all the other kids with the pumped up kicks" and it's all about one thing: belonging. 

From cave men to Mean Girls, belonging seems to be a big deal.

Just like an addictive substance, we crave for belonging. Without it, we feel lost.  In a way, it is a result of a chemical cocktail in our bodies. Belonging to a community activates some “feel good” hormones in our bodies which have positive implications in longevity. The absence of it also generates an excess of hormones which make us feel "stressed". 

In the next 5 minutes you will understand why. We will go back in time to explore the foundations of communities, which will explain why we do the things we do. It will make the following chapters make more sense.

It will allow us to build communities over rock solid foundations, not on desperate ads; because it is about understanding that you are responsible for making people feel better. 

Let's start exploring.

1. Back to The Savanna: Staying Alive

The Human design for Survival

"Should I fight this tiger with my bare hands?"

I'm positive that the first humans who answered "yes" to this question are not our ancestors. 

We are engineered to "live long and prosper". Obviously, living comes first, otherwise, you can't prosper.  Such a basic principle has deep implications in our lives.

First, let's talk about the individual features we have to stay alive. Further, we will jump into the technologies we created to keep us safe and sound.

Our "human Operational System" (let's call it hOS S, for Sapiens) has built-in mechanisms to make us think fast (instinctive) or slow (calculated). Psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls these System 1 and System 2 in his book: "Thinking, Fast and Slow".  He explains we often make overly-confident decisions lead by System 1, which represents an impressionist, fast and dirty draft of the world, primarily designed for survival.

If scrutinized, our decisions would be deemed irrational, even though it was seemingly motivated by facts and logic. Kahneman's System 1 can be related to our Limbic System (or Lizard Brain), as painted by author Daniel Goleman in his book "Emotional Intelligence".

Both authors would agree that most of what we considered a threat, today,  is an usual response of our brain based on the life we lived thousands of years ago, in jungle (or savanna).  Simply put by this Huffington Post article: "when you see your boss’s name in your inbox late at night, your body reacts like there’s a lion on the loose". 

Workplace stress, called "the health epidemic of the 21st Century", is nothing but having our "fight or flight" mode continuously activated.

Note: some people argue that stress enhances creativity, which they justify on examples such as the intense technological revolution that followed World War I and other historic episodes. This is true to a certain extent, but it depends on many variables We will explore it further, on this upcoming article.

You may not care about what all those Daniels (Goleman and Kahneman) said, but you don't wanna be that stressful workplace which gets people to work hard, but without consistency. Eventually people crash, quit or take a long sick leave.   

When you do not feel safe, your hOS S (last update I know of was 30,000 years ago) immediately sends chemical messengers (aka neurotransmitters) to shoot adrenaline, a hormone which should advertise like Nike: "Just Do It" (when it means fight or flight). 

It also releases cortisol, the misunderstood genius who became the "stress hormone",  even though it's function is to control blood sugar levels, regulate metabolism, help reduce inflammation, and assist with memory formulation. When you're in good mood, cortisol is a great guy! But when we feel continuously under threat, cortisol stresses you out. After all, it's a chemical and it has collateral effects. Too much cortisol can do all the opposite of what it is originally set up to. It "suppress the immune system, increase blood pressure and sugar, decrease libido, produce acne, contribute to obesity and more" (same article).

"Live long and prosper". Captain Spock. Credit: startrek.com

To the point: stress is essential to survival, but having it all the time can be harmful.

Can we have a better system to "live long and prosper" rather than shooting stress right on to our veins all the time?

Our intuitive System 1 imagined a better way to stay safe, which feels better than flooding your body with  cortisol: belonging.  Our ingenious System 2 agreed and worked hard on ways to make it happen, from creating language to complex organizational structures.

Let's take a look at it.
 

2. The Invention of Communities

COMMUNITIES: KEEPING YOUS SAFE SINCE 2 MILLION Years AGo

Here's to the lazy ones: we could replace this whole article with a Socratic syllogism, caveman style:

Belonging feels safe;
Safe is good;
Belonging is good.

Make people feel safe, #boom, done deal. But wait... There's more to it.

Communities are a technology from nearly 2 million years ago (built on hOS E, standing for hOS Erectus), built to keep us safe.

Picture our ancestors: those tiny, naked, clawless creatures who stood no chance against hideous beasts or harsh weathers.

They gathered to stay warm and developed complex skills which enabled us to build larger groups, better suited to achieve great things, from killing wild animals to taking care of home and - eventually - cultivating edible grains.  Together, they could feed and protect their offspring from wild predators. 

Maybe there was an uncle called O'Joe (most likely, his real name was a snarl I can't pronounce) who was good with tools, while Auntie Ann (probably her name) knew how to discern edible from poisonous roots.  Barney invented wheels,  Betty built a school and Pebbles became an awarded cave-wall painter. 

They lived longer and prospered because of communities.

Together, they could do better, beyond mere survival. If you are alive today it is because your ancestors decided to belong and you carry those genes. Most likely, those who opted for a hermit life didn’t spread their genes too far. 

Belonging is not something that merely feels good. We are hard-wired to connect.

Communities enabled us to do excel as a species. It allowed us to perform complex creative work. Today, we have created a context where we can study the atomic structure for 20 years in a laboratory guarded by safe walls. I wouldn’t be sipping tea and writing this if I felt like "I'm vulnerable to a bear attack at any time!".  If that was the case, I guess you wouldn’t be reading it either. 

Overall, belonging feels good because it tells our bodies to run lower on cortisol, reducing the sensation of stress and anxiety. It feels like someone got your back, turn of  the 'flight or flight' mode.  

But it also has “collateral effects", as it releases just another set of chemicals.

Closeness to other humans can generate some “feel-good” hormones such as oxytocin.  Released by human touch and famous as the "Cuddle Hormone",  Oxytocin is responsible for trust-building.  But don't get fooled: a mere high-five could be enough to start building trust bonds amongst people. "Beware who you high five with" grandma would say (I made this up).

Let's take a look into the next chapter.

3. The Secret: How to Live Long

Drop the paleo, gluten-free and vegan diets altogether

Psychologist Susan Pinker started her a widely watched TED talk with a teaser: 

“In the developed world, everywhere, women live an average of six to eight years longer than men do. Six to eight years longer.” 

Why is it so?  Before we start, I’ll break it to you: having over-priced kale smoothies and chia seed bowls have little impact to longevity. 

Susan Pinker presents the secret to longevity at TED2017

Pinker decided to explore the secret to longevity.

Curiosity took her to Sardinia, an Italian island where both men and women live remarkably longer: there have 10 times as many centenarians as in North America.

She researched the habits of the place, disregarding genetic profile (which only accounts for 25% of their longevity). 

Moving on, she compared her results to another study by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, from Brigham Young University, who analyzed thousands of middle-aged people taking note of multiple aspects of their lifestyle, coming back seven years later to see who was still alive.

There was a pattern to those who lived longer and it was unexpected: social integration.

Belonging to a community beyond your closest family and friends has a staggering positive impact to longevity, nearly over 30% the other factors (including vast healthcare). That means talking to your neighbor, greeting the staff at your local groceries store or having a enjoying a conversation your co-workers.... Community is everyone around you: your city, neighborhood, work, routine, etc.

I've made a summary of what Pinker's top10 Factors for Longevity, which you can see below (or watch her talk):

And The Winner is...

From #10 to #6 position we have overall life quality, including clean air, healthcare and various millennial stuff made it to the Top 10! Let’s cheer with an açaí smoothie (make sure to add some chia seeds and goji berries to it);

Starring on #5, Flu Vaccine shows to be more relevant than all the above. Go check your vaccination card before that smoothie;

Now we’re headed to our Top Winners! Put your hands to get her to:

2nd runner up: quit smoking, with a staggering effect in your health.

1st runner up: running close to the winner, is “Close Relationships”: your family and closest ties (people you call when you have some real sh*t going on);

And the winner is: Social Integration (aka belonging). Ta-da!

I took the freedom to interpret her graph on my own. Click here to see the original, presented by Pinker.

OK. Belonging makes us feel safe and live longer. What explains that?

Pinker explains that “interaction generates some feel-good hormones” which may reduce our cortisol levels and impact our overall health. That reminds us of the question she placed in the start: why do women in North America live longer than men?  She explains "women are more likely to prioritize and groom their face-to-face relationships over their lifespans", and she proceeds adding up data from Anthropologist Joan Silk's, whose work shows that "female baboons who have a core of female friends show lower levels of stress via their cortisol levels, they live longer and they have more surviving offspring".  Note to self: have at least 3 great friends!

Inspired by a Darwinistic worldview, this data allows us assume that individuals who had less cortisol shots on a daily basis had more chances to survive, bear kids and so on.  Feeling good is just a sign in the right direction. But it's lest risky to assume that feeling safe make us feel good. Longevity is a consequence of

I'll close this part with a quote from Susan Pinker:

"It's a biological imperative to know we belong (...). Building in-person interaction into our cities, into our workplaces, into our agendas bolsters the immune system, sends feel-good hormones surging through the bloodstream and brain and helps us live longer. I call this building your village, and building it and sustaining it is a matter of life and death."

Mic drop.
 

4. All The Lonely People, Where Do They All Come From?

Belonging matters, as it can make us live a happy and healthy life. And we need it now, more than ever, because we’re getting sick from loneliness. Literally sick. Try searching “loneliness epidemic” on Google.

Being mobile and connected, we no longer need to belong where we came from.

While we are free to belong anywhere, loneliness has become an epidemic.

If belonging boosts “feel-good” hormones in our system to make us feel good, the opposite is also true.

Headlines from several publications reinforce the impact of loneliness in our generation. Tip: search “loneliness epidemic” on Google.

On her book “The Village Effect”, Susan Pinker mentions a research on social isolation run by John Cacioppo, explaining that “... loneliness drives up the cortisol and blood pressure levels that damage the internal organs in both sexes, and at all ages and stages of adult life.” 

Cutting the long story short: the world is changing fast, but our bodies are a technology from thousands of years ago, a technology which still relies on mechanisms such as social integration to survive (and thrive).

Offline meetings still matter.

A study by Elizabeth Redcay, from the University of Maryland, found that live partner interactions show higher engagement of brain areas that are associated with attention, social intelligence and emotional reward.

Back to Susan Pinker, who observed the research above, “simply making eye contact with somebody, shaking hands, giving somebody a high-five is enough to release oxytocin, which increases your level of trust and it lowers your cortisol levels.”

No big news: we gotta get off these screens and high-five some people. Come on, go give someone a hug. Now.

You’ll thank me 50 years from now.

Conclusion 

The world needs new communities which better represent us, people who’ve gained freedom, but lost their original reasons to belong. We need better communities which allow us to trust each other, feel safe and thrive.

Put it this way: while bringing people together, you are contributing to a better world, by making people feel safer and, consequently, healthier. You may be even reducing State’s costs with social security, while less lonely people are less likely to develop stress-related diseases and more likely to have a faster recovery in general. Don’t believe it? Go read “The Village Effect” by Susan Pinker to understand why did the UK start a “Ministry for Loneliness”.

We also need to embrace diversity: for, when we’re free to belong, geographic location and ethnicity no longer matter. Besides, a study by McKinsey proves that more diverse companies make better decisions: the outcome is close to a 15% increase in financial results (read it here)”

We need better communities which embrace the power of diversity into building more abundance-minded contexts, meaning spaces where individuals are empowered to “live long and prospered”. Contexts where people feel safe and have the chance to become the best version of themselves.

These are the communities we’re talking about: diverse, abundance-minded, grassroots and, of course, authentic.

We are going to talk about all of these in detail.

Talk soon!

Community Building in a Nutshell (infographic)

We’ve been talking too much. Here some shortcut to it.

Purpose and Method to Make it Scientific

As said before,  science-making according to my own dictionary:

science-making

verb
1. to enable better discoveries by challenging our curiosity;
2. to start conversations that lead to better questions;
3. act of making something replicable with a high probability of success.

Important: certainty is not a promise. 

We better get cozy with the idea of "probability", which is why I call it the "Quantum of Humans". Cheesy huh? But why?

Quantum physics learnings on atomic behavior (particles or waves, how they bundle in quanta etc) lead us to an uncomfortable level of uncertainty, but it still allowed us to develop new technologies thanks to accepting probabilistic calculations. As a metaphor, I'd say humans are unpredictably similar to atoms. TL; DR: we can make a science out of uncertain stuff, like atoms and humans.
 

Disclaimer: This Science is Alive, Kicking and Moving Fast

We are building a piece of evolving knowledge which gains new outlooks as you read.

10 years of actively starting, designing and re-wiring communities gave me 10% of knowledge and 90% of curiosity about how to make it replicable.
 

Confession: I feel mostly lost in the process of making it a "science". It is like I have decided to paint a gigantic canvas, but as I start to draw I am unsure if it's going to look like an elephant or a turtle. Or even a creature I haven't yet seen. In short, I don't yet know most of the stories to be shared in here. You are reading a documented live exploration of human communities, guided by curiosity. 

Since communities are the best way to learn (and the original reason why humans started these physical spaces called "Universities"),  I will host conversations with active community builders, leaders, and experts. My knowledge will serve to guide the questions and identify patterns.  I have a few theories based on my own experience, but new insights will emerge from those conversations.

Real life communities (companies, grassroots or cities) will serve as the laboratory for this research and you can be part of it. 

Should you want to, feel free to invite me over to help you test the methodologies we discover here. We will test, fail, succeed and unveil new pieces of code until we can crack the whole thing, one step at a time (like solving a mathematical equation). 

Decoding Humans: A Multidisciplinary Deal

The journey to make Community Building a science involves exploring diverse fields such as psychology, anthropology, neurobiology and other "...logies".

Instead of reinventing the wheel, we will stand on the shoulders of giants to see further (cheesy but true). My keywords range from neuroscience to anthropology, quantum (aka chaos) theories, lean branding, organizational culture, ecosystem development,  customer development, the power of vulnerability and more. You can take a look at this page to get to know my giants (references).

I am aware that we are not programmed like machines to be decoded. Our system has problems not to be solved by static mathematical equations, with thousands of fast-changing variables like history, culture, hormones, context and experiences,  just to name a few. 

Still, the grounds for studying humans aren't set too far apart from the ones for atoms: we’re both hard to predict. 

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of... What?

To understand human behavior, we need to explore a bunch of available subjects. Let's take a look:

• Where do ideas come from? How do we form a belief? How do we learn what is right or wrong, good or evil, do or do not? Our talking will go from ancestors, cavemen, and stuff (aka anthropology) to linguistics, neurotransmitters and limbic system (aka neurobiology) and similar monsters;

• On current affairs, you will find concepts from branding, marketing, and business (aka value exchange as the how to build communities);

• Last, but not least, technology. It has reformed how we organize ourselves. Although the essence stayed the same, the way we make friends, do and marketing and business have changed. We will explore what we can learn and replicate from the online to the offline world.

Overall,  we’ll learn to develop more efficient platforms for value exchange (aka communities, either these are businesses, movements or platforms such as sharing economy marketplaces and similar creatures).

The Purpose of It: Shaping Communities of the Future

Technology has expanded our boundaries: we moved from being geographically or ethnically defined to having the freedom to belong anywhere.

We are amidst a process of rearranging the way we belong, worldwide. That’s an inevitable and a potentially positive phenomenon.  But change brings fear too. Some people feel lost. Loneliness is the epidemic of our era. There’s a crisis of values and outburst of extremism, as traditional mindsets resist to change.  We need to recode ourselves to a new era: we’re no longer fighting beasts, but we’re still fighting each other, while our current challenges make all of this obsolete.

Environment, social security, healthcare and the very sustainability of our financial system are in check, just to name a few issues which will affect all of us regardless of who you are. These require innovative solutions which can only emerge if nurtured by diverse cultural backgrounds creating together.

We’re no longer bound by race, social background or religion. We're bound by making life a sustainable project.

New Communities: Harnessing the Value of Diversity

Research proves that more diverse companies make better decisions: the outcome is close to a 15% increase in financial results (read it here).

Socio-cultural diversity can't be forced down people's throats based on a company’s manifesto which looks good only on paper. Its value must be true. My purpose is to facilitate the transition towards a world where people are happier in the communities where they choose to belong.  

Better communities go from improving your organizational culture to keeping your neighborhood safe or creating a collaborative environment for entrepreneurs to grow.

You can me responsible for engineering self-evolving and sustainable communities, based on core values, not on short-term gains. My contribution is putting together a toolkit and a network of experts into an ecosystem which helps people build better communities.

Overall, I look forward to being part of a global community which believes it is our responsibility to build a better world while leveraging technology.

If you believe the same, we're potentially part of the same tribe and I'd love to meet you. Hope you join the conversation!

Share your comments below. :)

Best, 

Lais de Oliveira

Preface: Why Making a Science of Communities

We are wired to belong.

Every person is, instinctively, a community builder. But we must re-learn and adapt to unseen circumstances of a fast-changing environment since technology has transformed the way we build communities.

Turning community building into a science is about making it replicable.

I'd like to take multiple experiences, analyze it and identify patterns into a hypothesis which can be tested. Through trial and error, we'd come to a comprehensive method, adaptable to different needs and circumstances. Such knowledge and methodology would allow anyone to start a community from scratch or re-design an existing one.

It doesn't matter if you need to strengthen your company’s organizational culture or change how customers perceive your brand. I'm talking about practical ways how you can steer the ship in the best direction. My goal is to understand human systems and make it replicable with a high probability of success. That's my definition of science.

The Certainty Myth, The Era of Probability

By academic tradition, for an experiment to become scientific it should be verifiable. It means multiple tests, same results. According to the philosopher Karl Popper, a good theory should be falsifiable, meaning: we could test its fundamental hypothesis either to confirm it or replace it with a better theory.

When it comes to human communities, we have the entire world as our laboratory and all the nuances of human culture, making it challenging to find one absolute truth. But we can definitely come to several hypotheses which could be tested and verified (or falsified) multiple times, getting to a methodology with a high probability of success.

This might sound terrifying to those who regard science as the field of certainty. But even in physics, one of our most "certainty-ruled" fields of science, the quantum spookiness has been teaching us how to embrace probability as a means to move on since the beginning of the 20th century.

Making Science When We are The Mice of Our Lab

All human sciences are in to check when it comes to certainty. Fact. Too many variables would make an experiment valid for specific groups, but invalid to others. Besides, when our behavior is the subject of our own study, we are under the risk of falling victim to our very mindsets, based on a narrow range of personal experiences. These could influence our theories, as well as the methods of running experiments to validate it. Arguably, every science is influenced by the scientist's individual circumstances (from time, weather and geographic location to cultural beliefs surrounding and defining its perspectives).

Several brilliant individuals built theories which, at the start, are mere hypothesis or imagination based on their perspectives and experiences

Einstein said that "imagination is more important than knowledge".

My goal isn't of reaching a perfect human communities theory, but starting a conversation and inviting people to research along with you (yes, you).

Daring to Make a Science or Illusions of Grandeur

I'd argue that science isn't about certainty, but about sparking curiosity that lead us to the right questions.

We grew up to see beautiful how theories are thrown away, such as the idea of an atom model which looked like a Keplerian replica of our solar system. These human-made models, based on what imagination could grasp, were proved wrong - to a certain extent: these gave us ground to test and evolve into new, better theories.

Every science is an ever-evolving deal. All scientific theories are, from the start, a hint, an idea, a curiosity, a philosophical argument started by a culturally biased or inspired human brain.

All the ideas we believe in, today, may be overthrown by a better approach the future, but without these ideas, we would not have been able to evolve.

For instance, we are still trying to discover the one equation which elegantly explains the Universe. Although it might not exist, searching for it has to lead us to great discoveries which helped build new technologies, from the iPhone to the MRI machines. Science is uncertain, ever-evolving, as we are.

What makes a scientist? Similar to being an entrepreneur: an inquisitive spirit daring to be wrong, as long as it helps us move forward.

Starting a Conversation, Engineering Curiosity

Again, imagination matters.

I have beliefs, ideas, and models for community building which might be right (or wrong). I want to spark discussions about community building which will inspire your inquisitive spirit. A single idea can inspire people to follow it's track searching for answers. The journey will lead us to confirm or discourage our belief.

Studying ourselves (humans) in communities is a complex subject, diverse in variables based on space and time.

That complexity is the very reason why it is interesting: the diversity of cultures, belief systems, and languages which compose our history and future are perplexing. Our nature to build communities has allowed us to thrive as a species, but also to fight each other and decline at times. Our bonds are both based on commonalities and differences, two sides of the same coin.

We're still discussing if there's one thing which would bring us all together, the same way how we're searching for the one equation which explains Nature Laws and the Universe.

Although it seems we've studied enough, we never stop being surprised by human stories which exceed our comprehension of humanity. I guess we won't know what that commonality is until a hostile alien attack brings us all together. OK, that's a joke.

The Science of What Makes us Human

Before an alien invasion (not that I believe in it), we can come to a better discussion and understanding of what makes a human community, about why and how we bond. Finally, about what binds us together. There's a lot of content about that, already, from Socrates to Clifford Geertz, Jared Diamond, Susan Pinker, Brene Brown and, well... Mark Zuckerberg. It matters even more since technology substantially changed everything about how we connect, for the last 30 years.

The idea of a universal "human binding element” is a belief in itself. Maybe, it is a fiction. It implies that we can crack the human code. That belief will lead our curiosity to ask questions which could take us to new levels of development in Artificial Intelligence, replicating consciousness, transcendence and so on.

But, for now, this book it's just a sci-fi inspired idea, a question: can we build a replicable system to create better human communities?

Talking about communities which have diversity - in all its forms - at its core.

Opening space for serendipitous discoveries is the point of following a scientific process. Hope you join me!

Best,

Lais de Oliveira