Communities are one of the most natural ways for us humans to come together and enjoy each others company. When set in motion toward a shared purpose, communities can also achieve amazing outcomes with very limited resources.

Encountering a strong and vibrant community might feel like there is something magical in the air —and there is— it is the human spirit at its best. However, professional community builders know that behind the magic there is a lot of hard work, difficult decision making, and cumulated collective intelligence shaped by trial & error.

The key to building a successful community is understanding the participant motivations and structuring the community to empower and direct individual action.

Mesensei is specialised in understanding communities and applying a methodological approach to community building to increase the chances of transforming a group of people into a vibrant community.

Our method has evolved from working in cases where multiple organisations have a need to come together to achieve a common goal. Common examples are found in domains of Science, Innovation and Technology and Social projects:

 

• University consortiums, with a need to bring together multiple institutions and researchers from different scientific diciplince

• Business accelerators, co-working spaces and science parks, seeking to facilitate an ecosystem of founders, coaches, mentors, investors, experts and other supporting services

• NGO’s coordinating large volunteer groups in collaboration with schools and businesses

Common to all these projects is that traditional centralised top-down management and communication models are ineffective —or at worse harmful.

Instead of power verticals, where direct command and control can be used, successful ecosystem facilitation relies on effectiveness of the community managers. They need to provide inspiration, tangible support, and build relevant connections between the participants. This is often an exercise in identifying a complex set of human motivations, management of expectations, and nudging to get the right things done at the right time.

Some are natural community leaders working their way intuitively, some rely on set best practices. The best lead by having a methodological approach and capability to adopt, adapt & improve.