How to bring a community to a ruinous end
During my fourteen years as a campus minister I saw dozens of faith communities grow, sometimes to hundreds of members, while other groups would atrophy and die.
Almost every group starts out with a weekly gathering where members discuss relevant topics and sacred texts. As the group grows their programs get more elaborate – presentations with movie clips, live or pre-recorded skits, and dramatic illustrations. Musical worship may start with an instrument or two, but grows more and more elaborate – more instruments, better amplification, greater selectivity of musicians, and more rigorous practice sets. But maintaining these high production quality meetings becomes challenging as both volunteers and professional staff become weary of pulling together the event week after week after week. The group then faces a fateful decision – how do they avoid burnout while maintaining their communal gatherings? There are many effective strategies depending on the resources of the group – simplify and standardize the program, hire more staff, recruit more volunteers, or relax the expectation of polish. But there is one strategy too often chosen that always fails – the choice to move to bi-weekly meetings.
The bi-weekly strategy seems logical and innocuous – “If we meet every other week it will be half the work to prepare and it will be easier for attendees to prioritize, right?” Sadly this logic has killed a number of communities. BJ Fogg’s insight into behaviors provide a clue as to why. According to Fogg, the difficulty of a behavior is related to how much time, money, physical effort, or mental effort the behavior takes OR and how non-routine the behavior is (see behaviormodel.org/ability). Leaders often attempt to reduce time, money, and effort by changing the frequency of regular gatherings but do so while underestimating the impact of breaking a routine. This disruption happens everytime a community changes the day, time, or location of a regular meeting, but going to bi-weeky or monthly makes it even worse.
Why are regular routine so valuable?
- Some rhythms align with biological rhythms. As humans we operate around a daily rhythm oriented around the rising and setting of the sun. When we, for example, try to sleep during the light of the day and stay awake through the night we work against biological rhythms. Many of us have experienced this when we’ve taken a long-flight and experienced jet lag or taken an overly long nap and interrupted the next night’s sleep. Aligning ourselves with our biological rhythms is like paddling downstream – the current of the stream helps propel us forward. When we try to schedule in ways that are unaligned with natural rhythms it’s like paddling upstream – possible, but much more difficult.
- Daily and weekly routines align with societal rhythms. I wake up at 6:45 am every morning and I don’t need to ask myself “which morning?” I meet with a small group of friends every Friday evening, I worship with my faith community every Sunday and therefore I don’t need to ask, “which Friday?” or “which Sunday.” Therefore, when I’m coordinated with others it is easy for me to avoid scheduling conflicts during those regular times. By going to an every-other-week cycle you force that question for everyone in the community every time they are considering scheduling something new. When our organizations adopt daily and weekly practices, we reduce both the cognitive and coordination cost that comes from being out-of-sync.
- Shared rhythms and routines shape identity. As our communities continue to engage in a shared routine, it begins to shape our sense of who we are both as individuals and a community. It starts as a collection of individual decisions “I’m a person who gets up early to exercise”, “I’m a person who is at every football game,” but it gets further reinforced when it becomes part of the community’s identity – “this is what we do”, “this is who we are.” Positive and sometimes negative social pressure begin to reinforce the groups identity and practice. Moving the day of the week can force members of the group into an identity conflict as the new routine doubtlessly conflicts with the routines of other communities of which we are a part.
Regular Rhythms for Tech Companies
I’ve been working in tech since 2009 and over this time I’ve observed how our organizations, like the university clubs and faith communities I led, can also grow and thrive when we adopt regular rhythms and routines. However, tech companies can also underestimate the cost of breaking regular rhythms and can make decisions that contribute to reduced tempo and cultural atrophy.
When Marissa Mayer took the mantle of leadership at Yahoo, many employees were filled with hope (see hope poster). At Google, Marissa helped summarily dethroned Yahoo as the gateway to the internet. While Marissa couldn’t bring Google’s technology to Yahoo, she did bring a keen insight into the practices and culture that helped Google’s ascent.
One practice Marissa borrowed from Google was the end-of-the week company all-hands, where the company would stop and celebrate the wins of the week and have time to collectively hear from the leaders and ask questions. Google called this “TGIF” and Yahoo called it “FYI.” Google and Yahoo weren’t alone – at Facebook it is called “Q&A.”
Having the whole company stop to reflect on the week, celebrate various milestones, hear from company leaders, and socialize over food and drink was a time-tested way to form community and create culture. Even the timing mimics the best practices of religious communities that have endured for thousands of years. The late Friday gatherings initiate a kind of Silicon Valley sabbath, when the community collectively transition from fruitful week of work to a day of rest.
The Friday afternoon company-wide meeting is just one example of how effective organizations drive a collective rhythm. Smaller teams and working groups often establish “daily stand-ups” as a way to quickly check-in on progress and identity and ideally remove blockers. Medium sized organizations benefit from a Monday morning review of their “data and priorities” as a way to to start the week with the clearest picture of the current reality, status against goals, and the priorities for the week to come. Special gatherings and traditions on longer cycles are useful as well. Annual reviews, quarterly reports, monthly “demos and drinks” can all complement the daily and weekly gatherings but, from my experience, they’re no replacement.
Unfortunately, many companies have forsaken regular weekly rhythms. While some of these rhythms have been revived by teams within these companies, often the regular rhythms are lost. As with campus ministries, the reasons and strategy for changing the rhythms seem logical and innocuous: “We can’t share openly because of too many leaks,” “we’re changing to times to accommodate other timezones,” “It’s hard to keep it up, week after, week, after week…” Unfortunately, for the reasons stated above, forsaking the regular rhythms often reduces the long-term organizational health. Companies’ traditions of moving fast and working hard until end-of-day Friday get replaced by Friday becoming a de facto half-day where employees sign-off early to beat the traffic on the way to Tahoe. Once this transition happens, it’s hard to go back.
Regular Routines for Families
Quite possibly the most important routines to establish in our lives are the routines we establish with our families. I’m grateful that my wife asked me years ago to commit to a weekly date night. Every week we come together to get some time for just the two of us. The rhythms with our kids differ but includes participating as a family in the weekly rhythms of our faith community (driven together to and from church) and regular video calls with grandparents. We also have established a practice of stopping to pray together before the first of us goes to bed on most evenings. We could of course do more, daily dinners together for example, but I’m incredibly glad we don’t do less.
I believe these types of rhythms have helped our family thrive. Weekly and daily rhythms are hard to set up, but once established they are a gift that keeps on giving. A counter example is our attempt to teach our kids how to do chores – we never established a regular rhythm of doing chores together with one exception – our sons consistently take out the trash and recycling before weekly trash removal. This exception proves the rule, regular routine matter.
Recommitting to Regular Rhythms and Routines
I love the rhythm of annual reflection at the end of the year, I love taking time to reflect on what worked well and I want to continue and what didn’t work and I need to refine or replace. I’m just now coming out of such a time of reflection, and this post is one outcome. I’m grateful for the regular routines I’ve embraced through the last years (weekly date nights with my wife, chats with my parents, and gatherings with my faith community) while I also regret not having established better routines in other areas like regular exercise and checking in with friends.
Once again, I want to recommit to establish healthy communal rhythms for myself and others – will you join me?