After his Machu Picchu retreat, the speaker's monthly Wisdom Council calls lost momentum when attendance dropped. He explains that people leave when perceived value falls below the cost of showing up, and introduces the concept of critical mass: the square root of your total users should become super-users who keep the community alive. He calls this the Minimum Viable Community.
Chapters
Taking a look at this, one of the things that is the second point on the momentum generator is alignment. And when we talked about alignment in start a movement, we talked about enlisting people. So we talked about enlisting collaborators, clients, coaches, and connectors. Just to remind you of that. That's great. When you start a movement, you're enlisting people to help you do the thing. When you're in sustain mode, coming back to alignment, you're about activating the community. Big issue these days. Activate community, engage community. Engagement is a big issue. I like to use the word activate better than engage. But, but they're in that same thing. So think about community and think about once you're in the sustain mode, how do you activate them? Okay, again, I'll use my wisdom council. So one of the things— this is a great story. So after the first wisdom council in Machu Picchu, I was going through oxygen deprivation. We were sitting in Cusco. We had just done 4 days. I'm exhausted. You know, I can't get my breath very well. And my travel curator leans over to me, goes like, so what's next with these people? I could have throttled her in that moment. I was like, we, we just spent 4 days impacting these people, having a great thing. What do you mean, what's next? She's like, we can do a monthly call. I mean, what are you gonna do with these people? I was like, oh, that's such a great question. Yes, right. So I was like, okay. So then we started, right, in October of that year— we did it in September, the Wisdom Council— in October we started Wisdom Council monthly, and we've had it every month since then. You know, the people get together from the Wisdom Councils, and so when we add a new Wisdom Council, the new people can join the new Wisdom Council monthly call. Okay, so, so I thought, okay, this is it, this is sustaining the movement. They've come to this big event, and now they have a monthly call. Okay, and Paul, you could predict this if you— if I asked you about this. And so what happens the first 3 months? Everybody comes, and then it trails off. I mean, you could predict that. I didn't know that at the time, but afterwards I was like, oh yeah, of course that was going to happen. That happens with every Wisdom Council. People come and then it trails off. And then we have a couple of raving fans that attend, you know, since the beginning, and a couple of them show up. We have 38 people in Wisdom Council now that have gone across all 7 Wisdom Councils. And so, so we get maybe 6 or 7 people on the call any given week, any given month, I mean. But I realized from a sustained perspective the monthly calls weren't enough, right? Because it just trails off. So then my hope with people is that they, that they collaborate with each other, they meet each other outside of the time and all that kind of stuff. So I pulled together a Wisdom Council engagement project. That's another project that I have. How do I engage these people? How do I activate this community? Because they're already there. I just have to— now I'm in sustain mode. And their interest wanes. It's like, and part of that is, and this takes back to my time in consulting, there was a, one of the people said, we didn't win the next piece of work. And the partner asked, why didn't we, why didn't we win that? And they're like, because they, they're fee weary. Ever heard that term? Fee weary. That partner turned red-faced and almost reached across the desk and throttled that person because they said, there is no such thing as fee weary. It's a concept you made as an excuse. What has happened is the perceived value has dropped below the cost, right? That's what happened. I love that perspective. So when I looked at the trade-off It means that the value that they were getting was less than the cost of showing up for 60 minutes. Okay, I have to add more value into, you know, from month to month in between. So, so that's what I mean by this. So I think about this, about sustaining a movement and activating my community. I think about when you're in a sustain mode, I think about critical mass. What's the critical mass that you have in your community that it'll go on with, you know, beyond you, Chuck, beyond you, right? So you've got it over the hump to the other side. It's going to thrive beyond you. Critical mass, the definition of critical mass is the minimum amount of fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain reaction. Okay. I'm a geek, so I love that kind of stuff. But we use that term all the time in, you know, in organizational behavior and organizational change. We need critical mass of people. So I said that one time, and I think I've told you the story before, Paul, because I think you enjoyed it. I said, well, we need a critical mass of people. And the client asked back, well, how many is that? I mean, how many people do you need to have critical mass? I hip shot right there and then in that meeting. Oh, it's the square root of the total number of end users, right? And they're like, okay. So, you know, in that moment I was like, but they bought it. They were like, okay. And I said, and then I've honed that over time. It's like, so if you have 100 end users, you need 10, you need 10 to be a part of that. You need 10 super users. You need 10, you know, 10 as a part of the project. They're like, okay, great. It's like, you know, there's— and later on I realized, like, but if you have 10 locations and there's 10 people in each location, you need square root of each of those locations. So you need 3 people from each location because you need them to be interacting with each other. You need the physical material to do the nuclear reaction. So it's not just the total number of users that you need to square root of, you need it where they can impact each other. This became a science experiment, right? You know, and they're like, this is great. This guy really knows what he's talking about. I'm like, I, and you know what? I think it actually kind of works. You know, so, so I put that out there. That's the, the, the, my story about the critical mass, what you need. And I put out there, I wrote down this for here. Maybe this is a new term. What's your minimum viable community? MVC. Talk a lot about minimum viable product, but what's your minimum viable community for your movement? How many people do you need? And, and to engage outside of your programs to sustain it beyond you.
