Building Community

Over the past couple weeks, you’ve seen the team at Engine blog a lot about food. All this talk of food (although seemingly unrelated to marketing and design) has been to serve a purpose: We’ve embarked on a week long 100 Mile Diet Challenge, and we wanted to let you know why and what we’ll be doing. We’ve had a blast thus far, and we still have two days to go.

But all of this talk of food has gotten me hungry… and left me thinking about community. Let me explain.

Historically, food has been a communal affair. For centuries people shared the responsibility of hunting for, and gathering food. Our society (at one point) was completely agrarian. We needed each other’s food to survive.

This survival strategy morphed over time into a highly social affair. People have always developed relationships over food. It’s our common bond. Food has inspired philopsphers to theorize, and poet’s to write. It has been used as a weapon of war, and of peace. As Ghandi said,

God comes to the hungry in the form of food.

Let’s just say food is important. It’s important to us at Engine, and it should be important to your business as well.

One of the biggest benefits stemming from our participation in the 100 Mile Diet has been in team building. We have a fantastic group at Engine, and work life is really great. But I’m a relatively new addition to the team, and in a lot of workplaces, changes in staffing can be a big adjustment.

When I saw the 100 Mile Challenge offer on the Prince Edward County Facebook Fan Page, I wasn’t thinking ‘relationships.’ I was thinking ‘delicious.’  But a few days in, I’ve already noticed changes in our group dynamics. We’ve always gotten along; we’ve always talked and interacted. But now we’re taking community building to the next level.

I don’t think your group, team or co-workers have to connect over food. It can be anything–sports, volunteering, whatever–the sky’s the limit. But employee relations should be interactive, engaging, and inclusive. Studies have shown time and again, that creativity and productivity are not proportional to hours chained behind a desk. In fact, I think there might be an inverse reaction. It’s important for all of us to stop and say, “How am I building community in my workplace.”

The online world is a-buzz with the term ‘community,’ and rightly so. It’s vital to that realm because social media is so dependent on relationships. But what field isn’t? Are we taking our notions of community past the SM world, and into our workplaces?

Seth Godin states in his book, The Dip, (and I’m paraphrasing) that if we don’t want to be the best at something, why bother doing it. I agree. So what’s stopping our organizations from taking internal relations to the next level as well.

Feeling tired at work? Bored? Engage those around you. Make things happen. Step up to the plate as a leader, and start building community. It’s as easy as bringing in a plate of cookies…or a whole camera crew.