The Culture of Invested Community

I have the privilege of working a job I never want to retire from.

What makes my job so fulfilling? The honor of leading a team that is hungry to serve and aggressively looking for new ways to add value for others. Seeing the results from this and the impact it has on those receiving it, is truly a remarkable experience.

At Roam, our goal is to create “invested community.”

What exactly is invested community? Invested community is a group of people who are actively seeking to create value for one another.

Leading what seems to be a euphoric mission that sounds nice but has no hope in actually coming to fruition, does not have to be an impossible task once you’ve identified the key ingredients to making it happen. Here are a few:

1. Identify the value you want to create for others.
2. Identify the skills needed to execute the value added ideas.
3. Hire to those Skills.
4. Train & Develop those you’ve employed.
5. Provide the Resources and Tools needed for your team to be successful.
6. Trust those you’ve employed by giving them the freedom and encouragement needed to fulfill their task.

There is a lot to be said about each of the points I listed above, but in short: if you want to create invested community with and for your customers, you must create it internally with your team first. Your team will treat your customers the way they are treated.

Many times, we have to fight an internal battle of becoming self-focused in order to begin thinking counter-intuitively. Much of what we want comes from a selfish desire to find personal fulfillment. The irony is that most businesses act selfishly to achieve this and completely miss that it doesn’t come from internally focused strategies, but rather actions that benefit and add value for others.

If you want to create invested community, start with the most vital piece in making that happen; your team.

I learned from one of my mentors that business is all about perspective. How you view things, is how you’ll do things.​

Leading the effort to think beyond ourselves and create invested community requires everyone in our organization to:

Believe the best in each other.
Want the best for each other.
Expect the best from each other.

If you can create an internal culture that is anchored by feelings of safety and trust, this will project onto everyone else that comes in direct contact with your organization.

There are many reasons why I love the job I have, but an important one is seeing what occurs when our team starts thinking differently than what’s normal, and use this space as a platform to do remarkable things that positively impacts others.

The beauty comes from a group of people with different skills and assets coming together to create value for one another. This, in turn, allows everyone affected to have a higher capacity to do this for other people.

This takes time, but once created, catches like wildfire. That’s our motivation.

I’m thankful to be a part of something that everyone can play a significant role in. It gives me extraordinary satisfaction to be with a team and around customers who inspire me everyday. I hope you find the ability, desire, and motivation to do the same.