Joshua Zerkel just wrapped a 7-year spell as Head of Global Engagement and Community at Asana.
Starting from zero, he led the development of a program that has grown a forum to over 600,000 members, recruited 26,000 ambassadors and run over 900 community events.
In doing that, the community has influenced almost $100 million in pipeline and dramatically improved customer adoption and retention.
Underpinning this success has been his unrelenting commitment to internal reporting and PR. Josh and team have iterated on their process, creating a comprehensive comms structure that should be the blueprint for how you go about getting buy-in for your community program across the business.
Applying the lessons that Josh discusses can make or break your program. So let's get into it.
Josh:
Pretty shortly after I started a series of expectations that other stakeholders would have of when they could hear about the community program, what they could hear about, ways that they would be made aware of what's happening and ways they could get involved.
So for me, there's a couple of structured things that we did at Asana in order to keep everyone informed. One is a comprehensive monthly report. And this includes literally everything that's going on with the community program across all of its different pillars, but also an executive summary for the people that don't want to read the whole thing.
So each month we would create a report that's around 10 pages of every pillar of the program and a deep dive into each one. I would write an executive summary, a wraparound of everything that happened. So if people just had a few minutes to read rather than 15 or 20, they could get all of the key points.
Internally at Asana, we use Asana to report on what we're doing, but I would make sure that every key stakeholder was added to that report so that they were made sure to be able to see it. So we do that every single month. Over the years, it's grown and contracted and grown again, depending on what's important to the business and what our availability of data is to report on.
In addition to the monthly report, we also do a Quarterly Business Review (QBR). The rest of the business does a QBR, so I've tried to do essentially the same cadence for the community program to get us in the process of recognizing that we are a key part of the go-to-market motion. We need to do the same things and the same cadence that the rest of the people who work in go-to-market do as well.
So we do a comprehensive QBR and that gets shared out and attached to the overall marketing QBR since I sit within marketing. So elements of our data gets funnelled into the greater report that shows a more comprehensive view of what's happening all across the marketing world.
That is a key piece of internal PR because it's reliant on data. And what I found is most business people, especially decision makers, they love what I call the warm fuzzies of community. "Show us the pictures from the events where everyone's smiling" and "tell us about the community member that did something awesome out in the world". Those are all fantastic. But there's a lot of people in the business that frankly won't care. And so for those people that want to have a balance of the context as well as the data to tell the complexity and the clearness of the whole story.
Gareth:
So there's a monthly business report and quarterly business review. They're created in Google Doc and key parts are then copied out over into various other parts of the seller for distribution to a relevant audience. For example, the monthly report is primarily aimed at the wider marketing team. That gets consumed by several hundred people across various levels in the business. The quarterly business review is consumed by a smaller group, mostly the community team. But the numbers from that doc get taken and used in the overall marketing QBR doc. That gets consumed by many more folks within the company.
Josh:
When I do the different types of reports, whether it's monthly or quarterly, I try to think about who is the audience that's seeing this? What's the level of information that they need? And then where can they go if they want to dig in deeper? So I'd mentioned the monthly report is quite long. It's usually 10 or 11 pages. But the executive summary is a few paragraphs. From the executive summary, I link out to for people that want to know more, where they can go to get the full deep dive. And from the full deep dive where they can go to get even more information if they want it, including spending time with me and my team to go through things in greater depth.
I think it's important to recognize what the recipients of this information care about, specifically stakeholders who have other programs that are related. What can I put in the report that shows the way that we are working in the community program that impact these other teams and ideally positively impact their results? And then for people that want to go deeper, and there's always a few, where can I send them to get more information, but not clog up this like, nicely crafted executive summary level report?
So if I think about the sections in the report, there's like the top section, which is the executive summary monthly recap. That's a place where I list key accomplishments, things that we did interesting programmatic things we did over the course of the month, or if there's like a core programmatic change that we're making things that other people who aren't paying super close attention to our program that they might miss. If we're doing something that's related to other teams or impacting other teams like a cross functional effort, I'll call that out in that executive summary section.
The next section is really a recap of the community programs core business impact goals, like what we are trying to achieve for the course of the year, along with the definition of each goal, so that people have no ambiguity whatsoever as to what we're trying to do. I'm trying to proactively preempt questions when I can just give the answers right in the doc.
Then because we have those core goals stated, I go into another section and this is static for every report of a recap of those core goals year to date, month to date and any month over month changes. And those are the highest level goals, the ones that are related to other things that are being worked on in the business, like things that led her up to those biggest of big goals.
In our program, every program has many things that need to be tracked to keep a pulse on the health of the program, not necessarily the impact on the results. For instance, we have an ambassador program. How many ambassadors did we recruit over the course of the month? That isn't something that the rest of the business is super interested in, because what they're interested in is what is the result of having those ambassadors in the program. But we need to keep a pulse on that number for our own tracking to see how we're doing. And so pillar by pillar within our program (we have three pillars).
Each pillar has their own extensive section within that report, where we go through pillar by pillar what's happening in that program: the pillar goals, year to date, month over month and month over month changes so we can see how things are going. And then any key programmatic notes, like if there's a big change that's going to be happening in the next month, so things that are upcoming or a key program that are going to be running or initiative that we're going to be running in the month to come, just to keep it on the radar of everyone who might be doing this, especially cross functional blockers.
If there's something that we've been working on that we can't move forward on because we're waiting for another team to make a decision or take action, I like to call that out in the report, because I want to make sure that people know that we're aware of it, that we're working on it, but we're relying on our partners to help move things forward.
“The content of each of these sections varies from month to month based on what's happening in the business, what the community program needs, what we're doing, but the sections are templatized.”
That way anyone that's reading the report and my team as we're preparing the report already know going in what numbers we need to pull, what sorts of things we need to keep on our minds as we're writing the report, especially as it relates to initiatives, blockers, the impact that we're making.
The process of getting the report to this point has iterated many times over the years, but it seems to be in a format now that's both easy enough for my team to produce and digestible for the people that are going to be consuming it.
Gareth:
Many of you might be thinking, “Wow, this is a lot.” And it is. This is where a well-resourced, established program has ended up. It's something that whole team works on.
Josh:
This would be way too much work for any one person to pull together. When each month closes, the first team task that we all do for the first day or so of each calendar month is work on our reporting. Each person on the team has a part to play when it comes into reporting. The pillar leads are mostly responsible for making sure that they're getting the information from their own reports within their pillar to gather the data that they need to craft their section. So everyone has a part to play.
The pillar leads have a little bit more heavy lifting because they're responsible for not just grabbing the numbers, but working with their teammates to make sure they understand the context of everything that's going on and are reporting on it effectively.
Each of the pillars does their section and then when that's all done, I work on my section. I pull some other cross-programmatic numbers. And then I also write the wraparound after I've had sense to go through each of the pillar reports and then gather what are the core themes that are happening and then pull that all together into a broader narrative that is digestible for other people at the business.
Josh:
I think those are worth calling out closer to when they happen. So internally within Slack, let's say we did a community event and there were some really great pictures or a community member created some really fantastic user generated content. Like we'll drip those into our marketing or business Slack channels, depending on what was created and where it would be most relevant to surface it.
“I want that to feel not like an event and more like something that happens all the time.”
So when there is something significant like that, I'll mention it in our monthly report. I want to make sure that it's sprinkled all around.
If my teammates notice something that the community members have done that's really great, I'll encourage them, not me, them to post it in various points throughout Asana, usually within Slack. So it feels like more immediate. And since they're the one noticing it, I want them to be the one to post it. I don't need to do that. It's more useful for them to get the visibility and I want them to have the chance of showing off their work.
Gareth:
So you've got this constant drip of news going out on Slack. The key regular reports sharing progress. These are all sent by channels that people opt-in to.
There's a number of ways that we get additional high touch and I would say broad based, call it publicity, internally.
So one is more high touch where like I or one of my regional leads will make sure that we have regular meetings with our counterparts in other parts of marketing or in Sales or Customer Success (CS). So those often take the place of periodic meetings with those folks just to make sure like I as the program lead understand what they're trying to achieve and they understand what we can do and how we can intersect our work to make sure we're achieving the best results.
Sometimes the conversations are really useful for that. Other times we need to do things in a bigger way. For instance, if there's a whole new group of people starting in CS, someone from my team or me will go and do a presentation for them on, "hey, here's the community program. Here's how it slots into and supports your work. Here's how it can make your life easier so you can serve customers in this other way."
So that's yet another form of internal PR, kind of like the roadshow, and we do this for different types of groups at different times. Then there's the we need to tell the whole company level of roadshow. So periodically at company all hands, which is for the entire company, we'll do something about community. Whether it's an important series of events that we're doing or something that we achieved in the forum and how we did it, how it impacts the company, or when we cross the significant milestone with ambassadors and have some really great content that we can share from them.
It's important that the company sees visually what the community program is doing. Most people have never worked on or encountered or used a community program and they may just not know what it's like and how it impacts the business, especially for people that never talked to customers. For instance, a lot of people in Product may never meet a customer in person. We can be the conduit to that feeling and that information.
“While I never want to rely too much on the warm fuzzies, sometimes you use them when it's most strategic.”
When you're doing something in front of the whole company, you want them excited about customers. This is a really great way to do that. So finding slots, whether it's an all-hands or in one of the all-company digests that goes out from one of the senior leaders at the company and including something from community in there.
I'm always looking for literally any spot I can find to strategically raise the profile of what the community and its members are doing.
Gareth:
These regular ongoing presentations to relevant teams within the business are known as a community roadshow. That can be really great way to educate the business on the role and impact of community.
Josh:
In the deck, we'll outline who the people working on the community program are. Me and my team will outline what the pillars of our program are. But that's usually not the interesting part to, let's say someone in CS or in Sales. What they're more interested in is what does community do that supports their work and helps them achieve their goals. So for each of these different teams, the deck looks different. And it'll talk about specific examples of ways the community team has partnered with Sales or CS or product or whomever, along with examples.
Ideally, we have examples from someone on the Product team, if we're talking to the Product folks, who's partnered with us in the past and the results they've gotten from working with the community team and with the people who are part of the community. So it's pretty tailored.
“One size fits all messaging doesn't really work. Each group needs something that feels resonant to them.”
What's important to CS is very different than what's important to Product, for instance. But each of them has ways that we intersect their work with the community and sometimes in very significant ways. It's just our job to outline what we do, how it impacts their work and how they can take advantage of our program in a way that meets their goals and helps our customers be successful. So we do have to do some crafting of what is the right story for these different audiences. How can we make it so that it feels really simple for them to get involved and then make sure they know the best ways to get in touch with us?
Josh:
Sometimes that's something that I know because I know how these different teams work and I know what their goals are. Other times I rely on essentially having someone embedded in those teams who we know is a champion of the community program to tell us what's the best story that will resonate with this group.
It's one thing if I tell the story, if one of my reports tells a story, it's another thing if we set the stage and then someone from that team speaking with their peers says, "Hey, I worked with a community team. Here's what we did and here was the outcome. Now this is part of my playbook." That's a lot more powerful than saying, "So-and-so did this and here's what they said and now they're part of our playbook."
“It's just very different when you have someone telling their own story.”
Crafting the narrative is figuring out what the value prop is for these partner teams, but then ideally having someone from those teams really stating the value.
Gareth:
Putting all of this together is a big undertaking. It's something that took the Asana team years to put in place, iterating and improving it all over time.
Josh:
I think it's naive to think that someone isn't going to come asking for this information at some point. Some decision maker is going to care and when that day comes, you want to be ready. And you don't just want to be ready, you want to be proactively ready so you feel like you've had sense to build a cadence, to build the muscle of reporting and figuring out how you want to tell the story of what it is that you're doing.
I actually think it's a really useful thing to do. Starting from the outset, even when you have maybe even very little data that you can report on. Get in the habit of creating a cadence for saying, even if you're going from zero to one and building your program from scratch, make a monthly update, even if it's just for yourself at the beginning. That way you you have this habit of telling the story, explaining the value prop, explaining where you're at in the process, telling where your blockers are.
Even if it's just for you, it crystallizes what's happening so that the next time you have those conversations with community members, you have a better sense of what you need to do next to help them be successful and build your program in a way that supports that.
This is something that when I talk with community leaders about a lot, they're just afraid to do. But, we're in business folks. It's pretty normal in business to do reporting and talk about what you're doing in a way that's beyond, "Hey, we just did an event, yay."
That's great, but you got to tell a bigger story, especially if you ever want more resources, more funding, more people. All of this is in service of building out a community that supports your customers and your business.
Reporting doesn't have to be this big deal. It certainly doesn't have to be what we have at Asana. We've been doing this for years and it's robust, but it didn't start that way. It started really small.
“If you are resisting doing this or you don't know where to start, just give yourself the opportunity to create a one-page report at the close of each model.”
Just talk about what you did, key things that happened, key blockers, key accomplishments, and what's coming up. That's a place to begin. As you start getting more data and you're able to track it, that's what you can start plugging into flesh out your report.
So there you have it. That's how Josh communicated the value of community at Asana. ✌️
