Much of what I’m advocating on this blog comes down to two-way traffic. Traditional 19th century thinking is one way. The boss tells you what to do. Period. That doesn’t work anymore for many reasons that you can find throughout this blog.

The secret to internal and external communities is to listen with respect.

In teams, you need two-way traffic to engage your co-workers. That’s an underlying prerequisite in all of my engaging tips. For example, you need the input from your co-workers to get a realistic roadmap because the world is evolving to quickly to do it on your own.

When you move away from the traditional top-down teams, you end up with a community. A community is no longer a hierarchy but a meritocracy. When somebody picks up an important role, it’s because the others consider him the best for that job. This is an organic process and it’s normal. Communities are the base of the collaborative economy movement, which seems exotic until you think of Cambio, a typical example of sharing something you’d traditionally buy.

Shira Levine from Zynga has a number of tips ready on how to manage external communities. As she points out, communities require more than a marketing department that freaks out when a customer has a critical opinion. Big surprise! The secret, as usual, is two-way traffic and respect. For example, Modcloth “allows the company’s crazy passionate community to vote designs for sale into production”. Even better, DuckDuckLabs actually hires from the community. The CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, says it guarantees a better cultural fit than a standard hiring process.

Like the ideas in my blogpost on Pixar, these steps require a different relation with your co-workers and your customers. Your first step to achieve this, should be to step down. You’re no longer a manager, you’re a member of a community just like your co-workers and your customers. Get down and between the other folks who are passionate about what you do. Then do it together with them.