This episode features an interview with Kosheno Moore, Vice President and Digital Community Leader for Regional Center Satellite at Fidelity Investments. Prior to joining Fidelity, she served as the Manager of CX Communications at Workday, Head of Communities at Aurea Software, Principal of Employee Communications at Jive Software, and spent 7 years at Agilent Technologies in various roles. In this episode, Shawn and Kosheno discuss strategies for creating meaningful digital connections, the future of D&I within corporate culture, and how to foster a sense of belonging among employees.
This episode features an interview with Kosheno Moore, Vice President and Digital Community Leader for Regional Center Satellite at Fidelity Investments. Prior to joining Fidelity, she served as the Manager of CX Communications at Workday, Head of Communities at Aurea Software, Principal of Employee Communications at Jive Software, and spent 7 years at Agilent Technologies in various roles.
In this episode, Shawn and Kosheno discuss strategies for creating meaningful digital connections, the future of D&I within corporate culture, and how to foster a sense of belonging among employees.
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“In order to create a sense of community in a digital environment, you have to not just think about the technology itself, like anyone can deploy any technology. It's almost moot point what technology you use, but it's about the strategy piece of it. It's about the bringing people together piece of it. Which means like, what's going to motivate people to come together? Can we organize people around certain themes? In order to do that, you need to be able to create communication messaging, and you need to do that in so many different forms of media, and you need to tap into different audience source. Community management, I think, really forces you to be omnichannel. And yes, communication is a big component of it, but it really challenges us to think cross-disciplinary, like you want to be strategic, you also want to be tactical, you also want to be multimedia savvy, and a great communicator, too. I think that's the beauty of it. I think when it's done well, community management strategy and technology, a robust technology platform, I think those could be win-win.” – Kosheno Moore
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:26): Getting to know Kosheno
*(07:37): Kosheno’s career journey
*(19:39): The challenges of building digital communities
*(31:35): The impact of community size
*(41:58): Kosheno’s thoughts on D&I strategies
*(46:22): The future of human connections at work
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Links:
Connect with Kosheno on LinkedIn
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Cohesion Podcast. Today I'm joined by Kosheno Moore. She is VP and Digital Community Leader, Regional Center Satellite for Fidelity Investments.
Shawn Pfunder: And Previously, Kosheno held communication and community roles at Workday, Aurea Software and Jive Software, which if you listen to this show and you've been in communications for a while, you definitely know what we're talking about. Kosheno, welcome to the show.
Kosheno Moore: Thank you, Shawn, for having me. Happy to be here.
Shawn Pfunder: Right on. Well, I'm, I'm super excited to pick your brain about things. You've been doing this for A long time. But before we do that, I've got some personal ish questions, I think too personal, but a chance for us to get to know you just a little bit better. First one that we have lined up is what is an insult you've received that you're proud of?
Kosheno Moore: Oh my gosh. Okay. We're getting vulnerable here right off the bat.
Shawn Pfunder: After I said, no, I'm like, Oh, we'll be that personal. Yeah. I,
Kosheno Moore: That's a really great one. I would say, so I'm from Japan, I have Japanese, I identify myself as Japanese as well, and after I am introduced as, you know, being a Japanese person, if I hear someone reply back and say, oh, your Japanese is fantastic,
Kosheno Moore: I get very upset inside. Try not to show it, but I do.
Shawn Pfunder: Your Japanese is fantastic. I mean, it's almost always the case. You learn a foreign language enough. Even just to say, unfortunately, I don't speak this foreign language as well as I'd like to. And then everybody is like, wow, you're fantastic. I am more than most.
Kosheno Moore: Yes, but you know, being a first language, you expect to speak it great anyway, right?
Shawn Pfunder: Well, forget it. All bets are off. I didn't know it was your first language. Yeah, there we go. It's fantastic. All right, next one. What are the top five most opened apps on your phone?
Kosheno Moore: Ooh, that's a good one. Wordle for one. My partner and I, we love competing with each other with Wordle.
Kosheno Moore: That's one. We have a going tally. Pocket for new syndications. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, the Fidelity app, keeping up on my portfolio outlook. And probably the fifth one will be Roblox. That's my job. My 10 year old likes to play
Shawn Pfunder: Roblox. This is the first time somebody said Roblox. Oh my gosh. Roblox is amazing because it's just.
Shawn Pfunder: It's one of those, like Minecraft and Roblox came out about the same time. And Roblox is a little less polished, but it's huge now.
Kosheno Moore: It really is. And Fidelini actually wrote a really cool app on it, so that's the reason why it's on my phone. And then, yeah, my kid just plays with my phone sometimes when the iPad isn't available.
Kosheno Moore: So there you have it.
Shawn Pfunder: What is a common myth about your field of expertise?
Kosheno Moore: Now, I would say, comprehensively, expertise is around community management, and especially when it comes to internal community management. The misconception, I think, is like, how do you communicate return on investment? It's just so hard to measure.
Kosheno Moore: It's so hard to communicate value up the chain where we need, you know, senior leaders investing in these stuff. And like, how do you articulate that the work that we're doing is meaningful? So it, in a, I mean, there's facts to that too, but it's definitely a misconception because there are ways to measure and show value.
Kosheno Moore: And that's why I'm here, Fidelity Invested, in this role because I felt that it was an important thing, but it's definitely a common misconception for sure.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, yeah. No, for sure. Two things. I saw what you said you did there. Fidelity invested. It's pretty great that they invested in, in this. And so the misconception being that you can't, I mean, I've heard that a lot.
Shawn Pfunder: You can't measure it. Or they'll say like, it's too fuzzy or it's, you have to just check in with people. So I love that. We're going to talk about that. And then what's the most impactful media you've read or watched or listened to this year? So Could be music, could be podcast, could be a movie, could be a book.
Shawn Pfunder: What's been the most impactful for you?
Kosheno Moore: Good one. Probably Culture King by Houston White Jr. He is an entrepreneur and community leader and partners closely, I believe, with Target to really help shift the brand narrative for target to be more inclusive and community oriented. So he published a little book, I think late last year, and it's just been a fascinating read.
Kosheno Moore: Super easy, sharp read, but so many impactful quotes and whatnot, because he really comes from a place of culture, community, human connection is really what makes this world go around.
Shawn Pfunder: I love it. If you guys get here like me jostling, it's because I immediately started writing it down. Culture King. I'm totally checking it out.
Shawn Pfunder: No, I love that. And what you mentioned about the people and culture, the diversity connection, I think that's probably where we're going to head. And talk about that. That seems to be your primary, well, it sounds so corporate. Your primary focus these days, but it's the thing that you love. It's your icky guy.
Shawn Pfunder: It's the thing that you're most passionate about before we get into what you're doing right now, right now, though, how do we get a job doing that? Like what's your path looked like from the beginning of your career to now so that you can focus on that. You're focusing on community diversity and, and connection internally, creating these types of communities instead of.
Shawn Pfunder: You know, I think traditionally it would be the more of this external meetup non profit kind of thing that people would do. You're doing that internally. What does your career look like that led you to that?
Kosheno Moore: Yeah, great question. And I do think it's, it was a little bit of luck, but definitely, you know, looking at my internal compass to find the work that really matters to me, that reflects my lived experience and passion.
Kosheno Moore: And I feel like that had A lot to do with how unconventional my career path has been. But my undergrad was in computer science. I thought I was going to be an engineer because
Kosheno Moore: I'm actually an introvert. I'm, I can be very socially awkward in a, in a cocktail hours, for an example, like I need my drink first.
Kosheno Moore: I started as a computer science thinking that I was going to be an engineer. I was too intimidated. Just, I finished the degree, loved it. But, you know, being the only. Women being only a person of color, it was just challenging. But when I went to corporate after grad, I'm like, I still want to be in the world.
Kosheno Moore: So I went into corporate IT and that's where I landed in a team accidentally that deployed a bunch of collaboration platform. And that was my introduction to SharePoint. And. And at that time, I think that's when MySpace and Facebook was starting to become popular. And a lot of the companies were starting to ask the question, what would it look like if we deploy Facebook like solutions on an enterprise?
Kosheno Moore: You know, are we able to handle not just top down communication engagement, but bottoms up, sideways, what would that look like? So it was just good timing in terms of, you know, things that I was excited about. I'm excited about, in terms of the latest technologies that was hitting. Us in all of our, you know, private lives, going to the workplace.
Kosheno Moore: But also, I think that's where I was introduced to Jive software. And I think at that time, we had one of the most progressive vision around a technology platform that was not technology oriented, right? Jive did such a great job, and such a great job marketing how This is a way to power human connection.
Kosheno Moore: And that was just an aphrodisiac for, I think, a lot of the customers. The business ultimately didn't go so well, as we know, but I mean, I think that created so much passion. And that was my introduction to like, okay, you know, things that I feel passionate about, community, belonging. technology, but also like how do we actually bring people together in a highly distributed organization through technology?
Kosheno Moore: What does that look like? So deploy that. Agilent Technologies went to Jive afterwards to become the, the community manager of Jive.
Shawn Pfunder: Wow. No pressure.
Kosheno Moore: No pressure, right? But it's just kind of like, let's eat our dog food, own dog food. Like we're selling this stuff to our enterprise customers. Let's make sure that all the use cases.
Kosheno Moore: But it was the most fabulous experience I've ever had because, you know, it didn't really matter what my, background was, it was all about trying different use cases, like what makes an organization go, right? Like the executive communication, goal setting, HR, sales enablement, you know, grassroots community organizing within an organization and Jive was, in the forefront of how do you bring that together in a single platform.
Kosheno Moore: And I just really love the vision. And I do believe that if we ask the past customers, former drivers, a lot of the passion carried through them, and I think, you know, that they've been so much influenced in the community management world when it was still more of an infancy in terms of, you know, we're doing discussion threads and whatnot.
Kosheno Moore: But when these community. Managers came, regardless of what the platform was, like, we were all passionate about, like, how do we bring people together and create that connection. So, fast forward, you know, from there, continued my work and even coming to Workday. Workday created a chief customer officer role, I think, several years back, right?
Kosheno Moore: And she was looking for a platform and that's when she needed a communication professional. And, you know, if you look at my background, it's not just communication. Communication is a big part of community management, but I think that was super really helpful coming into Workday and how we can create not just an effective communication program and platform, but a culture of inclusion by using a lot of the communication and community management disciplines.
Kosheno Moore: So That's how my journey went. But each time I'm always asking, like, is this something that is going to bring people together? Is it going to make every single employee feel like, you know, I belong here. And as I'm going through my career journey, titles never really mattered to me. So long as I'm actually doing the work.
Kosheno Moore: And yeah, so I love what I do and I'm super excited that I'm here at Fidelity to continue the evolution of this work.
Shawn Pfunder: That's phenomenal. I love that your journey. I mean, it's, it's unique. There's a lot of people that we work with in internal communications, employee experience, even as they make their way into, you know, traditional HR.
Shawn Pfunder: I mean, I worked with so many people that were journalism, creative writers, majors that managed to get a job. And they have to learn how to use the solutions that are the IT oriented, especially early on. SharePoint was not easy to get up to client server side with like, No cloud, how do you get these things?
Shawn Pfunder: It served you so well, I love that that was the path that you took. Starting off in IT and then, then moving that direction. How, how do you think, and you mentioned this a little bit on how your experience then really helped at Workday. So it's not just about like writing emails and sending out communications, but building communities.
Shawn Pfunder: And those communities, then when you build them, like the championing, I always like to say, just Champion the, the freak flags, let your freak flag fly, but like diversity in all different ways and being able to do that. I'm curious if your, your IT background up until a certain point, I would assume, like, really helped sort of your perspective or gave you a unique perspective or made it possibly easier for you to get into this space.
Kosheno Moore: Yes. I think the, the technical background, even a lot of the discipline and practices I've learned in the computer science studies here, but, you know, having that translated into IT world, I think it really afforded me to be able to Think critically in terms of how a solution like this can benefit an enterprise, right?
Kosheno Moore: I mean, when we talk about highly distributed organization, you know, And you're talking about not hundreds of people, but possibly thousands, tens of thousands of people. And if you are trying to invest in a community solution, and we're talking about big digit investments. Now, how do you do that? Well, you do have to ask the technical question, the security related question, the data privacy related question.
Kosheno Moore: And so in that sense, a lot of those Discipline and practice gave me a really good understanding of what IT stakeholders are looking for to help offer them comfort, affirmation, saying that, yes, this is an investment that our IT organization blessed and to deploy within our organization. So it definitely gave me a, you know, when it comes to software solution, well, that's the stakeholders you want to please.
Shawn Pfunder: No, it is. Like, they're always the case. Like you forget, or I, I used to forget. Yeah. Yeah.
Kosheno Moore: You have to talk to your CIOs, so I do think that's been a very helpful perspective and thinking about these solutions and how that can then ultimately benefit our business stakeholders.
Shawn Pfunder: I mean, this is what I do. I mean, people are probably far more successful than I am within those types of like those kinds of roles, communications, employee experience and stuff, but I make friends with IT so fast.
Shawn Pfunder: When I come in, I'm like, all right, tacos on me, pizza on me. Like, just start drilling them with questions, not only like about what's going on or what their pain points are or what they hate or don't hate. And, but like about their personal lives, like, is there any way I can make their lives funnier if I, by what I put in my tickets that I send, like whatever, I'm like, we need to be best as soon as possible to implement those.
Shawn Pfunder: And you've been able to see it go from like fairly technical then to Much more, almost like, uh, well you know how like some of the internal comms communication and then I want to talk about digital communities and what you might use to do that. That, for the longest time, seemed to be so far behind what we're doing publicly with end users and with the general public.
Shawn Pfunder: It's like we know we're competing against like Instagram for attention internally. And yet we have these platforms that are like, I don't know, super technical or just not that engaging. It's like, I guess if I have to, like going to your grandparents house, like, I guess if I have to, I'll go. You've been able to see that really develop into some like impressive, impressive software, impressive things that we can use for community that doesn't feel like, bleh, SharePoint, Circa.
Shawn Pfunder: 2004.
Kosheno Moore: And I think that's what, was, what's beautiful about the community management practice, because in order to create a sense of community in a digital environment, right, you have to not just think about the, The technology itself, like, anyone can deploy any technology. It's almost a moot point what technology you use, but it's about the strategy piece of it.
Kosheno Moore: It's about the bringing people together piece of it, which means like, okay, well, what's going to motivate people to come together? Can we organize people around certain themes? In order to do that, you need to be able to Create communication, messaging, and you need to do that in so many different forms of media, and you need to tap into different audience source.
Kosheno Moore: And so, community management, I think, really forces you to be omni channel. And yes, communication is a big component of it, but it really challenges us to think cross disciplinary, like you want to be strategic, you also want to be tactical, you also want to be multimedia savvy, you need a great communicator too.
Kosheno Moore: So I think that's the beauty of it. And I think when it's done well, community management strategy and technology, a robust technology platform, I think those could be win win. But I think oftentimes, you know, people are really quick to say like, yes, we are investing in a technology and yeah, here are the insights we get, check.
Kosheno Moore: It's not going to necessarily cut it, right.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, this will solve all my problems. I just bought Photoshop and now I'm a graphic designer. I know, I hear you, for sure. Well, those challenges then, that are outside of, I mean, I mean, maybe platform could be involved, but so many of them, so many of them, I mean, Simper is a great example.
Shawn Pfunder: There's just so much great stuff that you can do by default. Like that we couldn't do 10 years ago. And so having sort of omni channel or doing different types of medium, that's great. It's kind of like table stakes now. What are the challenges now that you run into at Fidelity or you see other people? I mean, you, you, you chat and you're active in the industry in general.
Shawn Pfunder: What are the challenges to building these? Digital communities are making them work. What are the primary challenges right now that you've been facing?
Kosheno Moore: Yeah, great question. I think, uh, noise, right? Like we're so inundated with so much information continuously, and you don't want to see how many unread messages are in my private email box.
Shawn Pfunder: It's like twice a year you go in and say,
Kosheno Moore: yeah,
Shawn Pfunder: I'm going to clean this up.
Kosheno Moore: And, and we're so desensitized because there's so much content that's out there and, you know, to remove that for eight hours, come into work and be inundated with more communication. I think it's a lot to ask folks to process and expect to create, you know, meaningful connections and outcomes.
Kosheno Moore: So I think the challenge is how do we keep the experience purposeful, intentional. Meaningful, when there's so much noise. And so we do need to take a very comprehensive approach, you know, recruiting just different levels of organization to let even one message or call to action stick, right? I do think that's where, you know, if you're a savvy communicator, where you understand the power of omni channel when the messaging is coordinated.
Kosheno Moore: I always like to use the, the analogy of carve the turkey or tofuki for those who are vegetarians, right? Like you have this. star dish and, you know, how do you carve it out many times over and distribute it to where people are at, you know, so I'm always asking, do we, do we have the turkey? Yeah. And it does require extra creativity, extra lift to kind of bring people along to help create that turkey together.
Kosheno Moore: But I think more time you can invest in that piece of the work. It's so much more easier to then, you know, leverage the omni channel approach to get that messaging out and bring people together, even, and people are going to have very different preferences, right? And just because, you know, we roll out a single technology, like this is your single source of truth.
Kosheno Moore: This is where you come to get your information. Yeah. Like most of us have teams out there. That's right. Outlook open, like so many things that so many tools that are available. Even competing for attention, even within our workplace. So how do we balance that? And I think more comprehensive strategy we can create upfront, the better.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. And it, well, it sounds like in the current environment, I think I'm probably making some assumptions on this. When you talk about creating these digital communities, actually, I'll back up. I'm I've done, you've probably done the same thing where I do surveys to figure out how people. Not only like to be communicated with, wow, I, I still get nervous when I end a sentence with a preposition, but I do it all the time.
Shawn Pfunder: There's also the, where do they go to get information in their normal life? Like, how do they find out about the nudes? How do they find out what's going on in the world? How do they find out about, I don't know, the Godzilla 1 is finally going to be on streaming? Like, yay. How do they find out that stuff?
Shawn Pfunder: And every time I've done that, the majority of the time, they say other people. And then I'm wondering like, well, how are the other people giving me information to give to you and putting it together? And it sounds like when you talk about digital communities and sort of lots of digital communities, that the way communities work is you might have people within a group, but then they're also part of this other group and the people in your current group aren't part of it.
Shawn Pfunder: So it kind of spreads and it's kind of organic how it works. It sounds like you're doing something like that to help with communications, keeping people informed, providing transparency and diversity. Is that accurate? Kind of what you're, what you're doing at Fidelity?
Kosheno Moore: Yes. And Fidelity actually done a pretty awesome job even before I came.
Kosheno Moore: In terms of taking a look at like, okay, pandemic happened, people are working remotely now. We have to strategically think about, well, what is their associate experience or what employee experience might look like, right? We have to be really strategic because this is not just a pandemic solution. It's like we've established an organization of fully remote associates.
Kosheno Moore: What do we do? So they made a pretty awesome hypothesis that, you know, if we bring people together around certain themes and let's call it, you know, bringing people together around career journey, bringing people around things that make us chuckle, like we love pets or bring, bringing people around our geographic location.
Kosheno Moore: And so I've identified several of these. areas of focus in which we can create community around. Then even if we are remote, these associates can feel better connected to our amazing culture, because that's what a lot of folks in our regional centers are experiencing when they come into the office, though it is known for its awesome culture.
Kosheno Moore: So that was the challenge. And, you know, they ran the program. They've created programs. Combination of in person, but also digital experiences and events, and it's not just one thread, or it's not just one event, but what I love about it is the community it was framed and the premises that if we are able to create a sense of community in these areas, then people are going to feel belonging, people are going to feel connected to Thank you.
Kosheno Moore: So that really gave us creative permission to just try different things. So long as we're activating these connection points, then it doesn't really matter what tools we use. You know, what events were running, but it's tying it into the purpose. And it was really fun to actually create the messaging and creating that sense of community around each of these different areas.
Kosheno Moore: So that's kind of been the, the, the more or less the, the premise of my work, how, when I inherited it, and I love the fact that the framework is so strategic and in a sense Visionary in terms of in the community management space, because when I talk about metrics, it's always about like, how are people engaged?
Kosheno Moore: But does that answer the question on like, are there people staying with our company? Right? When we can establish key themes. And even making a bet in terms of what type of community will serve our employees, our associates and our business at best. And if we can design experiences to support that, it's so much easier to bring people together.
Kosheno Moore: It's so much easier to get leadership on board. It's so much easier to articulate return on investment. And it's just so much easier to get cohesiveness. across so many different things that are happening within an organization.
Shawn Pfunder: So I have, I have, I have, well, not tons of questions, but I had, I definitely have questions.
Shawn Pfunder: So I'm super interested in this, your role. So I think about these digital communities, is it sort of a, part of it is really organic. So it's like, Oh yeah, I'm going to opt into this wordle community, but I have that. And then are there communities they sort of are encouraged to be a part of, or they're by default put into where it's more like.
Shawn Pfunder: I guess like the town square for that group or that community, like, how does that work? Is it mostly organic or is it a little bit of both in order to build that and foster that?
Kosheno Moore: And I think, you know, just speaking from the past use cases and organization that I've worked with, it's mixed. We create that to tailor what matters to the business.
Kosheno Moore: So for an example, in case of Workday, you know, we use Slack, I think that was the platform that really fostered a lot of the community efforts, but, you know, it was really Yeah. Important for us to have all the employees being a part of certain set of channels so that the leaders can communicate an important update.
Shawn Pfunder: Got it.
Kosheno Moore: Like you, you can opt out of that if you want to.
Shawn Pfunder: But you're the one that did it.
Kosheno Moore: Right. But you know, we're going to start you off as well. Being opt in and similar here on Fidelity too, you know, there's less of a focus in terms of using community platform for internal communication purposes. Some people might not know how to use Microsoft Teams.
Kosheno Moore: That's the platform I use. And we're going to opt everybody in on how. to use Microsoft Teams, how to manage notification, how to like things and comment on things in case you think this is not okay at work. It's actually is here, um, based on the culture of return and design. Right. And you know, if you're a part of a certain location based, home office, and we're going to, by default, put you in there and see if we can make connections.
Kosheno Moore: But you know, if you like all these other things, pets, sports, cooking, these are available to you too. Feel free to opt in. So I do think, yeah, and this is where I work really closely with the business stakeholders in terms of like, what are we trying to accomplish with this community effort? We could tailor it to exactly what you need, right?
Kosheno Moore: I think in Aurea's case, it was very much communication driven and HR driven. So it just, you know, depending on what the organization needs, but you could still use a lot of the same discipline to bring people together and start creating connections.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. See, these are when these conversations are really great because then I just start thinking about, all right, we're going to create a grilled cheese community.
Shawn Pfunder: And every Thursday. Somebody's going to get on there and show us how to make grilled cheese sandwiches, and then word spreads. Because it is like that sometimes within, not just communications, but if you listen closely, the thing that's most effective It's probably not the thing you came up with in the first place.
Shawn Pfunder: Like I know that happens so frequently.
Kosheno Moore: We definitely have a hall of fame content, but you know, I've gone internally by our own and a lot of times they model Reddit, right? Like it's hot dog, a sandwich, that, that, that thing still flies. I swear.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh my gosh. Yeah. The most popular years ago, the most popular, it wasn't just the most popular article that people were just constantly talking about it.
Shawn Pfunder: It was just a how to make coffee. Like we had to publish an article about how to make coffee. And no matter what we tried to get in front of that, like, it would be the, here's how to get your bonus. Here's how to get paid. Here's the latest news. We just surpassed this competitor. How to make coffee, like always, always surpassed, it was crazy.
Shawn Pfunder: And it just becomes that, I don't know, like we probably should have snuck in more culturally relevant or mission statement, something into the how to make coffee, but. It's one of those things where if you just, yeah, if you just listen, you know, I'm curious with the communities, are you familiar with, I'm guessing you are, that with, is it Dunbar's number?
Shawn Pfunder: We talk about the number of people within a space. It was, the, the number is based off of recent, and it's been, I don't think it's been refuted, like it gets debated. It's basically like how large an organization or a community can get. Yeah. Before it starts to fall apart, before there, like, there ends up being conspiracy theories or infighting or outfighting or sort of weird internal policing of the community and things like that once it gets past a certain size and some people are like the original number I think was like 150 people, but now most people are trying to work with 50 as being sort of like a sweet spot of the number of people within a space.
Shawn Pfunder: And doing that, that's really hard at a, at scale, like in a big company or a big organization. But I guess, I guess where I'm headed is you, I don't want to say you have limits, but have you seen that the communities or digital communities you've been working with sort of fall into a certain amount of people or like when they're organic, or do you try to keep them, I don't want to say limited, but focused, I guess.
Shawn Pfunder: So it's not just, you know, 3000 people in every single space that you're, you, that you're working with. Yeah.
Kosheno Moore: I think to a certain extent, yes, definitely the core team of folks are dedicated to this work. It's very lean. And I think in these organizational settings, it's always, you know, people are like, what's community?
Kosheno Moore: So yeah, okay, we'll invest in a community manager, good luck, sort
Kosheno Moore: of thing, right? So I do think the approach I found it effective is to find those passionate community connectors or community managers and the core team would act more like a center of excellence and provide training, best practices and whatnot and consult with various community managers.
Kosheno Moore: And that model has worked in terms of scale. So we can talk about 500 people community and we have, and the ratio is actually very different when we differentiate between our in person events. to the digital community connectors, depending on the type of community that role might be, you know, one in the same or not.
Kosheno Moore: You know, we can't expect a single person to pull off an event with 200 people. Right. Right. In person, right? But we could empower and train, you know, a digital community manager to run webinars of 500, 200, 000 people if we give them the right tools and training. So, I mean, I think those are the things that we, You know, do a litmus test with various use cases in terms of what matters.
Kosheno Moore: And we always try to define really clear objective in terms of what this community is for. Set the right expectations, set the right communication, do the right onboarding, train the right community managers, and give them the volunteers and resources they need. Recognize them. I think that's really important.
Shawn Pfunder: Huge.
Kosheno Moore: So underrated right now. I know. It's huge. Like they, they just need to be recognized and then adjust from there. Then we tweak it. Is it working? Is it not? But we have the framework and the baseline.
Shawn Pfunder: That makes sense. Okay. Real talk. I don't know why I said that. Like it's going to get super private or personal.
Shawn Pfunder: In the sort of the world that we're in, there's a lot of. A lot of people have been very critical of what we've used for digital communities, or even just digital communities in general, outside of work. We've got social media being the biggest one. When we talk about building community, I don't even say culture and community, digitally, Like, is that gonna, is that gonna work?
Shawn Pfunder: Is there still something? I always wonder whether or not it's a, it's like, like sugar to artificial sweetener. Sugar being the, you and I face to face, I mean, like we should talk. We're both on cameras in different parts of the country talking to each other about this stuff instead of in the same city, but is it going to work?
Shawn Pfunder: And how do I know if it's actually, I guess, we talked about this at the very beginning and is it actually pulling people together? Or is it just sort of creating people that are on, on separate islands with telescopes looking at the other person and like, Hey, what's your island like, like, do you think it works and how do we know if it's, if it works?
Kosheno Moore: I think it can, but I do think you need to be very strategic and intentional in creating that connection. Right? So for example, you know, at this point in time in the pandemic, people are being asked to come back into the office. So yes, like, okay, yeah, we need to come back into the office so that we can have in person interactions and have ideation and collaborate and get to know one another because that's really important for us to continue to be productive.
Kosheno Moore: But then if you're on, if you're in the office and you're on Zoom call all day, like,
Kosheno Moore: are you really, are you really driving that connection? And similarly, on the digital side. I think we have this thing called a casual collision where we randomly get masks to people who, who opt into the experience, but depending on people's personality, like, you know, okay, I met you for the first time, and I'm such an introvert.
Kosheno Moore: Like, I don't even know what questions to ask. You could have this like really awkward conversation. Digital cop interaction, right?
Shawn Pfunder: Casual collision.
Kosheno Moore: Yeah. Right. But I do think that when authentic, genuine connection happens, it can spark and it can spark amazingly. And it can happen. digitally, and it can happen in person.
Kosheno Moore: I think if you're trying to strategically create that environment in a digital setting at scale, you do need to be very, very intentional so that you can create the least path of resistance so that people can create that organic connection. I'll give you an example. Yesterday, I actually went into the San Francisco office and after work, I went to this super fancy Japanese restaurant.
Kosheno Moore: Not too far away, cause I was really craving this dish called okonomiyaki. It's a savory pancake. And I just came back from being in Japan for a couple of weeks and I was just like craving it cause I didn't get to, we missed the opportunity to go try it. So I was just like, Oh, this, this restaurant have pancakes.
Kosheno Moore: And it's like, it's very, like, it's like four stars, very expensive, and I was there for happy hour. And then the waiter came, and then he gave me the menu, and then I said, oh yeah, I would probably like the okonomiyaki. And then the first thing he said was, yeah, it's not quite authentic. But, right, like, he's supposed to be selling the, the, the product.
Kosheno Moore: And so that triggered me to immediately switch my language to Japanese. And we just had a blast talking about our home, home country. And it was such a good experience that, you know, like I came in to the office to work. Yeah. Like now everybody was on Zoom call and whatnot. So, yes. Like I said, hi to a few people, but like what made yesterday memorable is that I actually had this really fun conversation with a reader and it wasn't, you know, the experience wasn't great because it was a fancy restaurant or the meal was Okay.
Kosheno Moore: Yeah. Like he made that interaction memorable. He made an impression in my mind. So when we think about creating experiences, whether it's in person or in digital, we have to be able to create like, you know, what. type of ambiance and prompts and experiences. And I don't like to use the same space, but, you know, environment, can we create digital in person so that we can have that?
Kosheno Moore: And then when we can connect over authenticity, we'll remember for a really, really long time. I think we're continuously challenged, and it's a little bit of a different challenge over digital versus in person.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, it's almost a unique. At least my experience is finding the people that are capable of, I guess, if you have like the collision, that kind of thing that what you call
Kosheno Moore: Casual collusion.
Shawn Pfunder: Casual collusion, that's so great finding the people that are really, I mean, maybe they're extroverted or ambiverted or introverted, but they're good at, you know, It's sort of initializing or starting those types of connections.
Shawn Pfunder: And then they're the ones that are constantly having, they're like your connectors. They would be the, next time you're in a meeting, they're like, Oh my gosh, you got to talk to Kushner about pancakes. And you might even be mad because you're an introvert. You're like, please don't put me on the spot. But now everybody knows and you're able to start to, I guess, create that, that vulnerability, meaning you share, I share, you share, I share.
Shawn Pfunder: And that's how trust is created. This takes me to kind of the final thing that I want to chat with you about. We've had, we've had guests on, we've been talking, you know, within the industry at large about diversity and inclusion and how that's kind of shifted. There used to be, you know, C suite roles for that specifically, and we're seeing those disappear.
Shawn Pfunder: And there's a, sometimes the, it might just be click baity, but it's like, DNI is dead, you know, that kind of thing. Those kinds of headlines that come up. And yeah, we're talking about how those vulnerable connections, those real connections are so important. And I would assume is important for everybody in the company, not just, you know, the two Gen X white guys talking about Nirvana and like, this is so cool.
Shawn Pfunder: Watch Loudermilk, you know, like, but it's important to make those connections across the board in order to build trust, in order to have some sort of authenticity or vulnerability. Where is your, your brain these days and your strategy these days? Around the DNI, like where are you at? How do you focus on that?
Shawn Pfunder: Or are you like, you know what? It's problem solved. We're doing great.
Kosheno Moore: I think we're going through an evolution DNI, right? It's if we think back and you know, what triggered this. DNI, like what put DNI to the forefront of everybody's minds with George Floyd. And it did call out that, okay, we have a problem.
Kosheno Moore: And then in order to address the problem, we gonna create a role, go chief diversity officer, and we're going to hire a bunch of people to run programs and run metrics and see if we can change this around and whatnot. And if I go back and think about the conversations that we've been having with these leaders, their aspiration is that, okay, yes, it's important that, you know, we have these organizations and these topic of discussions to create inclusion and remove biases and all that.
Kosheno Moore: But at the end of the day, like, we need this to be a part of culture. And, you know, I keep thinking that that's what they kept saying. So in essence, that's kind of what is happening where I think for those companies that have done really well, it's in their accountability metrics, right, it's in the top track of the executives, the leaders are modeling these things, the diversity numbers might look slightly better when you look at their diversity reports and ERGs and affinity.
Kosheno Moore: Groups are, yeah, less focused, less focused on being. events or like educational arm, but more of creating true community for those who need it, a space for people to be vulnerable. I think so much effort was placed, you know, a couple of years back that, you know, everybody was like, Oh yeah, we're, we're an inclusive company and it's really unfortunate that, you know, all these worlds were created and now, you know, they're being redefined or, but I do think that in those areas, the companies have done
Kosheno Moore: really, really well. They have a leader who are thinking about this thing, maybe a chief diversity officer, and their efforts and messaging and experiences are fully integrated in the way that the business is being operated. And the companies who are not doing that, it's just kind of being swept with the wave of, you know, D& I being, you know, Politicized, and, and then on that, and you have, and it's easy to cut.
Kosheno Moore: I mean, it's a separate function. It's not revenue generating like a, like time to tighten up belts. Like we're going to need to cut. Yeah, let's cut DNI because it could be controversial. It's really easy to say that, but I think there are definitely companies that are trying to do well and at least have the intent.
Kosheno Moore: And I think those are the ones that are seeing the right outcome of what the leaders back then intended DNI to be.
Shawn Pfunder: You know, what you're saying reminds me of, like lots of things can be this way, but specifically with D& I is that you can have a strategy around it, but you don't necessarily have to have a product or a branding behind it, like integrate it.
Shawn Pfunder: That makes more sense instead of saying like, here's our D, our D& I product and our initiative and the name of it and the names of the, like, it's so tempting to brand everything where it's just. Something that should exist. We should have the strategy and be having the conversations. It's like creating a, a super, super, super large brand around one on ones.
Shawn Pfunder: You're like, wow, we're a one on one culture and here's the big thing. And here's the logo for it and everything else. But it's has to be. Like once it's really integrated, it's more powerful because part of your DNA instead of just coloring your hair kind of thing.
Kosheno Moore: Exactly. You can't opt into it. You just have to be, right, if you're a part of the organization that prioritizes that.
Shawn Pfunder: That's awesome. Well, okay. So a couple of questions looking ahead, anything that you're seeing on the horizon when it comes to, I wouldn't even say communities, in binding, binding sounds really intense too, but making better, longer lasting connections, teamwork, people feeling like they belong at work. You seeing any trends, anything that's kind of coming up that, that will be helpful in the next three or five years?
Kosheno Moore: I think a lot of what's happening in the world is also, you know, having business, have difficult conversation here at work, in our workplace too. So I do think that our way of communicating is going to shift. And I think it might even force us to be more authentic. I know we are always saying like, let's be authentic, let's be authentic, but you know, it's, it's, look.
Kosheno Moore: People are starting to realize that, and I think people are starting to crave that. So I do think that the companies that are thinking about connections, community, from a lens of like, we want to create a place where all of us can belong. If they're able to prioritize that, I do think their future work can be very, very good.
Kosheno Moore: And there's so many, you know, amazing technological innovation, artificial intelligence, like all of that stuff is creating the next wave of engagement, right, to make things exciting and interesting. But are the organization really ready to meet those advancement in technology with a clear purpose around why they would want to bring people together?
Kosheno Moore: And I think it's really up to the organization. Where they wanna invest their time. I think a lot of the companies have been investing in external communities. Yeah. I think the sense of like creating communities around customers are a great way to do one to many marketing and get prospects and do referrals and do, uh, customer loyalty programs, that sort of thing.
Kosheno Moore: And I think a lot of the companies are starting to realize like, hey. You know, putting your marketing hat on, if this works for our customer, why, why won't you use the same discipline to address your internal audience, your employees, right? So I do think that Community management as a practice have a really bright future.
Kosheno Moore: I do think that it does bring in a lot of these marketing discipline internally to the forefront of our, you know, HR partners and leaders and our employee engagement. And I think more open our leaders are in thinking like, okay, you know, we've been working in silos and these things, but how do we work cross functionally?
Kosheno Moore: The community management discipline can be a nice overlay to help bring that strategy to life.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, that makes sense. I, well, and, and, yeah, so many leaders, CEOs, C suite, but just managers. It's almost like they play a role once they get into that role, but it's no longer as human as they once were. It's okay that people know you really like pancake.
Kosheno Moore: That's totally fine.
Shawn Pfunder: Right, and you can talk about pancakes during your team meeting if you want to talk about pancakes during your team meeting. Instead of business, business, business all the time. Well, how can folks connect to you on LinkedIn, on the socials? How are you comfortable letting folks connect with you?
Kosheno Moore: Yeah, I'm definitely on LinkedIn. Love sharing a lot of the cultural efforts that Fidelity is driving and a lot of the thought leadership of my colleagues and peers who are really active in this space. I think there's a lot of conversation to really, you know, Have us think creatively and then we're at unprecedented time to kind of help define like what the future of work look like.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Kosheno Moore: So yeah, I'm definitely on LinkedIn.
Shawn Pfunder: All right. There you have it. Find Kosheno on LinkedIn and define the future of work. I keep having these conversations. I love it. Hey, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. It's been wonderful to meet you.
Kosheno Moore: Thank you. Likewise. I appreciate the time.