Flow

02 · What good looks like

Digital feng shui.

In feng shui, harmony comes from how energy moves through a space. Flow applies the same idea to attention: people, content and communications move to where they belong, and stay out of the way otherwise.

Natural, not mechanical

Flow isn't a set of rules or automations someone has to build and maintain. It follows the way information already moves among people: a committee's work flows up to leadership, the notes and photos from a meetup land back where it was held, and a region's invitation reaches every local group beneath it. Because it's built into how spaces relate to each other, it works from day one, without setup.

Inside a group: rooms, spaces and the hub

Everything a group uses is a digital space. The hub is its home. Spaces are its main areas, rooms are the smaller groups inside them, and meetups are gatherings that start and end. Hubs, spaces and rooms are always there; meetups come and go.

• Activity flows upActivity flows up from rooms to spaces to the hub, so leaders see what's happening without asking for reports.
• Meetups come homeWhat a meetup produces, from notes to photos to follow-ups, flows back to the hub, space or room it started from.
• Folders move every wayFiles in folders flow in every direction, so they're where everyone expects them.
• Shelves choose their flowEach shelf of resources flows up, down, both ways or stays put. A committee's working notes stay in its room; organization-wide forms appear on every shelf below.

Across the organization: hub to hub

In organizations with local chapters, every chapter has a hub, and so do its region and the national organization. Flow between them runs hub to hub. It never reaches into another group's spaces or rooms, so each group's inner life stays its own.

• DownA region invites all of its local groups to a meetup, or posts to its blog for all of them.
• UpA local group submits a post to the national blog for publishing. Members, and credit for the money they raise, roll up from local group to region to national.
• SidewaysLocal groups collaborate by invitation: one proposes a co-hosted meetup or a shared post, and the other accepts.

A local group that sponsors a student or youth group stays connected to it and can collaborate freely, while each group still belongs to its own region.

What flows is more than posts: people (members, donors, attendees, shoppers and sponsors), content, communications and money, each moving the way it naturally would.

Just in time

Flow also respects each member's attention. Members should find what they need at the moment they need it, without hunting:

• Back to the sourceAny reply links back to the conversation it came from, so nobody scrolls to find context.
• Since you were last hereA personal recap on arrival: what changed with your people.
• Live summariesTap and hold, or hover, on an active space to see what's happening without going in.
• Signal MixerMute, pause, digest or elevate any space, person or topic, right from a message. Each member sets their own dial.

Connected elementsHow arriving feels is covered in 07Feel. Who can message whom is governed by 02Process.

04 · Ask yourself

Questions for your leadership team.

1. Where does your most important announcement live a week after you post it?
2. How many places do leaders post the same message?
3. Does committee work reach leadership on its own, or only when someone forwards it?
4. When your region or national hosts something, how do members find out?
5. When a member comes back after a month away, what do they see first?