community-diagnostics

name	community-diagnostics
description	When community engagement is low or members aren't returning, diagnose whether the issue is coordination failure (incentive misalignment, siloed internal teams, top-down adoption, broken information flow) — not "more content." Communities are moats that fail when starved of resources or treated as a marketing channel.
composition_level	atom
extraction-lens	capability
source_attribution	Matt Bond (Hivemind Library) — synthesized from a16z Future
license	pending-consent
status	candidate

Community Diagnostics

When to use

• Community engagement declining or churn rising
• Community feels like a marketing channel rather than a coordination layer
• Different teams (product, marketing, support) give conflicting messages
• Considering community investment but unsure where to start
• Pre-TGE community readiness check

When NOT to use

• Pre-launch with no community yet (build before diagnosing)
• Community with strong, sustained engagement (no problem to diagnose)
• Tactical content / channel optimization

Core procedure

Step 1: Identify community type

Different community types require different incentives, governance, and content. Pick one explicitly:

• Community of Product — formed around using the product (Notion, Figma)
• Community of Practice — formed around shared craft or discipline (DevRel, design ops)
• Community of Play — formed around shared identity or culture (NFTs, BAYC, fandom)

If the team doesn't know which type they're building, that's the first finding.

Step 2: Diagnose the six coordination dimensions

Score each: aligned / misaligned / unclear.

1. Incentive alignment — do budgets and KPIs reward community success, or do programs languish?
2. Internal alignment — do marketing, product, support, leadership share a common vision? Or do siloed departments create conflicting messages?
3. Go-to-community readiness — is the community type clear (product/practice/play)? Each requires distinct mechanics.
4. Bottom-up adoption — are participants empowered with self-serve experiences and encouraged to evangelize / co-create? Or is the team expecting top-down adoption?
5. Information flow — do forums, AMAs, on-chain governance let feedback shape roadmaps? Or is feedback ignored?
6. Measurement & iteration — is the team tracking participation, retention, sentiment? Are engagement drops being treated as coordination issues rather than content issues?

Step 3: Identify the bottleneck

If multiple dimensions score "misaligned," start with incentive alignment (cascades into everything else) or internal alignment (siloed teams produce siloed communities).

Step 4: Output recommendations as coordination fixes, not tactical fixes

The skill's value is redirecting from "we need more content" to "we have a coordination failure." Output should name the structural issue and propose the structural fix.

Output format

COMMUNITY TYPE: product | practice | play | unclear

DIMENSION SCORES:
- Incentive alignment: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Internal alignment: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- GTC readiness: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Bottom-up adoption: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Information flow: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)
- Measurement: aligned | misaligned | unclear (notes)

PRIMARY BOTTLENECK: [which dimension]
DIAGNOSIS: [structural cause, not symptom]
RECOMMENDED FIX: [coordination fix, not tactical fix]

Anchor examples

• Figma — community of practice around design, with strong cross-functional resources, bottom-up adoption (designers evangelize internally), and dedicated community team treated as first-class function.
• Lululemon — community of play around fitness identity, with rituals (run clubs, ambassadors) that compound retention beyond product.

Both invested in community as moat, not as marketing channel.

Failure modes

• Treating community as marketing. "Post more on Discord" treats symptoms, not causes.
• Siloed budget and KPIs. When community KPIs aren't tied to revenue/retention, the program languishes.
• Top-down expectations. Founders expecting community to "just happen" without empowering bottom-up creation.
• Wrong community type. A community of practice approach in a product context (or vice versa) produces friction.

Related skills

• dao-failure-pre-mortem — applies when DAO governance is the coordination layer
• incentive-surface-diagnostic — drills into incentive alignment specifically
• four-foundational-stories — the Group story is what makes community possible