Why does the IDF need the career servicewomen community?
The community supports women who want to feel part of the organization even when they're away from their role. It strengthens their sense of connection and makes information about their rights and obligations after giving birth easy to access. It also surfaces issues and pain points that senior commanders and professional staff would have no other way of knowing about, certainly not this quickly. And no less important: the community has become fertile ground for entrepreneurship inside the army.
How was the community founded?
It all started with my own story. After years in meaningful roles, I went on maternity leave and suddenly felt lonely.
I felt I needed guidance, partnership and friendship, and I needed easy access to information about my rights and obligations. Michal, a friend and a career servicewoman herself, felt exactly the same. We were both members of another community for nursing mothers, and that's where we got the inspiration to start a meetup group.
In the community's early days, a month after I gave birth, I posted in the group inviting everyone to my place and asking them to bring their baby and something tasty to eat. 10 women came from all kinds of places across the IDF. It was so much fun that we scheduled another meetup. We started coordinating meetups in a WhatsApp group that became a sub-community of its own. And that's how it snowballed.
Worth noting: to start a community inside a military system, we had to think about the formal side too (legal approval, information security approval), and we defined procedures and rules. For example, ever since we founded the community, the only way to add new members has been "a friend brings a friend," because we want to keep it relatively confidential and avoid risks. Anyone who wants to add someone has to message us privately, and only then do we approve.
What is the career servicewomen community and how does it work?
Today the community has 3,600 members and 13 leaders who run it through a Facebook group and WhatsApp groups.
The community has spun off dozens of groups for needs that came up: maternity leave, nursing mothers, pregnant women, a group for returning to work after maternity leave (a very complex stage), and a moving group of women going through fertility treatment who support one another. Today our community is a full set of platforms that meet a career servicewoman's needs across every area of her life and every stage she's in, and it constantly generates conversation and connection. We also have an anonymity mechanism that lets us post on behalf of women who don't want to be identified.
These groups created a sense of connection, both to one another and to the organization. We're talking about women from across the army, at different ranks and in different roles, some at headquarters and some in the field. That creates a unique kind of diversity that only happens inside the community.
When did you realize the community was working?
The most meaningful moment was when a parenting center was established thanks to a post in the community that sank into people's awareness. Within a year of that post, the ribbon was cut at the Matzpim center. For me, that was the seal of approval for the community's need and value.
There were small, lovely moments too. At the end of one of my talks, a woman in the audience said she had joined the community 2 years earlier and it simply changed her life. It made her feel more connected to the organization and helped her deal with all kinds of challenges she was facing. Every time she ran into an issue or a problem, she found a quick solution in our community (plus a hug along the way), and that changed her whole experience of service.
Incredible connections also formed between women from completely different corners of the army. After sitting together for 3 hours, they discovered they had a lot in common, and real potential to connect professionally too.
Cracking the win-win: how do you make sure both the community and the organization get value?
The win for the community: career servicewomen get a complete set of support and information that's available to them at all times, during maternity leave and after. New connections and friendships form, and their sense of belonging to the organization is maintained and grows stronger.
The win for the organization: senior commanders get exposure to the conversation. Everything rises from the community to the top of the chain of command relatively quickly and accurately. Painful issues, needs and wishes surface in the community, get space, and from there drive change and impact. On top of that, the community has become fertile ground for entrepreneurship inside the organization.
The magic and value of a community is exactly this: pointing to places the organization didn't realize were so painful, and showing what was hiding there.
What challenges did you face?
- The community grew on the margins. When I told one of my superiors I had founded it, he warned me, a little anxiously, to make sure it didn't harm the corps we served in. That shows he didn't understand the community's huge, positive potential.
- Even today, 5 years after we started the community, a big part of my work is making its value to the organization visible and explaining it. Happily, more and more commanders, women and men, are seeing that value.
- Another challenge is setting up meetups for women on maternity leave, at different ranks and from different places, who sometimes can't even manage to make a cup of coffee and drink it while it's hot. Getting a meetup to actually happen isn't always simple. But passing the lead from one woman to the next allowed us to keep the meetups going.
- Even when you want to drive change, you have to make your impact while staying within the organization's lines. You need to find that delicate balance: getting what you want without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Tips for building a successful community
- Sometimes when we start something in an organization, we want to connect with senior management and get their approval. But pure entrepreneurship doesn't look for approval from above. We're simply passionate about it. Once it's established and up and running, that's when we bring the organization's leadership on board.
- You have to dare. Bring your ideas as they are. Don't hide. Be proud of your idea and don't give up.
- When you want to drive change, it's important (also) to make your impact while staying within the organization's lines. In other words, find the delicate balance between getting what you want and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- We tend to be afraid that a community will replace or undermine an existing mechanism, and in the army that's doubly complicated. But today, a community doesn't compete with the standard mechanism; it offers an alternative. A manager can't always provide an answer, and the community complements the existing mechanisms. The more comfortable you get with that, the more value you can get out of it.