| SPACE MANAGER

Chat spaces scale from 1 person to 10.000s. Here is how the best space managers help their spaces grow.

How to become a space manager

Some chat spaces are like startups: The founder is the manager.  And they can make their buddies from business school managers too! Nobody gets equity though, that's a bummer.

Other spaces are meritocracies: You can be promoted to space manager. As with many promotions, your payment stays the same, but your responsibilities increase. Promotion means someone looked at the list of members, thought you trustworthy and clicked the Make manager button next to your name. That someone is usually an existing manager - a Google admin in your organization can also promote you. Just like when Global Headquarters steps in.

Finally, some spaces are sluggish bureaucracies: When the last manager in a space leaves the company, Google Chat will automatically promote the two longest-serving members in a space. This means less work for Global Headquarters - yet you can always call HQ if you think management should be replaced.

Space managers have additional powers

As Chat spaces grow, their managers are tasked to keep the peace. To do so, they have two categories of superpowers: Actions and policies.

The smart space manager will exercise power by setting policies, such as Who can find/view/join a chat space? Anyone enables your space to show up in search results and grow. Anyone with the link can join a discoverable space. Restricted means someone from the space has to add new people. Like sharing a file in Drive, isn't it?

By the way: There are 2 important settings you can only configure once, while creating the chat space. These "founder" settings are locked afterwards:

1. External members: Marks your chat space as "External". You can add people from outside your domain to these chat spaces.

2. Only space managers can post: Everyone else can only react to your messages. For these spaces, an 8th policy becomes available: "Who can reply to messages". This lets you open your space for replies if that's adequate, even temporarily.

Space managers can take actions nobody else can: They can see the view counts for everyone's messages, not just their own. They can delete messages that other people post*, and if push comes to shove, they can delete the whole chat space. And they are the only ones who can promote others to managers (and back).

How to manage your space like a pro

Just like Meet can scale from 1:1 meetings to webcasts with hundreds of thousands, so can Chat. Wise space managers recognize where their space lives on a continuum between a cozy group chat and a massive announcement space. As your startup grows, things might have to mature. You now have policies for that.

Experienced space managers don't go it alone: Spaces can have multiple managers, so make sure to promote at least one other person to manager. In case anything happens on your vacation, these people can resolve any situation in your community - and if you should leave the company, the space will be in good hands.

Finally, the best space managers are gardeners: They set their spaces up for success (by writing helpful space details, provide links to FAQs and team sites in the space details) but also intervene when necessary. They handle difficult Chat situations gracefully - if necessary, outside the space.

As Chat's popularity explodes and its usefulness keeps growing, do take a look at spaces that you manage. Do you have co-managers in place? Should people still be able to use @all? Does your space have a helpful description so others can find it?

Thank you for reading!

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