Adding Belonging to the Collective Contribution Equation

Yesterday, during Collective Contribution LIVE, Paul Haury made an observation that made so much sense, and simultaneously blew my mind:

Belonging exists between two people.

Immediately, I drew the comparison to the livestream itself.

All the people in the room are people who I have belonging with. They accept the invitation because they have belonging with me. That is an individual relationship. Then we get into the digital room, and the possibility of additional belonging becomes possible. But it doesn't come to life until those people choose eachother in belonging.

Which I, as the possibility-creator, don't control.

It's such an interesting phenomenon that I thought it deserved it's own article.

So here we are :)

And since we've been having some fun with the equation of Collective Contribution, let's try to bring these two concepts together.

Ready for the adventure?

Adding Belonging to the Equation

Here's the working hypothesis so far for the Collective Contribution equation for momentum:

{(A + B)R + P} = CC

CC + CC = M

A has something meaningful to contribute and B is ready to receive it.

Two more dimensions then come into play: The Relationship (R) and The Problem (P). The Relationship is a multiplier to (A+B) (which means, if it's zero, that potential collective contribution remains hidden to the world). And then, of course, the people need to see something they want to fix, so we add The Problem in. That entire equation so far? That's The Experiment (E). And on the other side of The Experiment, we have the Collective Contribution.

Start stacking Collective Contributions, and we generate Momentum (M).

So if belonging matters to Collective Contribution, where does it live?

My perspective? Somewhere in the R. Or perhaps, there is even a way to convert the R to a B, to say, give a multiplier more power?

Understanding the A's and B's

As we explored in the Collective Contribution Math article, we tend to count participants as 1's. A company with 20 people has 20 ones. A livestream panel has 5 ones. A slopitch team with 15 people has 15 ones.

But as we've already explored, a collective isn't just a collection of ones. There are operations that allow those ones to become greater than the sum of it's parts.

And Belonging (B) is one of them.

Because if A has something meaningful to contribute and B is ready to receive it, there is still something happening between A and B that determines what becomes possible next.

P.S. In the equation, it looks like brackets.

A container, per se. A Relationship Container.

So, let's explore the impacts of Belonging when we start by defining the container.

Way One: Start With the Container

I think most of us are familiar with this: we get hired into a team that already has X employees. We join a slopitch team that's made up of a bunch of individual registrants. We join a community board or someone else's game night.

We are now part of an identifiable group of people with a boundary around them.

Now, you can end up in one of these groups and NOT belong. And if you want to dive into that experience, check out the conversation in the live linked at the top of this article. But I'm not exploring that as part of this article; I'm exploring how we USE the container we are given (or have chosen), to create belonging WITHIN.

And in fact, the container does something incredibly useful:

It creates the opportunity for connection.

It puts people in proximity who might never otherwise have met. It gives them a shared problem, experience or purpose around which relationships can form.

The conditions have been created FOR Belonging. But the container itself doesn't do it.

The PEOPLE do.

So, while the container is very good at gathering the ones, there's something more that makes the + sign appear between them. And that leads us into another potential starting point...

Way Two: Start With the Strands

In this scenario, we don't start with 15 people on the slopitch team. We start with two.

A ↔ B.

Two people have a connection. They become curious about one another. They understand something they didn't understand before. Maybe they discover something they care about together. And for each member in that two-some, that is happening mutiple times. So, while A is building relationship with B, B is also building relationship with others.

B ↔ C.

My current slopitch team is an AMAZING example of this.

My sister played last season. She connected with a few of the team members who decided to play together again. But they didn't have enough people. So, I joined. And one of the other players brought his roommate. And we still didn't have enough, so they added another couple (they came together), and another triad (they came together), and one single solo player, who I played catch with before the first game to bring him into the group.

That's a BUNCH of 1:1 relationships thrown together into one container, each of those relationships based in individual strands of belonging.

And when those strands start connecting, something else happens.

What began as: I belong with you.

Starts becoming: We belong together.

While I'm generally more an observer of reality than a reader of deep research, I wanted to see if there was any research that would give us some useful language for this distinction, and I came across these two terms:

Relational identification—the connection created through our relationship with another person

Collective identification—the connection we experience with a larger group.

They are NOT the same thing. Although, of course, they are connected.

And while, originally, I had thought this post would uncover that one of the Ways was more successful in designing Belonging, what I discovered is that BOTH are contributors.

And they need to work together; a Collective Contribution I guess I would say 🤣

Creating Containers & Strands, Together

What makes this revelation especially interesting to me is that I'm currently involved in experiments that start from both directions.

When I create LIVE events, like Collective Contribution LIVE (the first one is happening on Sept 23, 2026 and tickets are still available), we start with the container.

Cat Seier and I are intentionally inviting people into a physical experience. We create the room. We create some structure. We introduce ideas and activities designed to give people opportunities to interact. The collective exists, at least structurally, before most of the relationships do. And then we ask:

What conditions help meaningful strands form inside it?

Think Big, DO BIGGER will do this at a much larger scale. Hundreds of people will enter an experience with a common invitation: bring the ONE thing you're thinking about, working on or trying to move forward. Simon Hartley and I construct the walls around the experience; not to dictate exactly what happens inside, but to create enough structure for people to find each other, contribute and build something together.

On the other hand, some of the other Collective Contribution experiments have grown in almost exactly the opposite direction. Take CCTV for example. That series started with individual conversations, that showed me that multiple people were talking about the same thing (albiet with unique perspectives). All those 1:1 converted into a collective room.

An important thing to note is that those conversations weren't originally pieces of some carefully engineered community architecture.

They were strands; generative strands that didn't exist until they did.

And slowly, those strands started intersecting.

People began referencing ideas from other conversations. Introductions created new conversations. Patterns emerged that no single conversation contained on its own.

The panel isn't interesting because several people appear on the same screen. It's interesting because of what happens between them.

One person's thought changes someone else's thought. Someone builds on an idea. Someone challenges an assumption. Someone connects two things that hadn't previously been connected. And eventually, the conversation itself starts creating something none of us brought into it alone. And new possibilities for containers exist on the other side.

Two Ways Into the Equation

So, if there isn't one right way into the equation, maybe the more useful question is:

Whichever one we start with, do we understand what's still missing?

If we start with the container, our work isn't finished when everyone arrives. We next need to create opportunities for strands to form.

If we start with the strands, our work isn't finished when meaningful relationships exist. We have to notice when those relationships share enough purpose, energy or possibility that connecting them could create something larger.

And as we say that, if the inputs are the same, is there a way to create a mechanism that allows for all the components, once they exist, to be woven together into Collective Contribution?

The Equation Becomes The Loom

Is it too old school at this point to use a loom as a metaphor? Not Loom the video recorder, but a loom that weaves thread together into larger pieces of fabric.

Imagine the equation we've been exploring above as a loom; anyone can build one. We can create boundaries and bring people into proximity. We can offer a shared purpose and create opportunities to contribute.

But the loom isn't the fabric.

The fabric appears when the threads begin crossing.

A connects with B. B connects with C. C sees something in A's idea that A couldn't see. D contributes something none of them possess.

One strand crosses another, which crosses another, until eventually it's difficult to identify where one relationship ends and the collective begins.

And suddenly, something new exists.

The + Sign.

The Plus Sign Matters

It's funny. When I think about Math, I always think about it from left to right (like reading).

A + B = ?

First, A. Then a + sign. Then B. Then, a sum.

Even when we look at an equation in brackets, we know we do what's in the brackets first, but we STILL do it linearly.

But the more I explore this People Math, the more I think that isn't actually the case.

With a container, I can put A and B together (A B), but it's actually their interaction with eachother that creates what happens next. They decide if they're going to be a +, or if they're going to walk back out the bracket door of that container.

And that, an outside party can't control.

So, what does it come down to?

A and B CHOOSING to invest in eachother. In eachother's successes, dreams and failures. And the more we do that, regardless of whether or not the container was created first, the more powerful we make the equation.

And if we're going for Momentum, we need all the power we can get.

At the end of the day, maybe Belonging isn't just a part of the equation. Maybe it helps turn a + sign from a mathematical symbol into a human one 💞

Wanna get in the conversation? DM me and we can start with Way 2 ;)