It’s been a little while since I’ve written. Trying not to feel too disappointed with myself, having started the year with such good intentions to share a more regular stream of consciousness. Life has been quite turbulent for me lately; I moved home in March, uprooting from Liverpool to Hebden Bridge. If any of you reading are based in West Yorkshire and would like to connect, let me know! I underestimated the scale and intensity of moving home and managed to get Covid in the middle of it all. Yet here I am, tucked away in some rolling hills and enjoying life. It’s good to have some space for writing again.
There’s been a huge amount going on at Catalyst too. This note is going to provide some insight on our two day core team retreat, focussing on how we co-created our draft new strategy. As some of you may be aware, we’re undergoing a strategic review this year, which means that absolutely everything is up for grabs.
The aims of the two day team retreat were;
- To gain clarity on the scope of the review project activities and start to define a project plan.
- To identify the broad groups of stakeholders which currently exist and who needs to be involved / informed / consulted within each project phase.
- To evaluate the governance structures for the Catalyst network and make some progress on decision making mechanisms and processes.
- To spend quality time together as a team and build relationships, to provide space away from ‘business as usual’ activities.
There was a particular focus on strategy forming and drafting a robust plan for the review project (which we’re already in progress delivering). Despite our team being very effective at collaborating virtually, there is nothing quite like getting together in person to brainstorm, get creative, vibe off one another and do that more informal ‘getting to know you’ stuff — which is still important as we’ve not long formed a team.
The venue for the two days was the Manchester Buddhist Centre, a beautiful and tranquil place in the heart of the Northern Quarter. We booked the library space which was filled with inspirational books on spirituality and dharma. The combination of red bricks, wafts of incense and innate calm of the place set the scene for our visioning perfectly. It felt so aligned with our core values of love and reciprocity. We even managed to fit in a lunchtime meditation session, which was aptly directed around sending love and peace out to humanity.
I’d like to give a shout out to our facilitator, Ellie Osbourne. Ellie guided us expertly through a jam packed agenda and managed to somehow balance some very ambitious expectations for what could be done within the timeframe, alongside building in space for peace, connection and relaxation. Having Ellie on board also meant we could all participate fully.
What happens on a Producer retreat?
Well, we covered a LOT of ground. Here’s some of the highlights:
Drafting a shared vision, mission, and some 5 year and 3 year goals through a framework known as the EOS. We had done some prep work for this, and already created our shared values.
Exploration of stakeholder mapping, both for the review as a project and Catalyst as a whole.
Social benefit modelling to help inform our vision and goals. What impact will we create? Who will benefit from our activities? Why do we exist?
Review project planning — day two of the retreat was more practical, aiming to identify work streams within the project, clarify roles, and plan out the strategy work stream.
There’s a lot to potentially reflect upon, but I’ll start with the strategy sessions, as that is the work stream within the review which I’m leading on.
Why did we choose EOS as a framework for the strategy?
This is a framework which was introduced to me during my time at InnovateHer by Tony Foggett, CEO of Code Computer Love. It’s based on a book called ‘Traction’ by Gene Wickman. Simply put, it is a 2–3 page strategy which is agile and iterated regularly. No more lengthy strategy documents which take an age to explain and nobody ever really looks at again. It maintains its relevance by regularly being ‘pulsed’; monthly, quarterly, annually, and linking this to the longer term ‘bigger picture’ (3 and 5 years in our case, to align with our funding runway). Despite some of the cringey American terms in use (‘rocks!’) and its formal business language, it really does work when it’s adopted and backed up by a robust monitoring system, in my experience.
We agreed to adopt this model as a core team for now because we felt a strong need to have some clarity on our vision, mission and immediate goals for this year, even if they aren’t perfect. We have a lot to deliver across multiple funding strands and the strategic review to complete. It should help keep us aligned and motivated, but also provides clarity on what to focus on, and where the pressing needs are.
We all acknowledged that this will also need to be presented to the wider network for input and review. We felt it was better to start with something concrete for this consultation piece, rather than a blank sheet of paper. As Producers we have been given a clear mandate to set the vision for Catalyst, but there’s a ongoing tension arising from the need to move forward quickly and the desire to be fully collaborative and participatory with the network, rather than imposing a ‘top down’ approach.
Setting the vision for Catalyst
This is so tough! Anybody who has tried to do this for a organisation, project or entity will know our struggle. We started by reviewing previous versions of the vision pulled from various resources, alongside iterations of the theory of change which Ellie had kindly pulled together in a beautiful Miro for us.
We then brainstormed some key words which we felt must be in the vision statement. We didn’t arrive at the final version that day and it didn’t feel close. But it ‘percolated’ overnight and the following morning there was a ‘aha’ moment when it surfaced.
Our vision statement is;
To collectively realise a digitally enabled and resilient social sector.
It’s intentionally simple, and it doesn’t deviate much from the previous versions. We tested them, and found that much about the original vision from 2019 when Catalyst first launched still rang true. This comes with a caveat in that during the review process we’ll be undertaking sector needs research, to uncover what it is the social sector needs from Catalyst right now and whether this has shifted over the past two years. If that research shows that this vision needs amending, we’ll be evolving it. Yet we think it’s good enough for now, safe enough to try.
Our mission is;
To develop an ecosystem of social sector actors who are actively creating digital networks, infrastructure and practice, to drive societal change.
This is our ‘how’ statement. How are we realising a digitally enabled and resilient social sector? It’s mostly through our network (or ecosystem), collectively. Our current ‘test’ is centred around initiatives (or projects) which provide a range of digital services to social sector organisations and we connect these up through our network.
This mission also nods to the ambition that we’re actively testing out new ways of organising collectively to help address social issues. (credit to Suraj Vadgama from Nesta for this helpful framing). We’re seeking to experiment with different models of infrastructure and governance because we want to drive systemic change. There’s work still to do on the ‘why?’ So we expect that this mission statement will continue to evolve, too.
We’ve created some 5, 3 and 1 year goals which we’ll be sharing with the wider network very soon. We’d welcome input from both those currently inside the Catalyst network and equally those who have never engaged with it.
Stakeholder mapping
To help us identify who our key stakeholders are, and to make sure we involve and engage with them at the right levels (and at the right time), we also completed a stakeholder mapping exercise. This is work we’ve been doing in the background for a couple of months, looking at the mapping from different angles and trying out different models.
On the retreat, we tried the RACI model to help highlight levels of stakeholders. It shone a light on some of the power dynamics we were already aware of, but that feel more urgent to address. For instance, currently responsibility for decisions and resources rest largely with the core team of Producers, key members of the CAST support team and the CAST board, due to our structure and legal status. The Initiative leads group are accountable for directing some resources and making some decisions pertaining to their projects.
We aspire to work in a truly decentralised way with a less hierarchical approach. To do this, we must intentionally shift power by changing the structures around the centre and defining a more clear governance model for this, so that others are clear on their roles and accountability within the model. This links to a very insightful debriefing session we held with the current Initiative Leads this month, which highlighted very similar themes. Ellie is writing a piece to expand on what we discovered.
There’s more work to do on understanding the needs of these stakeholders and how we can potentially meet them, in more depth.
How will we be approaching the review project?
We have identified work streams so that we can each have clear responsibility and roles within the project. These include:
Sector research (Ellie)
Models and governance (Siana)
Impact and learning (Ellie)
Operations (Jo)
Strategy (Jo)
Network Engagement / communications (Siana)
This runs alongside the ‘business as usual’ activities, under which all the Catalyst initiatives and programmes will continue to run, and the data from these will also inform aspects of the review — under the research and impact and learning strands.
If you want to go far, go together
We are planning to have finished most of the core aspects of the review project by December 2022. It takes much longer to collectively realise a project like this, and we’re only a tiny core team, but we aspire to include and engage the network along the way which we think is essential and speaks to our core value of collectivism.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African proverb
There will be more from us soon on how to get involved with shaping the future of Catalyst, with opportunities for all to input. We’ll be sharing our draft EOS first. In the meantime if you have any ideas, comments or feedback, get in touch.
