Fieldnotes: The nascent stages of lab formation
Part 1 — Exploring the emerging seeds of tackling environmental challenges
Lately I’ve been reflecting deeply on the work I view as the most needed in the world. My Masters (focused on environmental impact of conservation projects) is drawing to a close, which means my focus is lifting to glimpse at what the next couple of years might have in store.
In my last posts for my Masters, and my ode to Lifehack’s work in NZ, I hinted towards my intention to train my skills, energy and recent experiences in the social labs space, onto the challenges most close to my heart: biodiversity loss and climate change.
Over the course of my career, I have become more and more interested in the question of what we need to do to go from awareness of environmental challenges, to developing strategies and taking action.
As Otto Scharmer says in a recent interview:
I believe many people would like to lean into the emerging future. But it is not easy. You need to build the capacity, on an individual level and on a collective level. This capacity allows you to deal with disruption; to lean in so you can sense and actualize the emerging future possibilities. What reliable methods allow us to do just that?
Otto Scharmer — Interview with TwentyThirty
The majority of the last 10 years of my life have been spent in service to this question. From investing in the Enspiral collective to trying to build a Local Food tech startup, from co-leading a social lab to experimenting with various forms of communities of practice for people leading work on complex challenges. The thread has been about collective action, and launching & sustaining impact.
So what next?
Well, I promised a group of people working on good stuff in the UK, that go by the name ‘Fellow Travellers’, that I would try to lift the lid on this next phase — to work out loud as it were, on the developments of a lab, from scratch.
Laying The Foundations
Firstly, I wanted to lay out some of the important first steps I see in building a Lab. These first steps draw heavily on Mia Eisenstadt & Zaid Hassan’s work on social labs, and specifically the Preconditions which need to be addressed before convening people and getting to work.
I share this as a first step to help guide my own work, and for others to use to investigate complex challenges from a fresh slate.
Relationships First
The key to any successful intervention in complex challenges, is to realise the importance of relationships. As I wrote in The Relational Field, we are able to achieve more if we acknowledge that we do not have all the answers to the challenges which face us. In short, the first steps in my process, are to start looking around for the good humans who I would feel privileged to work alongside.
For me, a strong team isn’t really just about skill, craft and experience — it’s about the ability to effectively function as a team, learn fast, and tap into other resources as we encounter challenges.
I had an amazing opportunistic catch up with good humans today, which partially prompted this long overdue post.
Consider this a call out to other people, across Australia and New Zealand who are interested in supporting trans-disciplinary work on biodiversity loss, in the coming months and years, to get in touch.
Lab Modelling
One area which is little understood, and perhaps not explored hugely — is attempting to capture the core aspects of a Lab, succinctly, to be shared with stakeholders to build momentum.
I had discussions with Joshua Cubista awhile back in this space, so I feel it’s time for us to be in touch again to discuss this area.
I see it somewhat like the emergence of a practice around business modelling, and platform modelling in recent years. With a canvas as a centrepiece for a design process, the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder), Lean Canvas (Maurya) and Platform Design Toolkit (Cicero) all emerged as lightweight tools to capture and share the essence of strategic design when it comes to businesses and platforms.
In short, I envisage the coming months will look at creating a similar tool for early stage social labs. I’ll write about that more as it happens.
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