Re-imagining the ‘boring bits’ #1
Reflections from our conversation with Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs
In March 2024 we talked to Indy Johar from Dark Matter (DML) as a part of our preparation for an event — and hopefully the spark of a local movement in what DML calls the Boring Revolution. We’re taking chunks of that conversation and sharing our reflections and local context over a series of short blogs.
It’s quite easy to get excited about the ‘shiny objects’ that populate thinking about innovation for a better world — better tech, better services, new products. But we’d suggest that re-imagining the ‘boring bits’ has a central role to play if we are to truly ‘change the world’.
Bits like the structural ways of working in institutions, organisations and communities — things like regulatory frameworks, procurement and contracting processes, compliance requirements, reporting priorities human resource policies, intellectual property arrangements …
Over many years we’ve been working across different domains where these elements have come up time and again as what needs shifting for greater change to initiate and, in many cases, to ‘stick’.
We see both constraints and opportunities in that. And while we’re excited about the opportunities we see in re-structuring the ‘boring bits’ there’s lots of exploration needed to understand HOW this could be done across diverse domains.
In addition to our own practice, we’ve been inspired and energised by the work of others in this space, particularly Dark Matter and their explorations into the Boring Revolution.
We sat with Indy Johar to get his views on why a Boring Revolution is important, and to explore some opportunities currently surfacing in the Australian context.
Listen to his perspective on why our current ways of organising as a society are self-terminating, and the worldviews that would support the shifts needed.
The conversation has furthered our wondering about how to catalyse and support shifts when we’re often operating in contexts that feel stuck. Indy’s positive perspective on this was both hopeful and challenging.
And so we’re committed to exploring how we might elevate the boring bits in our context.
Some in our team have backgrounds in examining opportunities that lie in procurement, but we’re interested in the many domains where the ‘boring bits’ play out (pretty much everywhere!)
To further learning and sharing of practice-based-experience we’re looking for brave partners to work with, who bring their rich contexts and technical experience, to work together on how we could open up that practice and thinking.
We’re also interested in exploring how to think more openly about and work constructively with ‘snap back’. When hard-won shifts are undone — as a result of people, policy and/or political changes in the broader context. It can be devastating for those who worked so hard to bring about the change.
We’re asking how we can connect learning and practice, so that insights generated through what Indy has called the ‘million micro experiments’ could be shared broadly so that useful practices can more quickly be integrated into the DNA of organisations? What can we do today to start on this journey? (We note that recently Indy / DML put out a call on LinkedIn to see who might be interested if DML or a combination of orgs hosted an open online “office hours” programme for people building real options for societal transition.)
Drop us a line at GCSI@griffith.edu.au if you’re a brave, curious explorer in these domains in Australia or Aotearoa New Zealand and are interested in working on this together.
