What does a good ending look like?

Reflections on how we’re closing Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation

Good Shifts
The Good Shift
14 min readSep 26, 2024

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In May 2024 GCSI received news that the University would not be continuing the Centre’s funding beyond the end of our initial five-year exploration period, established in 2019. This gave us five months to consider how best to ‘gently unpick’ the Centre and what next for the people within and the work underway.

This year we evolved our Chimes practice to be called a ‘Fermentation Space’. Part generative conversation and part learning space. In one of these sessions we asked each other:

What does a good ending look like and how is GCSI chrysalising into its next form?

We’re sharing here what came out of that conversation, in all its meandering glory. It’s worth noting the interesting tension that exists between the collective and individual experience. We have all experienced this time differently and so we invite you to read the below as a pooling of different perspectives that may sometimes be at odds with one another.

The illustrations throughout are by our Director Ingrid Burkett who sketched them as part of a collective exercise testing a new team-based approach to the RADMIN — In Your Livelihood program (more about that towards the end).

Why does an ending sometimes feel like failure? And is it even an ending?

It’s a cultural construct of mainstream narrative that if something ends, it didn’t work. Or to be successful it must continue indefinitely, scale and grow.

But when we begin to learn from nature, and recognise the wisdom of Indigenous Knowledges we remember, as adrienne maree brown says:

“Everything dies, but that’s kind of good. It makes for a very rich world. All the richness, all that fecundity, all that beautiful miracle of life; it happens because we live in cycles, not perpetuity. Let’s learn what we need to learn and move on. To compost this and process it and see where else the resources need to flow… it’s vitality. What you’re speaking to is life force… mushrooms know this.”

(note — this quote is an excerpt of a podcast with Krista Tippet and we’ve moved the order around a little bit. We believe the intent is still honoured. It’s worth a listen to the whole thing!)

Acknowledging the messiness in transformation

Tied in with our society’s avoidance of talking about death is a tendency to gloss over the hard bits. Perhaps because we don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable? Or maybe we’re wanting to encourage with a ‘you can do it!’ achievement type mindset.

But we need to be prepared for, to hold space for and be ok with the messiness and grief in transformation.

If we look at two common metaphors for transformation — a phoenix and a caterpillar, we see the phoenix obtains new life by rising from the ashes of its predecessor, and a caterpillar breaks down its own body before rearranging its cells to become the butterfly (rather extraordinary actually!) Those metaphors helped us feel ‘ok’ with this messy stage. Although there was a reflection from one team member that they’re still quite individual processes.

We found that despite having moved on with a positive narrative and response (more about that below) for some of us there was still a little anger, hurt and anxiousness co-existing with that. We spent quite a bit of this conversation giving space to these feelings and observations.

And even though at GCSI we intentionally created opportunities to acknowledge and work through the complexity and difficulty of this particular ending, we were still somewhat surprised perhaps at the depth and lingering ‘shitty’ bits, as someone called them.

One person shared that when faced with the inevitable and well-meaning ‘pity or sad’ responses from people, she had to keep reminding herself that it was important not to see this through the lens of failure. That it wasn’t ‘good enough’ to survive. Even though she knew in principle that was not the case.

Which brought us to a conversation about success and what that actually looks like. Another team member reminded us that if we’re working in complexity and areas where we don’t yet know what success looks like, then holding our ‘thing’ lightly — whether it be a project, an organisation, an idea — and deliberately taking one step at a time to see what evolves, is actually success. Even when it ends or turns into something different.

In fact, we have always aligned with the thought that everything goes through phases

Phases of maturity, of growth, of learning, of delivery, of ending — and when we intentionally frame these phases, including intentional endings we have an opportunity to access great energy. The fact that we programmed in a five-year check-in point is one example of this, it instilled an entrepreneurial energy in us, reasonably unusual for a university centre.

And we have often spoken of biodegradability in our work. The notion that we are aiming for our partners to learn alongside us so we’re eventually not needed. An example is our partnership with Community Power Agency (CPA).

We started working with CPA in 2021 exploring together how we might create an online learning environment for renewable energy professionals that would contribute to our mission of distributive and regenerative futures. As we developed this partnership, we continually asked how we might create something that would contribute to growing CPA’s capabilities in designing and delivering their own transformational online learning.

The partnership matured through multiple iterations of the Socially Responsible Renewable Energy Development course and is chrysalising now to a self-paced online learning module so it’s accessible to more people. We will step out, CPA will run this, while another area of Griffith will facilitate it. Although our partnership has reached an ending phase, we can see how the ripples will carry learning opportunities into the future.

During this conversation one of our team shared how they were inspired by the intentional death date of AIME’s IMAGI-NATION:

“Declaring death in advance removes that sense that you are keeping secrets to increase profit or success. There is no hidden agenda when you have announced your own departure. It is responsible transparent and brave. Death can reduce the fear of bankruptcy which hobbles so many organisations making them wary of risk. The equation changes when you have a deadline. Removing that fear unlocks more potential.

Death introduces urgency — it makes you want to try out and spin up every great idea you might think you’ve ever had. No more saving for a rainy day. Spend while the sun is shining. Death removes the pretend permanence, the illusion of perfection, the promise of eternity.”

Excerpt from Hoodie Economics

Energy flowing elsewhere

In the book this team member referenced — Hoodie Economics — Jack Manning Bancroft also talks about energy flows. This had a lovely connection back into our conversation where one of the team suggested that for her this is less about endings and more about energy flows.

She talked of rivers, streams and redirecting flows. Sometimes the redirection may happen naturally and other times it might be imposed but still it flows. She reflected on how in the public service this is actually a given. If one decides to work for a reasonable period of time in the public sector part of the inbuilt framing is that at regular intervals your work and energy will be redirected towards different priorities — work on one project might end, or your whole department might change, but the flow of service continues.

Different metaphors for transformation

Reflections on the role of universities in incubating innovation for impact

Throughout this process we’ve had a number of conversations about the best ‘home’ for this type of work, acknowledging there are different phases and stages to consider.

Universities the world over play key roles in fostering innovation and experiments across disciplines and contexts.

We are grateful for the support Griffith University has provided in incubating us as a bold experiment exploring how a university might activate its resources towards innovation that has an impact.

When we first started out, as the Yunus Centre in the earliest days, key leaders adopted an attitude of abundance and possibility — urging us to think and work creatively, to push boundaries and develop new prototypes of university-community partnerships, funding models and knowledge translation.

Being incubated within a valued institution like Griffith provided us the conditions to experiment and learn with partners locally and globally to test ideas about how to improve outcomes for people, places and the planet, in complex environments.

We evolved into the Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation while our context evolved around us — a global pandemic impacted mindsets and policies influencing universities. Attitudes of scarcity and constraint emerged prompting us to start thinking about “spinning out” — a common next step after incubation in many innovation spaces.

This musing from Hannah McDowall at Canopy felt very apt during our conversation:

“I am in a constant question-mark about how our kind of work should find a home. Established institutions give us a visibility, infrastructure and credibility which is very useful to platforming the work, and at the same time, they often embody systemic constraints which are totally counter to the decolonial thing we are doing. And so we are squeezed.”

What does ‘chrysalising’ look like for GCSI: Dandelions, butterflies and river flows

A thought that’s been bubbling with one member of the team is the difference between ‘the work’, ‘the job’, and ‘the platform’. She sketched out what she meant:

The work: refers to everything you do towards your underlying purpose, a north star (or southern cross in our part of the world) — the work can be an individual purpose, or it can refer to a collective purpose.

The job: refers to a particular role you might play in an organisation — in which you may or may not have full scope to do ‘the work’.

The platform: refers to an organising ‘vessel’, it could be an organisation, institution, a network, a project.

And if one is deeply connected to the work, the energy stays with that despite the job and the platform changing.

Indeed, the thing that remains constant for the team at GCSI (both current and past team members) is a dedication to continuing ‘the work’.

How that looks for different people — which ‘job’ and ‘platform’ they’ll continue it in — is going to be different.

A small number of GCSI’s current team will be spinning out into a start-up called The Good Shift, moving into new phases of our current work, thinking and writing. (They will continue to host this publication so stick around!)

A larger number of us have and will continue to break off like tributaries, or dandelions, taking our accumulated learning and experiences into new forms of the work.

While it’s wonderful to see where the dandelion seeds are landing, this is not an easy transition for everyone. Some dandelion seeds are still being carried along on the wind and we are working hard to support each other through the ‘disintegration’ phase.

Our journey to ending

During our conversation we lamented a little on the lack of material and metaphors surrounding collective endings, although once we started drafting this piece we re-found some of the wonderful sharing by initiatives like Stewarding Loss, The Decelerator and the thoughtful humans behind them.

It’s heartening to see the way we have approached this phase aligns with the material on endings we have enjoyed reading. We greatly appreciated reading about the experiences of others so we share ours below to add to the body of thinking and reflections, using the same or similar headings from their case studies.

Pre-decision

In the lead up to the decision we stayed true to our ethos of transparency. Our entire team knew we were preparing business plans and scenarios to contribute to the conversation around whether we would extend past our exploration period or whether we would explore what transformation looked like.

Once we knew

As soon as possible after a decision came through our director called the whole team into a meeting to share what she knew. Despite knowing this was one of the options, there was still much disbelief, and a grief that surprised many of us.

We received assurances from both the Business School leadership and GCSI leadership that we would undertake this ending with care, and support every team member in the way that they needed.

How we dealt with it early on

We already had scheduled one of our regular ‘Team Days’ just a few days after the decision so we used that to continue our processing, reflection and next steps in a way that centred care and a commitment to embodying our principles of giving a damn, making good happen, being open and transparent and being radically flexible.

We invited team members to embody how they were feeling in the moment and possible next steps in their journey. The team member who crafted the gathering chose a tool developed by the Presencing Institute called the Stuck Exercise. It was interesting to note how so often the body already knew what the mind wasn’t ready to see. Upon reflection at the end of the day this was the most appreciated segment.

We then invited people to share, if they felt inclined, what their personal priorities were for the next five months, any thoughts or preferences for next steps in the work, and what support we as a group might be able to offer.

Next, we imagined in pairs what it might look like in 10 years if this ends well. We called it an ‘Interview with the Future’ and imagined running into someone in 10 years’ time who commented on how the impact from these GCSI / Yunus Centre years has continued to ripple out, and asked us how that came to be. Some of the ideas imagined out of that session were:

  • Team members took care of one another and carefully and considerately wrapped up work with partners.
  • We made sure the thinking and learning we had shared was still available, accessible and continued to ripple.
  • The idea of GCSI as a dandelion — making sure that all the seeds found good conditions to continue to thrive and grow.

And before we broke for an optional virtual lunch together, we got into some more practical discussions around considerations for messaging and ideas for how best to pull together our ‘Composting Plan’.

Comms / Narrative

We recognised early on it was important for us to be intentional about the narrative. That if we were to be true to our belief that endings and transformations are natural and essential phases of this work, then we needed to get in front and walk the talk. It’s easy for people to slip into pity or sadness in this situation, especially when things are going well, but that didn’t feel helpful. We wanted to understand this as an evolution and be thankful for the opportunity to incubate the work in the ‘safe’ hands of a university.

We quickly co-created a list of partners and connections who should find out about the change from us. We considered who needed to know immediately due to live conversations about partnerships, who should receive a call, those for whom a personal email would be appropriate, and who should be the one to connect. And only once those people understood the news did we go public on LinkedIn and in internal university platforms.

Composting

We developed a ‘composting plan’ and check in on it as a team every week. And we tried to maintain space for generative conversations — about options for chrysalising, and how we were each journeying through the time.

We perhaps got a little caught up in the doing for a while, but the conversation that led to this blog was a good reminder to return to the intentions we laid early in the process.

There will always be a tension due to the ‘different rates and speeds of composting’ as one team member puts it, so to stay true to the aims of a good ending, it’s important to keep checking in.

Deeper reflection

With serendipitous timing, one of our Adjuncts, Kate Rich invited us to help her and collaborator Chiz Williams test a new team-based approach to their RADMIN — In Your Livelihood program. A group of six (half our team) were involved in this during August this year.

Having a process hosted by people external to the team gave those involved the space to dig further into where they were at and what they were holding, without some having to ‘lead’ the others. All reported a cathartic experience that supported evolving their thinking and feeling responses to the context. You can read a little more about how it came about and their experience in this piece.

Ending

In step with our intention to ‘end well’, once we’ve closed the Centre at the beginning of November, we have planned a final gathering for current team members to take some time to reflect and celebrate the work, relationships and ripples we’ve nurtured, and contemplate what seeds may be sown in this fertile soil. And, it must be said —to take a moment to simply appreciate each other and have some fun, because joy and connection are equally as important in this work.

Thanks for reading our journey. Here’s the full series of Ingrid’s ‘cathartic cartoon’, in order of how she felt it.

Contributors to the conversation and editing: Ingrid Burkett, Joanne McNeill, Athanasia Price, Cathy Boorman, Michelle Smith, Sidsel Grimstad, Neiewa Taumayauna, Suzie Parnell, Rena Frohman, Katie Stubley

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The Good Shift
The Good Shift

Published in The Good Shift

Thinking, case studies, and reflections on systems innovation for green and just futures from The Good Shift and others we find inspirational.

Good Shifts
Good Shifts

Written by Good Shifts

Scaffolding shifts towards green and just futures.

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