IO Collective: Forming a Community
Learnings from the IO Retreat 2017
Last week I got the opportunity to attend the second IO Collective retreat at the Asha Centre, near Gloucester to explore themes of collaboration and participation, spend time with a really inspiring group of change-makers and to cook and eat loads of delicious meals together.
There was an overwhelming sense of potential within the group and the wider network to create something special. What exactly that something is, is yet to be fully understood. It will take time, energy and a good deal of patience.. But it’s there.
What is IO Collective?
The ‘IO’ in IO Collective stands for ‘Imaginal Organisation’.
Imaginal cells are the cells that work together to transform a caterpillar into a butterfly. As the caterpillar slowly dissolves inside its chrysalis, these miraculous cells come together and begin to take action. As the old structure breaks down, the imaginal cells work together to form the butterfly.
Over the past few years there has been a momentum building. Everywhere I go, all over the world, I have been meeting people who are sowing the seeds for positive change. Whether it’s in a commune in Rio that run one of Brazil’s largest guerrilla media organisations, two enthusiastic change makers driving around Europe exploring sociocracy in schools, a group of people in Brighton attempting to shift the way we raise money for the causes we love, or the endless list of others that I could think of — there is a very real grassroots movement pushing forward positive change.
One of the biggest shifts seems to lie in a desire to shift from a loose network of individuals working in isolation to something more substantial, with a shared goal.
This is where IO Collective comes into play.
At the retreat we gathered around the question:
“How best might we support one another to multiply our efforts in co-creating the powerful transformation that we dream of for a better world?”
The IO Retreat was about becoming aware that we are floating around in a caterpillar soup and realising the imaginal potential of what we can achieve together. If we can find the right balance of personalities and the right energy to move forward, we will be able to create something long lasting, adaptive and beautiful.
A Space for Exploration and Experimentation
The beauty of the IO Retreat for me was the shared desire to experiment.
We created a safe space where everybody was invited to fully embody themselves. Over the course of the week, we took part and led various activities to listen deeply to each other, discover each other’s vulnerabilities and to really connect on a human level.
Being free to experiment and allowed to fail was at the heart of the retreat and I believe at the heart of the IO Collective itself.
We co-created the agenda at the start using Open Space (to varying degrees of success!), which people brought forward their skills and offers to the group, to allow us to try new things and run workshops without fear of failure.
Some of the highlights for me included Circling, Collective Humming and the Money workshop (which are all detailed in this excellent post by Ellie Osborne), although I can honestly say every activity we did from cooking together, wild swimming, to the bursts of spontaneous discussion all provided a rich environment for exploration.
Participation and Decision Making
There was a real diversity in where people were coming from and each person had a different style of doing things. Diversity inevitably brings tension — but finding a way to work with this tension, and not repress or ignore it was one of the keys to the success of the week.
As passionate believers in real democracy, we tried to live by our values and make decisions as a group using a consent based system which straddled the line between Roomio (the offline version of Loomio’s decision making tool) and elements of Deep Democracy. We didn’t want to just go with the majority vote and leave a grumbling minority in the wake. We wanted to listen to tension and work with resistance. It is often easier and quicker to ignore the minority voices — but with that you lose the richness of diversity and different perspectives. Just because a majority of people agree on something, it doesn’t mean it is the correct or best path to take. It is by listening to dissent that we can forge new and stronger paths.
Within the group there were plenty of different voices. Some people were from the “Enough talking, more action!” camp, while others were very much from the “No, this needs much more discussion” way of doing things.
By creating a space where both perspectives were equally valid it created a challenging but inviting space, where people were able to learn from each other and genuinely grow together. I probably have a slight tendency to be more of a dreamer in the “let’s discuss this some more” way of doing things, so appreciated having some people there to pull out some tangible next steps.
Making the IO Collective truly democratic as it moves on will be a challenge, but definitely one worth fighting for. If we can carry on in the same fashion, seeing tension not as a negative, but a challenge to understand and build on, we can move through differences of opinion.
When resistance arises it can be framed not as a hinderance, but as a chance to explore different perspectives and to grow both as individuals, in relationships between individuals, and as a collective.
Fun and Play
While there was a good deal of discussion and debate, the underpinning atmosphere was one of fun and playfulness.
It’s easy to get carried away with the serious stuff and to write off the playful aspects as frivolous or unimportant.
However, it was in those unplanned and spontaneous moments that the real bonding and deeper understanding of each other emerged.
Watching the dynamics of collaboration unfold in an impromptu game of ultimate frisbee or exploring the nooks and crannies of an unfamiliar territory in a game of sardines with a group of adults I’d just met provided insights into people that all the planning in the world couldn’t have drawn out.
The ability to maintain that sense of spontaneity and playfulness is going to be one of the things that will help define the success of IO Collective as we move forward.
So, Now What?
So the retreat went well… now what?
Of course, it is much easier to create the conditions for change and collaboration at a beautiful retreat centre in the Gloucestershire countryside — but the challenge will be continuing to live, work and build on these values in the ‘real world’, when time, money and external pressures are all too real.
But then again, time, money and external pressures are one of the driving forces behind the need to form a collective in the first place. By changing the way we approach life and work in the world, we can change the way that the world approaches life and work.
If we can harness these realities and use them to maintain momentum in times of doubt then that will be very powerful.
Already there are moves to continue discussions, create spotlight working groups and reach out for collaborators on our individual projects.
Let’s watch this space, but I have a good feeling about this.
