Why is open working relevant to my role?
I facilitate the Open Working Programme at Third Sector Lab. In our most recent cohort of the Discovery fund, participants have asked for a breakdown of how open working was relevant to different roles. They are sold on open working, but are struggling to explain why their colleagues should do it too.
And so here’s a breakdown of how open working is beneficial for a range of roles throughout the sector, on both big levels and small.
Benefits of Open Working
Although open working saves time, it doesn’t always feel that way to beginners. For some, it’s an indulgent self-reflection that they just don’t have time for — in a sector strapped for time and resources, I don’t blame them for the assumption.
There are lots of big picture benefits to working in the open.
- Establishing your organisation as a leader in your field
- Attracting funding, volunteers or employees
- Creating an open dialogue with the community you serve
- Reflecting on the work that you do
One of the biggest benefits that’s the most hard to define is that the entire sector benefits from not working in silos.
There’s a reason that academics publish their work openly — there’s no point running the same experiment 100 times in different labs across the country if someone has worked it out already.
Open working for fundraising roles
Whenever I use fundraising as an example, there’s often a lightbulb moment for people.
As someone who has myself scrambled to put together funding applications, I know first hand how useful it is to do that kind of homework in advance.
By gradually gathering your thoughts and reflections on the work that you do, when it comes to writing up big reports or applications, you’re editing rather than writing. You’re capturing small wins that you might have forgotten about as the weeks went on.
By spending just half an hour writing weeknotes, it’s possible to save entire days later on.
Open working for service delivery roles
Service delivery can be a tricky sell. Often in the third sector, those in service delivery might work with vulnerable people, and might not feel they can share intimate details of their work.
However, as Giles Turnbull has pointed out in various workshops — even the Ministry of Defence has written weeknotes. There will always be a part of the work that can be open.
Gathering data as you go is always a good idea, and that data might look different from role to role. It might be that data needs to be anonymised in order to be shared with the public.
To help people to be clear on what is okay to share and what isn’t, Third Sector Lab are developing an Open Working Policy template for organisations.
People in service delivery roles might ask themselves every week:
- Did I receive any feedback from service users?
- What did I use my budget on?
- What problems did I solve?
It might be that your weeknotes are another source which helps a colleague to write a funding application, or to report back to senior management or your trustees.
By effectively communicating the work that you do, the impact it has, and the time and money it costs, it’s easier to report to funders and operational staff about what you need.
It might be that your organisation needs a case study, and instead of scrambling to remember one, open working has given you a written record of feedback in the past six months.
Open working for communications roles
As someone whose role is as communications executive, Open Working provides a useful record to draw from. If writing about your work is a muscle you exercise regularly, it’s far easier to create new content, either from scratch or drawing from your previous weeknotes.
It’s also a fantastic way to engage with your stakeholders, or ‘opinion-havers’ in a more casual way. It’s a wonderful context layer to engage with your audience — think of your weeknotes as a level beyond a 140 character tweet, but not so dense as a 140 page report.
Open working for technical roles
Sometimes the audience for your open working can be inside your organisation.
If your work is more technical, open working can be a bridge between you and your colleagues. Instead of explaining your work to different departments or your board, they can keep up to date with it via your weeknotes.
It is also a way to reach out to others in the sector who do understand the work that you do. Our current cohort of the Open Working Programme are all leads on community tech initiatives, and have been able to greatly learn from each other’s experience with service design, CRMs and app development.
Weeknotes can either help you to find other people who speak your language, or translate it for those that don’t.
Open working for funders
When funders work in the open, it makes a really powerful difference. By understanding what funders are looking for, those in the third sector can better report back to them and present their work in relevant ways.
It also makes funding a more human experience. Last year, the Open Working Programme brought together grantees and grantholders from Power to Change as part of one cohort.
Over eight weeks of the Open Working Programme, through live interactions and reading in depth about each other’s work, both grantees and funders left with a greater understanding of each other’s work.
What about me?
If I haven’t covered your role, please do let me know! This is a live resource that I’m happy to add to or expand on. If you do any of these roles, and have other reasons for working in the open, tell us that too!
Hopefully this article can serve as a resource for open working champions, who’d like to bring the practice into their own workspace.
If you’re looking to get started, here are some inspiring Open Working templates.
