Loomio Collaboration Clinics

Healing the pain of teamwork

Humans everywhere form teams in order to collectively get things done — often resulting in great achievements. However, it is a pretty common experience for many of us to feel that the teams we are a part of are a little unhealthy and in need of some care and attention. Wellington based Cooperative Loomio has set out to solve this problem by creating both an online tool and real world approaches for teams of all types to work together more effectively.

The Loomio team will be running open ‘Collaboration Clinics’ at the OS//OS Open Source Open Society Conference at Michael Fowler Centre on 22/23 August. These clinics will diagnose the origins of your teams’ pains and prescribe a specific health plan. If you are part of a team that you feel could benefit from some expert collaboration strategies or tips on how to use this open source software effectively in your team then these sessions could be for you.

I interviewed Loomio Co-founder Richard Bartlett to find out what these clinics will involve and who might benefit from attending.

Why is Loomio important for teamwork?

Rich:

Loomio’s vision is working towards a world where everyone can participate in the decisions that affect them. There are plenty of decisions that affect us that we are not currently participating in, and there are many people trying to create more participation but it is not always easy to do so. This is a huge source of frustration for people.

Loomio addresses the basics of how to work together that apply to any group of people trying to get something done: how do we delegate work to each other? how do we follow up? or how do we make a call?. So many people are forced to undergo meetings that are really dysfunctional and inefficient and there is some really basic stuff that can be done to bust through that. Loomio can provide strategies for them to shift this dynamic and bust out of these uncollaborative and unproductive behaviours.

Loomio is like a hammer when it comes to building a house — the tool is an important component but habits and practices are just as important. With Loomio we have focused on making a really good hammer but it is designed to be adaptive to work with people’s existing habits and processes.

What is the motivation for these Collaboration Clinics?

Rich:

Everyone knows they want to collaborate more but often they are not sure what the practical first step is. Many people see the potential of the internet to work more effectively more efficiently and more engaged but often haven’t quite connected it to their real work. There are also plenty of people who have heard about Loomio and have a vague sense it is a cool thing but haven’t had a chance to apply it. This will be a perfect opportunity for those people to jump.

People with an aspiration to work more collaboratively often feel quite alone because they feel that their colleagues do not share this understanding or recognition of the problems and want someone with experience and enthusiasm with some practical advice on things they can try out. From talking to a lot of these people, When you are in it it is really hard but when you have a coach or supporter you feel more armed to take this on. We hope to give them the basic tools and processes for working together better — such as more effective meetings and more efficient decisions.

What format will the clinics take?

Rich:

Firstly we will host a series of rapid fire group presentations with specific topics on things you can do such as engaging staff, increasing collaborative capacity, using Loomio to supercharge meetings. Groups or individuals can then also sign up for ‘one on one’ consultation sessions which is an opportunity to spend ½ an hour with one of our collaboration experts. These will provide a diagnosis and a prescription of simple first steps to try out that we expect that will lead to a long slow change.

Who can benefit from them?

Rich:

Anyone in a team who is feeling the pain of decisions, emails and meetings. If these three things aren’t working well — if your team is incapable of making decisions, meetings feel super sluggish or pointless or you are constantly emailing but never getting to an outcome then that team could benefit from these workshops.

It is a case of getting context of what’s going on in group and how they’d like it to be different.

We can give some suggestions people can try which we think are likely to be successful and are also likely to build a habit of a more positive collaboration culture. Like how do you sign off minutes or follow up with people about actions.

What are some bad teamwork habits Loomio can address?

Rich:

• Lack of transparency — A lack of access to information can develop into a political poker chip, whereas creating a culture where everyone who could benefit from it has access to information can unlock latent intelligence which really supercharges people’s capacity.
• Making decisions in the wrong context, for example due to urgency in rushed meetings can result in poor decisions. This can be done smarter by deciding asynchronously on Loomio when people have time to do so without this stress.
• Making decisions via Email or chat means that some people can miss the opportunity to have input if they are not online at the time.
• The email mess — Emails can create messy chains and diverted threads which lose the train of thought and nobody really knows what the outcome was. Email as a tool is not designed for getting to outcomes.
• Making no decisions at all — often there is so much uncertainty about who is making the call or has authority to do so that no decision is made.

Loomio can remedy these habits by providing clarity about who is making what calls, who should be invited to the decision, when the deadline is and what relevant info people need to make the call. The tool is designed to bring the right people together and give them the time and space they need to make an informed decision together about something.

What are some scenarios for use of Loomio?

Community engagement and consultation — Loomio has been used by New Zealand Government departments such as LINZ, Statistics NZ and the Wellington City Council. It was highly praised by the National Assembly for Wales which used Loomio to consult with service users and providers…

Decision Panels/committees — Loomio can be useful for groups tasked with making specific decisions such as hiring staff.

Corporate Boards — Boards are used to long and deliberative decisions leading to specific outcomes. Loomio helps them make this easier and keeps a good record making minutes and public record requirements simpler. It also helps involving wider team members in these decisions.

Worker participation — Loomio can help with this process of collectively agreeing on rules or procedures with your team. For example NZ law now requires worker input into health and Safety rules so it could help companies comply with that. Large NGO the Wise Group has successfully used Loomio in this way.

Changing internal policies — Loomio can be used to ensure all company policies are co-designed and agreed by consensus meaning everyone is onboard with a sense of buy in.

Making big decisions — Loomio can assist with getting input and consensus on whether an offer, a potential contract or invitation should be accepted or with making big decisions such as legal structure or investment. Loomio has applied this approach internally to decisions on whether to become a worker owned co-op and whether to get outside investment.

Supercharging Meetings — We have a process where we announce upcoming in person meetings at least one week ahead and launch a discussion which shares all relevant information with the whole team. This means everyone is prepared and the meeting is more productive. We also ensure good records and follow up of actions by launching discussion threads on topics emerging from the meeting that need more energy. Debt Resistance UK has used Loomio for this aspect.

Business Planning — At Loomio we also use the tool to get company wide input on quarterly plan objectives and actions.

What are some practical tips for using Loomio?

Firstly Make sure you warm up the group. It is important to talk about the Loomio tool first explaining why it is beneficial. It is important to get a shared agreement from the group that there are problems and an understanding that Loomio can help solve them otherwise people may resist or ignore it.

Secondly, be bold and start proposals. Have a first guess at an answer — it doesn’t matter if it gets shot down. Be quick to start proposals and quick to iterate and develop the thinking.

Finally don’t forget there are friendly humans at the other end. We are a small and friendly cooperative with a support team of smart people who can help clear up any confusions or issues.

Grab your ticket to OS//OS now to learn more about how this new tool and approach to teamwork can help your team collaborate more efficiently and effectively.

In addition to running collaboration clinics with the Loomio team — Rich will be speaking at OS//OS at sessions on Open Democracy, Innovation and Open Thinking and Virtual Reality for Civic Deliberation