Not waiting until the end, to end
Seven ways to design in an ending upstream in your work
At Stewarding Loss we believe over the coming decade we need to start to value loss and endings, and see it as an embedded and inevitable part of our culture, not to be ignored or something to be afraid of, but embraced, intentional and beautiful.
Too often, today, we’re used to waiting until the shock of a sudden ending to pay attention to this. From the experience of working with organisations in the process of closing over the last few years, we know that designing an ending, close to the end is important, but by that point, there is only so much you can do for the people, the work and the impact you can have.
While it’s too easy not to make the space or have conversations about endings as they can be seen as counter cultural or taboo, we mark the end of weeks and years, significant moments, cycles of time and have ways to acknowledge these everyday endings in a really positive way.
We’ve found there are ways of holding the prospect of endings through the lifecycle of an organisation rather than wait until the last moment. We’ve been noticing practical examples of where and how people are considering and exploring loss and endings upstream in organisations and movements. And in some cases, making endings a core strategic choice.
This blog charts seven ways you and your organisations, group or movement can start to consider and embed health practices around endings into your work. Ultimately being more ready for the inevitable endings rather than have it done to you and shifting beyond the assumption that endings are bad.
1. Start with the end in mind
We’re seeing more and more organisations putting a defined time frame on their existence. It seems particularly prevalent for funding organisations — who have a pot of money and intention to spend out — with groups like Local Trust, Spirit of 2012, and the Whitman Institute actively committing to that. Putting a time frame on things allows for a focusing of mind and energy and can offer a way to galvanise and focus attention in a way that might not be possible if money or action might be perceived to be infinite.
Where to start:
While for many organisations that have already been established, setting out as a time bound entity might not work. But if you feel your energy, funds and motivation are waning, stating a time period that you have left might be a way of galvanising one final push in order to end on a high. Starting by asking questions about what an exit or ending might look like in strategy processes or as a rolling agenda item is one way to begin.
2. Framing endings as part of your mission, vision or purpose
Sometimes the framing and language around loss and endings can be affronting. While we don’t make the space for talking about these things, despite their inevitably, the words and phrases can be off putting. But there are ways of framing and talking about this that allow people to explore these ideas and connect them to the work and mission of the organisation so they don’t appear to be separate.
Where to start:
Play with ways of positioning and incorporating an ending into your mission. Play around with different narratives and ways of thinking about it. Here’s some different framings you might play with:
- Endings as a signal of impact and having achieved what you set out to
- Endings as the clearing — coppicing and making space for new growth
- Endings as the beginnings of the new system you want to see
- Endings as part of process of change
- Endings as the vital and overlooked stage of transformation
- Endings as exits
- An opportunity to galivinse and renew action
- Vital learning
- As transitions or evolution from one thing to the next
3. View your strategy through a new lens/ framework
There are two systemic frameworks we’ve found fully acknowledge endings as part of the cycle of change. Both of these can be used as a strategic tool to map your work, explore the roles you need to be playing at different times and help to notice patterns in your work. We’re seeing different funders and collaborators start to pick these up and use these to inform their work, actions and open up conversations about their own endings and exits.
Panarchy: Adaptive cycle
The adaptive cycle systemic framework created by the Resilience Alliance, it sitatues endings and ’release’ as part of the cycle of change. Fully integrating it into the natural cycle of how change happens. I’ve been using this with change makers and funders in collabration with the School of Systsems Change to think about where they are and what role and support is most useful at each stage.
Berkana Loop two loops
Giving a simple and powerful visual overview of how systems die and new systems are emerging, as well as some of the roles that support this constant process. You can read more about the Berkana Institue’s Two Loop model and explore how others have used it via Cassie Robinson’s blog.
Where to start:
Read more about Berkana Institute and the Adaptive cycle and Vanessa Miemis and Gavin Keech’s work on the different roles needed in the cycle and play around with filtering your strategy or purpose through these frameworks and see what new insights they give you about the role and approaches you could be taking. We’ve seen teams design exercises at their away days and board sessions to bring in new perspectives and ideas too.
4. Leaving well, shifting roles
We all leave jobs and roles much more frequently than we’re likely to be part of closing organisations. Leaving a job or a role can often mark the close of a significant chapter in our lives. Leaving roles well — or not — can really impact on our sense of motivation, identity and agency. Exit interviews, rituals of leaving cards and leaving do’s are normalised, but sometimes the personal and emotional processing can be overlooked. Customising your leaving can be a great way to offer closure, consolidate learning and focus for what’s next.
Where to start:
Take a look at this curation of stories about people leaving roles to be inspired about how to do this well. If you’re considering or making a move you might find this you might find this Quitting Quadrant from Sarah Weiler useful and there will be a ‘Manual of leaving’ (coming soon) to help you reflect on your imminent or past role endings.
5. Recalibrating relationships
Be that the end of professional relationships, grant relationships, end of funding or collaboration cycles, cofounders or collaborators shifting modes — these natural and sometimes contractual moments mark a moment for reflection and resetting relationships.
Sometimes a relationship has run its course or something changes for one of more individuals. There might be points in the midst of professional relationships where we need to recalibrate relationships — what can start as a small niggle, if not addressed soon, can overtime create a gulf that can be seemingly impossible to bridge. Recalibrating relationships is hard to do, as we fall into patterns of relationship that can feel overwhelming to shift as time goes on.
Where to start:
Be open and explicitly about time horizons when you know you have them. Design in honest reflection and feedback moments to air what needs to be said. As leaders — create safe spaces for people to share, model good feedback, and be open and invite hearing sometimes challenging feedback. Bring in a trusted mediator if it feels like there is an issue to work through, the book Holding Change by adrienne maree brown is a great handbook for effective mediation. And there’s much to be learnt from the conscious uncoupling movement for professional relationships.
6.Good programmatic and project endings
Too often project and programmatic endings are dictated by funding cycles. The honeymoon period is over, challenges and tensions have come to bear and it’s easier not to look and turn to the next new, exciting thing. So too often projects can just fizzle, with no clear end point in site. We’re used to learning and evaluation work — but we can overlook what these projects mean for the individuals participating and designing and running them. But ending projects and programs is something that gives us an opportunity to practise better endings every 1,2,3 years or however long yours is.
A good project or program endings might not be an endings, but an exit strategy — spinning something out to its own entity, transfering the hosting role to another organisation.
Gill Wildman from Plot Studio’s has been working with the creative industries in the south west of England to better understand and design for good programmatic endings. Impact Hub Birmingham consciously closed their work and have used this rich learning to see the Civic Square program and CDRA closed after 30 years and used this as a moment to really capture the practices they’d developed together.
“celebrate and to collect the strands of this practice, to honour it, and through all of this, to bring together a collection of writings — enlivened and inspired through this gathering process — as a way of sending forth the CDRA legacy into the world.”
CDRA Closing workshops
Where to start:
Understand the timeline you’re working with — what you know and don’t know. Think through your exit or ending strategy — it might inform how you design your work differently as a consequence. Working through the Staying Close to Loss toolkit and canvases will give you some ideas for the stories, rituals, artefacts and relationships you might want to nurture and continue. Joe McLeoad’s work on Endineering of products and services is also a great source of inspiration
7. Spaces to work with grief
Grief is an inevitable part of the process of ending. In western cultures we’re used to thinking about the grief associated with losing some, but less able to recognise this in our professional contexts. But making space to process grief is key.
As Malkia Devich-Cyril eloquently talks about, grief being is at the heart of social movements, and we need to find ways to embrace it:
“while loss is deeply uncomfortable we can learn to adapt to the natural phenomena of loss”
Malkia Devich-Cyril, in Holding Change
There’s a whole growing community of grief tenders from the apprenticing to grief program out there who hold tender spaces for people to come together, listen to each other and share their experiences of grief. It can be a surprisingly touching and humanising way of connecting to what is important to people. At best, releasing, renewing and galvanising.
Where to start:
It starts with listening, making space in your organisation, community or group to really hear each other. Be inspired by the graceful, simple but powerful #spacesforlisening format. Bring people in to host a grief space if you feel this is alive in your context.
So where does this leave us?
In the next decade we need a vision for a loss centred civil society. A paradigm shift in how endings are considered as part of the lifecycle of organisations across civil society and beyond. If we each in our personal and professional lives started to practise good endings around just one of two of these areas that we have the power to shape and design, we’ll be making a contribution to the transformation of mindsets and cultures we so need.
Find out more — and access resources
Stewarding Loss has created a series of different resources to support intentional endings, each of which can be adapted in the context of these ‘upstream’ endings .
Check out the website for more information or if you would love to chat more about any of these ideas, email me (louise.j.armstrong@gmail.com) or via twitter @louise_a.
