Building an Open Movement for Internet Health
Openness at Mozilla: Part 1
“We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it. ~John Lennon”
Here at Mozilla, we feel the same way about openness. The concept of openness is built into our manifesto, it’s in our mission statement, and it’s one of the categories of Internet Health. It’s always been a part of us, it’s how we came into being.
Like love, being open isn’t just one act, like saying a vow. It’s something you do, something you practice, something you have to actively “look after” and “nurture”.
At the end of 2018, all Mozilla staff gathered together for our end-of-year All Hands Meeting. This is where we, as an organization, reflect on what we accomplished during the year and set our plans for the year ahead. The Open Leadership & Events Team (OLE) decided that one area of focus for us in 2019 would be to “support the Mozilla Foundation and our community to work like a movement by applying the practices and skills of ‘working open’ to our everyday work”.
What does it mean to “work like a movement”?
You know that feeling when everyone on your team and in the communities you serve are all working together to go in the same direction at once? Sharing ideas, strategies, and resources? Helping one another reach new audiences and engage existing ones in new ways? Making change in the world that people feel like they’re a part of? That’s what we’re going after — a way of supporting the movement for internet health that’s more open than ever.
Working like a movement means that we, our partners and allies all operate as a unit; that we seek each other out as stakeholders of the work; that we are transparent about our decisions; and that we crave peer assists and collaborations with a diversity of people from across the movement. These are the principles and practices of working open and are the foundational blocks of the movement.
How do we get there?
Before we reached out to support the organization in working like a movement, we reviewed our own practices as a team. For the past several months, we’ve been having in-depth conversations around our personal and team goals for working openly. We looked at our everyday work practices and identified where we needed to make some changes, individually and across the team, to achieve those goals. We came up with a process and shared folder for our meeting notes where anyone can see what we’re working on. We published a website with information on what we do, who we are, resources we’ve created, and others we recommend. We are currently working on an “Easy to do Open” Checklist.
We’ve done these things to make our work more efficient, transparent, inclusive; it helps us clarify who is doing what and where there are opportunities to work together within the team and across the organization. At the same time, it has highlighted where we need other voices and input, where there is opportunity for broader collaboration.
Where do you come in?
We want to show others the work we’re doing, but we also need to create a space where others see themselves in the work. We don’t want to just share the work and make it available, we want you to do it with us.
This week we launched a phase of our work for the year we’re calling the “Discovery Phase”. We want to discover current understandings and perceptions of our working open practices, where and how we apply them, and what kind of support we need to work more openly as contributors to the movement for internet health.
Next week we’ll be sending out an internal survey to our colleagues across the organization asking them a series of questions for gathering feedback to help us work more like a movement and better understand the state of openness across the foundation. Our goal is to help Mozilla work more like a movement in supporting people and projects that champion internet health and better machine decision-making. We’d like to know your thoughts on this too!
Every week over the next couple months, a member of the OLE team will be publishing a blogpost focusing on one question from this survey. They’ll be reflecting on why this question is important and how they would personally answer the question.
For each week, we’d like to know, how would YOU answer this question? For Mozilla? For your community? For your organization, or project? How would you answer this question for a healthier Internet? All our blogposts about openness and movement building will be published on the Open Leadership blog page of the Mozilla Read, Write, Participate blog.
Have feedback, questions, or suggestions? You can let us know your thoughts through a variety of channels:
- Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
- Let us know via email at leadopen@mozillafoundation.org
- You can also tweet us @MozOpenLeaders.
We invite you to join in on the discussion!
We are eager to learn what you think!
