Introducing: Reinventing Work
An emerging global movement. We make work better, one place at a time.
Reinventing Work turns one in a few weeks time 🎉 We’ve grown and evolved considerably since our first meetup in Bristol in July 2018. So almost a year into our journey I thought I’d introduce what we’ve evolved into as of July 2019. Also to share how you can get involved and contribute to our growing movement as we continue to take shape and adapt.
In a nutshell
Reinventing Work is a global grassroots movement of ‘reinventers’ who want to learn and practice new, more human-centred ways of working. There are a number of monthly meetups around the world where we get together to share practical advice, explore ideas, look at the patterns found in existing self-organising teams / self-managing workplaces and how we might put these into practice.
Why? Because, globally, 85% of us are disengaged at work.
With your help, we want to help put this stat right. Reinventers participation is valued and you don’t need anyone’s permission to get involved with or to start working on whatever you are interested in. If it floats your boat and meets our purpose — making work better, one place at a time — then go for it!
Global movement?
That’s right, Reinventing Work has spread to five continents and counting. So far reinventers have met in person in:
- Asia: Singapore.
- Australia & NZ: Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney.
- Europe: Bath, Belgrade, Berlin, Brighton, Bristol, Brussels, Bucharest, Den Haag, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London, Manchester, Porto.
- The Americas: Las Vegas, New York City, Montreal, Portland, Seattle.
- Online: head to the #online-events channel over on Slack.
More and more chapters are emerging and we’d love you to start one where you live. You don’t need our permission, and we’ll help you as much as we can. Here’s a Trello board with some ideas on how to start your own chapter, and you can contact Mark to chat first 👍.
New to new ways of working?
If you are new to this world but have a sense that work just isn’t working then watch this excellent 45 minute Google Talk by Aaron Dignan, Author of Brave New Work. It’s the perfect place to start — I can’t recommend both the talk and the book highly enough.
A few excellent next stops include:
- Leadermorphosis: a podcast exploring the emerging world of self-management and progressive organisations, hosted by Lisa Gill. Each episode features a guest thought leader or practitioner offering their perspective on new ways of working.
- Corporate Rebels: a blog offering a wealth of knowledge, thought, practical advice, and real world examples of organisations working in new, better ways. I’ve linked to an excellent article written by Lisa Gill. Head over to their archive, it’s a goldmine.
- Liberating Structures: if you’re convinced (or curious) about new ways of working and want to practice some, I know no better place to direct you than the Liberating Structures app. Experiment with as many as you can!
- Reinventing Organisations: a seminal book on new ways of working. I prefer the illustrated version as it’s better organised and neatly summarises the full text. You can download it and pay as you feel.
Reinventing Work: where to start?
A great first action in your workplace would be to:
- Gather a group of colleagues for a lunch and learn to watch the talk above.
- Then spend time discussing new practices you would like to try, and old practices you would like to stop. Why not try a circle discussion for this.
- Seek to agree on a time bound, safe to fail experiment — try a new process to see if it’s more efficient, or remove a process that slows things down.
- Get a date in the diary to evaluate the experiment and to discuss new ones.
- Share the resources listed above and arrange a regular lunch and learn to explore them.
Reinventing Work: Discussion
Discussion between reinventers tends to take place over on Slack. Hit ‘Channels’ on the left and join the discussions that sound interesting to you. If you have any questions or would like to seek advice on any aspect of new ways of working then ask away — we’re a friendly and supportive bunch.
Reinventing Work: Meetups
If there is a meetup local to you then come along to hang out with and learn from others who are passionate about new ways of working. If there isn’t one yet then you are very welcome to start your own. Here’s the Trello board again and we’ll support you as much as we can — just get in touch.
We tend to do a lot of meetup organising on Slack and Zoom (or similar). If you would like to get involved then head over to Slack and hit ‘Channels’ to find #admin-bristol or your local chapter’s admin channel. In the spirit of transparency we encourage working out loud in these channels, rather than sending direct messages between co-organisers.
Reinventing Work: Handbook
Our handbook is your guide to getting involve with the Reinventing Work movement. It outlines our purpose, why we feel we need to reinvent work, how we seek to do this, and things we’re doing right now. The handbook details the roles you can play, the collaboration tools we use, and how we make decisions. It also explains our principles on profit, promotion, brand, collaboration and inclusion.
Reinventing Work: Blog
You can read articles from fellow reinventers about new ways of working and you can write them too! Let me know if you’d like to write and I’ll add you as an editor of our Medium Publication.
Reinventing Work: The Future
We know better than to try to predict and control this. We hope that there will be more meetups in more cities helping more people to reinvent work. But we don’t want to grow for growths sake, rather to make a meaningful impact in our workplaces — to make work better, one place at a time. It’s been a fun ride so far and it feels like we just got going!
Our purpose is to make work better, one place at a time.
Last year we bought reinventing.work and this year we want to make good use of it . So give it a click, it may be up an running. I wonder what it will look like in July 2020? Your suggestions are very welcome, and you are very welcome to get involved and shape our future. We hope to see you soon at a Reinventing Work meetup near you!
Questions?
If you have any questions please ask away on here or over on Slack. If you’re in Bristol let’s grab a coffee and if not let’s chat over Zoom or similar.
