How can we use rhythms of work to accelerate systems change?
An experimental approach for the System Change Lab
You may have read about our lab’s experiment with morphing our own working practices to a more self organising and ’teal’ approach. So nine months in, I wanted to share a little about what lies beneath, share some of the approaches we’ve used and talk about what it looks and feels like in practice.
Opening information flows
Slack has quickly become an essential tool for how we work. As Esko Kilpi explored in a recent blog:
“Information is the energy of organizing. When information is transparent to everybody, people can organize effectively around changes and differences”
Slack has helped to make information flow better between us and allow for more transparent and open communications. We’re careful in creating new channels and really defining the purpose. But this regular communication has been a foundational tool for our experiments in how we works and relate to each other and our work.
Using rhythm to structure time
Core to what we’ve been exploring have been the idea of working rhythms. Much inspired by this blog from Richard Bartlett from Loomio and the Enspiral network (a source of much inspiration throughout our experiments)
“There is no map or compass when you’re navigating through emergent multidimensional space. The one thing you can count on is the steady passage of time.”
You need some sort of constant when you’re working in the context of uncertainty, so one of the first things we did was to design our own rhythm. This really helped as we were finding that our standard team meetings weren’t working for us, so we used the same amount of time we were spending each month and redesigned how we used that to better suit our evolving needs.
Daily: work exchanges
Where: on slack
Purpose: share information, workings, questions we have that relate to the projects and work we’re doing
In practice: this has speeded up how we work and allowed for greater transparency and sharing of information, knowledge and learning. It can be overwhelming sometimes when you have multiple slack notifications as well as emails to look at, but we also found that the number of internal emails drastically reduced.
Weekly: Check in
Where: 30min Skype or in person catch up.
Purpose: Generate a sense of shared understanding, accountability and balance the energy and support as required. Support the practice self reflection.
Format: Check in with each other — what’s going on? How do you feel? Share anecdotes about what’s going on. What support do you need? Talk from the I — and be honest about what is going on.
In practice: we thought we would do this daily to begin with, but it didn’t work like that. Things aren’t always neat and we don’t always manage to all get together, so if team members can’t join — they check in on slack. We sometimes find it hard to make the time for checking in at a personal level when we’re each working on a whole number of pressing projects with deadlines. Interestingly, we found that the check in process also benefitted project meetings (especially sessions longer than an hour) and enabled other colleagues to try out new ways of working. In these sessions ‘checking out’ and leaving know what you’re going to do differently as a consequence is just as important as checking into the session.
Monthly: Operations session
Where: 1 hour, virtual session
Purpose: Looking at resourcing, financing and business development. Making sure we’re building and developing the work we want to be doing.
In practise: some things can’t wait for a month. So this is all supported by Slack operations channel — where we track things that come up through the month. Through this, we have developed our awareness of the wider organisational challenges and found that this enables us to take collective responsibility.
Quarterly — informal activity
Purpose: Pick an activity we can do together / in synchronicity in each geography — to connect and embody in different ways of living and being
In practise: So far we’ve been to a morning rave and roller disco, as well as experimented with a series of early morning breakfasts outside the office. These things happen in a more ad hoc way, but help us connect in (and with) different environments and contexts.
6 monthly away day
Where: ideally in person
Purpose: A moment to recalibrate and ensure we’re moving in the right direction. Look at what have we achieved together. Identify what our priorities are for the coming months. Be intentional about where we put out energy. Be honest about how we need to change, what we need to shed and what might be new.
In practise: In June we spent lots of time outside, connecting and deciding to run these experiments with how we work, in December we spent some time pulling together our leanings and running a shared appraisal session (more below). This helped inform our priorities for 2017.
A collective appraisal
At Forum we have a standard appraisal process already, seeking 360 feedback from those you work with and being delivered by a line manager. But as a team we were curious about what a more systemic appraisal might look and feel like and found that Laloux’s book ‘Reinventing Organisations’ provided helpful ideas on how other organisations have made this work. Not content with reading the theory and practice of others, we decided to put it into practice at the end of 2016.
Purpose: We want to try and conduct appraisals in a more adult-adult/teal way; Experiment with a new process for appraisals/learning/skill development; see if face to face feedback helps to make us more efficient and to grow as a team and to conduct a co-inquiry that goes beyond an objective evaluation.
How: we spent a day together, out of the office And I’ve written a whole extra blog about the finer details of what we did here that you can read (coming soon.)
In practise: On an individual level it was a really positive experience, reinforced some things about my own practise, allowed us to spot some patterns and needs across the team and more importantly — creates a culture of feedback. The intention now that we’ve done it once is that we don’t have to wait a whole year to share our feedback and support each other — but that we can do it on a more frequent basis. It’s also something that could be really helpful for project teams or others that work together a lot.
Support network
We know that doing the work of a system changer’s means you need to have both personal resillience but also the support networks to draw from. We’ve tried out a few things in an effort for us all to feel more supported- from peer coaching, where we’ve paired up with those we don’t work with day to day and self organised to be a sounding board for each other. To any of us having the option to host a ‘working session’ when you need some new perspectives or ideas on a project or a challenge you’re working on. And we piloted an event series called Living Change — bringing together a potent mix of people to explore the realities and tensions of what it takes to be an innovator of systems — someone creating change in the world whilst committed to living change yourself.
How does it all add up?
The culmination effect of these different experiments is that as a team we relate to each other differently, there is a deeper sense of connection and shared endeavour and that really supports the system change work we’re pursuing.
But it’s worth saying that exploring how we work and organise is a constant experiment and we’re continuing to evolve the ways in which we relate to each other and work together as we’re sensing our that our needs are changing and bring new ideas and approaches in.
We know that in 2017 we want to open this out and for these processes to be not just for our team in the System Change Lab, but to try some of these processes with a wider community of system changers. More people are starting to identify themselves as ‘system change practitioners’ — and as Jon Alexander from the New Citizenship Project recently said…“now is the time for spiritually lighted friends to start to be more active together” and to really explore what it means to organise and be part of a wider ecosystem of system change.
