How we prepared and ran a retrospective for Catalyst’s transition process based on range of tolerance

If you’re connected to Catalyst in some aspect, you probably know that this is an exciting time for the network. Since 2021, Catalyst has reflected on a need for change stemming from wider world events, movements and shifts in perspective and (un)learning in the shape of moving away from CAST and setting up a new organisation. The process to get Catalyst to this new era and organisation (which has been set up as a CIC in the past few weeks) is known internally as the Transition Process.

I have been working on supporting this process since October, joining a long term collaborator of mine, Abi Handley, who has been involved with the network since 2021. The support is two-fold: We provide strategic support for the transition period by co-designing focused sessions, and supporting the process as needed — intentionally broad because we wanted to learn what was needed and shape our approach based on delivering value to those involved in the process. The other facet of work was to establish a team — ideally a sociocratic circle — with the domain of supporting Catalyst and each other to build collective power.

A jargon klaxon might have just sounded in your mind, what’s Sociocracy? Broadly speaking, it’s a governance model that fits alongside the ethos of organisations and groups of people that want to self-govern based on values of equality with a focus on safely holding and integrating dissent. One of my go-to ways of introducing it is that we help individuals move from their personal preference into their range of tolerance so that they can make better decisions as a group. This is nicely demonstrated in the image below — look what happens when we’re operating within our range of tolerance, rather than our personal preference — the space is a lot bigger, and I think better decisions are made:

As a network, we’re not fully practising Sociocracy, but Abi and I do try to bring in working with our range of tolerance as much as possible. We applied the same approach to preparing and running the retrospective, it probably wasn’t going to be exactly how everyone wanted it, but we were aiming for them to be able to tolerate it and engage with the questions posed. The transition covered lots of steps within one process, and although we were learning throughout, we wanted to conclude the work with initiative leads and producers to capture learning and give people an opportunity to voice how it was for them at each stage.

I’m going to keep my personal style of working present and bring in honesty and genuine insights around this work. The process meant that everyone who has led an initiative (and therefore been funded by Catalyst) for the past X years needed to make a proposition and apply for funding. There were more steps than this, but the reason that I specify this one is that ultimately the process did include ‘old’ ways of working, i.e. there were funding and decision-making dynamics that can cause anxiety, anger and fear. We were aware of this from the start, and despite our desire to move into new ways of working that openly talk about and challenge power, there were still ways that it manifested.

As we approached the end of the transition, we received stronger feedback and feelings around not feeling happy about the process. Some people were more vocal than others with their frustration — that it was not deeply defined, lack of clarity and inaccessible language, or something else. In order to give people a chance to feed back, to balance the amount of energy that we want to dedicate to a process that is closing (and that we don’t intend to again) and to learn for the future, we proposed running a retrospective, or ‘retro’.

We prepared and ran the retro by:

• Identifying four key stages within the process so that people could feedback on smaller chunks, rather than an entire five months’ of work
• Using a standard two hour meeting slot to run it so that we were in our normal group cadence. The setting and tone of the meeting (something we internally call ‘climate’) was incredibly important to openly acknowledge and establish tone
• I did this by introducing/reminding people of the Prime Directive: Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand. I made a specific request for people to speak their truth respectfully. I was as aware of the people that were annoyed about some parts (or maybe all!) of the process as the people that were grieving through the change, or could be overshadowed or left feeling powerless if the meeting took a specific direction in tone. My aim was to validate all emotions in the room, and make space for all of them as best as an online two hour meeting can.
• We gave the initiative leads time to review a jamboard listed with each of the main steps of the process, and followed the same feedback framework that they’ve used before: High Five; Watch Out; What About? This provided some continuity with what they’d used before
• Once this was finished, we came back together and asked people to mention the most useful thing that they wanted to share with the group. This was an intentional decision because there can be a temptation to go into lots of detail on an individual basis in a retro, and we just didn’t have time for that. The responses were varied and many of them were heartfelt, it seemed that the framing of the meeting at the start was heard and respected.
• Abi and I had a debrief with the producers to group the themes that had emerged, read each response in detail, frame some How Might We statements and capture learnings to take them into the new version of Catalyst.
• After the meeting, we received some messages and comments that thanked us for holding the space for people to reflect and offer their thoughts around the process, to others saying it was quite granular and they struggled to reflect on each stage. And there you have it, the range of tolerance.