#WeekNotes w/c 22 May: It’s Alive!
This is my first Atelier of What’s Next (AWN) update in a while. Three parts:
Already started (which also explains why there has been a gap).
Playing with offers.
Towards a process backbone
Already started
I had a breakthrough earlier this week while in my peer coaching group. When my turn came I said how disappointed I was to have made so little progress on the Atelier, having had the idea 5 months ago. They pointed out 2 things. First, there are good reasons why I haven’t been able to put extra time into the idea (on top of delivering some big profession projects, I’ve had a series of family emergencies).
Second, most importantly, the Atelier is already underway. I’m already working on things which could be and should part of What’s Next. I’ve been working with an organisation that is trying to use AI to communicate with animals. (Yes, really.) I’ve just finished chairing EIRIS Foundation, which is all about pioneering the next steps to sustainable finance. I’m mentoring a start-up that’s in the Greenhouse incubator, that’s part of Imperial College’s Undaunted programme, working on climate change.
Yes, I don’t have the superstructure, the legal form, the precise descriptions of how this or that bit works.
But the workshop as practice (attempted), as a way of being (attempted), well that is underway.
When they said that, I felt a relief. And the guilt at not doing the WeekNotes. (And with the release of that guilt, that need to do a proper WeekNotes, of course I find myself able to write one.)
WHAT NEXT:
Act as if the Atelier of What's Next is already underway (because it is).
Accept that I will need to do first, learn from that, and then cerate the various structures around it all. (Otherwise, the perfect will be the enemny of the good, permanently.)
Re-start the week notes, as a way to land the learning (hence this post).
Playing with offers
This morning I was playing with what the ‘offers’ of an AWN might be. This popped into my head:
What’s Next for You? — individual coaching and mentoring.
What’s Next for Your Organisation? — organisational strategy.
What’s Next for Your Sector or Field? — system change strategy and practice advise.
What’s Next for [insert category of thing or situation]? — [some kind of strategy offer]
It’s neat. It’s clear. It’s memorable. It fits with my past and track record. And its wrong.
Wrong in that it doesn’t fit with the original concept: building a workshop where new things could be developed and released.
All too easy for the offers above to fall back into strategy consulting. Which has its place. But wasn’t the idea of the AWN. And makes me think that the strategy consulting-like projects should be thought of as not in the AWN. As in, for financial reasons I may well need to take on consulting work that isn’t really developing something new. But I should force-fit that kind of work into the AWN. It is a separate track.
WHAT NEXT:
Consulting-like work is allowed (for financial reasons) but doesn’t count as ‘in’ the Atelier. If there are processes which are being tested and improved during a piece of consulting work, then those practices could be thought of as being in the Atelier.
Towards a process ‘backbone’
My starting hypothesis is that it is possible to have a common set of practices to draw on for working on the What’s Next. Within umbrella assumption, that there is a specific series of steps which can be good-enough for describing the journey of a What’s Next*, with implications for what needs to happen next for it to make it to the next step. A bit like NASA’s Technological Readiness Levels (TLRs), which are much used in VCs.
(*SIDEBAR: Interesting that I have created a very specific jargon term — a “What’s Next” — to cover the multiplicity of stuff which I want to be allowed to develop, from public policies to new institutions, from practices to new movements or scenes.)
For a long time I have liked Rowan Conway et al’s “Think like a system, Act like an entrepreneur”, which re-purposes the Design Council Double Diamond for systems change. (As I write this, I’m very aware that: it is a long time since I read that piece, so I may be mis-remembering it; and, the Design Council has done their own ‘Double Diamond for systems change’ update, which I have in somewhere in my electronic ‘to read’ pile).
Even so, I feel that I can do a ‘started for ten’ on that process backbone, building on Conway’s work.
For each step:
Shape the context. Consider how the activity and outputs of the step can also be contributing to the wider context which makes the whole journey more possible, and opens up more potential. Could you be making new relationships which are helpful in the future? COuld you be building the capacity of key stakeholders along the way? What else could you be doing which delivers what the step needs in the short term, and shapes the system for the long-term?
Have a tight learning cycle. Within each step there is a need to be agile and adaptable. And, above all, to learn by doing. Which means having a tight learning cycle (Hypothesis -> Action -> Results -> Revised hypothesis -> etc).
Also, the talk of numbered 'steps' inevitably makes the 'journey' sound straight-forward (1 to 2 to ...). I hope I don't need to tell you, dear reader, that is not how life plays out. Any framework like this simplifies the world, and so misses out stuff. Of course, all frameworks are wrong. But hopefully this one is useful.
WHAT NEXT
Start explicitly using this to frame my work.