Atelier WeekNotes w/c 8 Jan 2024

Tracking Initiatives and 2024 Objectives. Decline of social media. Project Turquoise starts. Testing the possibilities of a book based on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business'.

I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (What’s needed, What’s ready? What can we do? What next?). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.

This week covers:

PRIORITIES
1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit -- nothing this week
2. Organising for abundance -- the Atelier now has trackers!
0/DETECTING
-Decline of social media (and a sponsorship opportunity).

IN THE ATELIER
-Project Turquoise is starting!
-Testing the possibilities of a book based on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business'
-Atelier-related outputs

ATELIER OPERATIONS
Tracking progress
-Initiatives tracker
-Atelier 2024 Objectives

How can the Atelier of What's Next be of service to you, and your purposes? We'd love to hear from you. Perhaps you have a challenge or idea to put in the studio. Maybe one of our existing topics appeals to you. What if you love to make new things happen by being part of the studio? Or if you have feedback or comments that would improve this deck. Either click the button below or email davidbent@atelierwhatsnext.org.

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PRIORITIES

1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit -- no update this week

2. Organising for abundance

Last week I wrote the latest description of the Atelier and what success would look like in 2024. To help generate that success, I have turned those features into a tracker, basically a long table, which you can find towards the end of this WeekNotes.

In the tracker there are some milestones (eg have good-enough single webpage by end of Jan) but most of the lines are habits or practices (eg review the list of current projects monthly for progress and a next step).

This reflects my working assumption that if the Atelier (and all who sail in her) have regular, appropriate habits and practices then good stuff will emerge. I've taken this assumption from places like The Inner Game of Tennis (Buddhism + Sports Psychology) and my own experiences learning piano.

The other tracker I have made is for the initiatives within the Atelier. It is also a table (current version towards the end of this WeekNote) showing the current status, and the next action.

The underlying purpose for both trackers is to prompt the appropriate action at the appropriate time -- hence I think of them as part of organising for abundance.

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0/DETECTING

Decline of social media

This year I will be running for the third time the 10km London Winter Run for Cancer Research UK. (The first time I ran it, in February 2021, my wife had just been diagnosed with cancer and I was looking for some exercise to do in the lockdown. She then died that April.)

In the past 2 years, as soon I started posting about my training on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) then people would immediately, and generously, start donating. Quite quickly the total would go through the amount I had guaranteed (£175), and in both years climb on to over £1,200.

This year, no donations have come through social media in the first week. One implication: I need to change my fundraising tactics.

Second implication: people in my social group (so, middle aged professionals) are using the social media giants much less than in previous years.

If you would like to donate, please follow this link.

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IN THE ATELIER

'Project Turquoise'

Concept: A project to make a better future visible and accessible to our young people, so that they are aware of the alternatives to business as usual when they are making future life and career choices.

Latest. Step: 1/DESCRIBING, 2/DISCOVERING, 3/DEFINING.

At the end of last year I wrote that I had had a first approach, someone with an idea and wondering how to develop it. I'm glad to say that we've had a second conversation, in which we agreed I could put non-confidential information about the initiative into these WeekNotes.

So, the person is Celine McKeown, the brilliant founder of Do What Matters, which "creates spaces and experiences for you or your team to reconnect to the heart of what matters and move forward with greater alignment between your reality, purpose and impact in the world."

Her idea, in her own words:

• A project to make a better future visible and accessible to our young people, so that they are aware of the alternatives to business as usual when they are making future life and career choices.

• Specifically, to connect local 6th form college students [starting in Brighton], who under the new government guidelines all need to complete a week's work experience, with local organisations who are working towards better futures (be they regenerative, restorative, place-based, nature-based, circular, participatory, distributive, community-based, citizen-led innovations, collaborations, businesses, local governments, start-ups or NGOs). Joining up the dots, making the system visible to itself.

We had an hour-long conversation, much of which I won’t go into now. Two things from all this:

Test: at the frontier of generating a better future?

One could say: isn't that all a bit small? Changing what happens in the work experience weeks of some 16 year olds? Is that really "at the frontier of generating a bitter future"?

To which I'd say: I hear you, but I think there is a lot more going on here.

Even at just the local level, the initiative could generate multiple impacts, including greater connectivity between local organisations with aligned working practices. It could be one keystone in enhancing a local cluster.

Local clusters with strong connections (but not too tightly coupled) are important for resilience. And resilience is one of the pillars of what we need going forward.

So, Project Turquoise gives a local expression to a global need (the 'macro in the micro'). But, crucially, with ways forward which are within the reach of those taking them.

The contrast is with many initiatives to change the global system. High ambition but the path forward requires stuff to happen which is just not within the ambit of those planning it. ('First, we need a complete change in human consciousness...')

Imagine each town has a version of this, where the young people can get an experience with a future-facing organisation. Everywhere that is happening, the connections between those organisations will go up, as will their connections into the local community. There will be more local clusters.

Hence also why Celine is happy with me sharing the idea here. If someone else gets inspired and does something similar where they are, how fantastic. (Though, if you are in Brighton, please reach out to Celine.)

All that said, there is a caveat. There's no point having a stated ambition like 'at the frontier' if there is no test which ever says no. As in, perhaps I will always be able to find a way for something to work.

Heads of Agreement

Because Celine was the first person to approach the Atelier with a nascent idea, I had to work up a Heads of Agreement, something which gave a contractual basis for how we were going to work together.. Here's what I came up with:

• We are starting by exploring what the idea might become. We both know it could fall over quickly, or go on to be great. There’s no way of knowing yet.

• We are going to start with a few Zoom calls (say 2, one hour calls), and see where that gets us.

• We are starting in good faith and trusting each other. If something isn’t working then the first step is to raise it. But anyone can stop the arrangement.

• The idea is your idea. The Atelier will take no stake or IP that is about your idea, unless we agree something different in the future.

• The methods we use to develop your idea remain with the Atelier (and lessons from using them will be integrated into their next use). Where possible, the Atelier will acknowledge contributions to improving the methods.

• The experiences might appear in the Exploring What’s Next WeekNotes. Anything written there will never reveal commercially sensitive material, betray confidences, or be embarrassing. At the same time, there will not normally be pre-approval for the content. If there is anything you want to not be put into the WeekNotes, then please say.

WHAT NEXT

• Project Turquoise: Concept note.

• 'At the frontier' test: capture the qualities.

• Heads of Agreement: formalise.

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Testing the possibilities of a book based on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business'

If you're a subscriber to this SubStack then you have already received the introduction to the New Series, based on the 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business' masters module i co-teach this term at UCL.

To rehearse, the series gives a weekly key insight from the Masters module I co-teach on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business'. Part of the motivation is to test the idea of turning the module into a book.

WHAT NEXT:
- Next instalment early next week.

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Atelier-related outputs

Long Read: 'Practice makes the pianist, and the pianist makes practice'

As Rilke says, “To be here is immense”. But, I think to myself as I go into the exam, that is not the same as *fun*.

This is the key quote from a piece I have written about why fear of climate change pushed me to learn piano in my 40s, and the experience of a Grade 5 exam. Read it here.

It is an essay, very much inspired by literary / pretentious [delete as appropriate] London Review of Books (LRB). Coming in at a little over 5,000 words, it is short for the LRB but long for our current digital life.

So, I'm amazed that it has already had over 200 views, and has had quite a lot of positive comments and responses in various social media fora.

The concluding section very much reflects where I am at on the Atelier too:

"Practices [meaning: methods used in decision-making and habits of action], how they develop, how they are scaled and improved, needs to be core to how we address the challenges of our powerful times."

Hence why success for the Atelier this year is as much about creating practices that 'work' as anything else. Also why the 'frontier initiatives' where I think I can make the most difference are methods (like 'Imagining transformative pathways for decision-making' which is central to the SoSS pilot).

Innovation for Sustainability interview

A new episode has gone out. I was speaking with David Hunter, who is a Senior Counsel at Bates Wells, a purpose-driven law firm (David’s corporate page and LinkedIn).

Our conversation covers a lot of what Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs calls the ‘boring revolution’ — the vital work of getting legal and governance regulations and practice to align with generating a sustainable world. 

Enjoy on Apple, Spotify or here.

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ATELIER OPERATIONS

Tracking progress

Below are the versions of the progress trackers which I can get over into SubStack. (SubStack doesn’t support tables in its own formatting; you have to use Datawrapper.) The originals use colours (Red, Amber and Green), which make them easier to follow. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. So, the tables below are a bit…uneasy on the eye.

AWN Initiatives tracker

As at Fri 12 Jan.
RAG=Red (needs urgent attention); Amber (needs corrective action); and Green (on-track).

AWN 2024 Objectives

As at Fri 12 Jan.
RAG=Red (needs urgent attention); Amber (needs corrective action); and Green (on-track).