Atelier WeekNote w/c 10 Mar 2025
ATELIER MANAGEMENT 2024 Results. Progress on the story I want to be able to tell. Progress on KPIs. 0/DETECTING. Operating in a world where Trump is setting the weather.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
I'm getting back into a weekly routine. Hurray! But I can't share everything I've been up to this week (hopefully some interesting/good news soon). In the meantime, this WeekNote covers:
0/DETECTING
Operating in a world where Trump is setting the weather.
ATELIER MANAGEMENT
2024 Results
-Progress on the story I want to be able to tell.
-Progress on KPIs.
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.
0/DETECTING
Operating in a world where Trump is setting the weather
You may have noticed that the President of the USA has been taking a chainsaw to the established order.
Back in late Jan, I had thought that we would have at least 4 years of swimming through bullshit ('bullshit'=speech is intended to persuade without regard for the truth), and I had been inspired by Vaclev Havel's book, The Power of the Powerless to argue for living in truth. We have a choice and a responsibility to differentiate ourselves from the officially mandated culture and make our own choices so we don't automatically reinforce the bullshitting culture.
The bullshitting is still there. And the Trump Administration is not just a bull in a china shop, but a bull that is worried the china shop will close soon. ('Must. Finish. Destruction. Before. Defence. Mechanism. Activates.')
It all has been deeply disturbing, what with the attacks on the foundations of security, economic prosperity, scientific endeavour, free speech and legal rights that I / we have taken for granted. This despite giving a talk in 2017 on how 'our past is ending'.
So, I was grateful for a wise insight from Robin Alfred (facilitator of depth work, emergence and transformational fields, hear his explanation of all that here). He shared with me (and has allowed me to share with you) what I thought of as a Serenity Prayer ("Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what can not be helped, and insight to know the one from the other") but applied to Trump.
"It is not my business to know or interfere with Trump’s contract with God, but it is my business to be conscious of how I relate to what he’s saying and doing, and to be clear where I have a ‘no’ to ethical violations he and others may be committing, without othering him or contributing to the polarisation of the field, and all the while being conscious of my projections, and my unintegrated and unconscious parts, that help create what manifests today as Donald Trump.
"This is tricky but necessary practice."
The part that particularly struck me was about how our own projections help create the situation (something that is not in the Serenity Prayer). I believe the actions of the Trump Administration will cause huge suffering. And, I have to admit that Othering Trump, and the people who voted for him, is all too easy but gets in the way of making the world a better place. (Just like calling Brexit voters idiots doesn't help.)
ATELIER MANAGEMENT
2024 Results
So, it is March 2025. In December 2024 I said I would provide a review of Atelier in January. Obviously, that didn't happen. Partly, I needed to work on going from 'getting by' to 'existentially revived' (see last week's post). Partly, I was hitting deadlines relating to job interviews. Anyway, there we go.
At the start of 2024 I wrote about what success would look like, the story I wanted to tell about 2024, and the specific KPIs that informed that story.
In short, success for the Atelier is about maturing the supply-side (the capabilities for delivery, the resources, the organisational form) and the demand-side (the demand, the impact), especially thinking in three phases:
Short-term: Learning by trying.
Medium-term: Thriving by doing-and-learning.
Long-term: Contributing to a better future.
Progress on the story I want to be able to tell.
Obviously 2024 was a year of learning-by-trying. In terms of the story I wanted to tell:
"A year of strong progress and the fundamentals in place." NOT MET. As related elsewhere, family challenges really effected me. So, I was not able to put in the effort or nuance that I had planned. Result: there has been only weak progress and the fundamentals are not all in place. Darn.
A big highlight was the launch of a specific project. DELAYED. I had hoped that Influential Trajectories would be launched this year, with the results of the State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS) pilot. Instead, the SoSS pilot was scaled back (I would call it semi-skimmed, rather than the full fat version I had hoped). Influential Trajectories was pilotted with Rewiring Aotearoa, and proved to be a good vehicle for exploring how to electrify the rural economy.
The huge theme of the year has been learning-by-doing. PROGRESS. As a process indicator, there have been regular (it not quite weekly) WeekNotes. In terms of the main lessons themselves:
There is a body of work on 'deep transitions' to join in with and use (more here).
Ask for help, more than I have before and more than I’m initially comfortable with (without being extractive; and without obligation). Give help when asked (without keeping score).
Nurture flywheels. What is matters if all those component parts are creating a positive, reinforcing feedback loop, which out-competes the alternatives. More on flywheels: here applied to investment principles; here as a test on progress in transformational change.
Last week, I wrote about some more meta- and personal lessons, on shifting stance from ‘do the routines’ to “To be here is immense.” (Rilke). That was probably the most important lesson of 2024.
As result of our fast learning cycles, we have re-shaped our offer. NOT MET. Not enough interactions to have good evidence on how to re-shape the offer. Came close with one competitive bid process. Someone who had not worked with me (which is relatively rare) but had found the Atelier through LinkedIn (which must be some kind of miracle). In the end they said that they would have appointed me, but the other bidder had larger team and so wider skills.
That said, the method inside SoSS did get a name, and a standalone page: Influential Trajectories.
All this is only possible because the Atelier now has at least 2 part-time co-founders. NOT MET. I had one series of conversations which seemed to be leading somewhere, but then the person in question had to work through a life challenge. Also, some wise heads warned against the idea of 'co-founders' when I am clearly the founder. They were using some work by Peter Koenig called The Source Principle:
"Every human initiative – from projects to parties to entire businesses – starts with one single founder, the source. The source is the person who takes the first risk to realise an idea.
"Many people believe there can be equal co-founders who got started ‘together’, but Koenig has found that in every case there is one single source. Two or more people cannot take the initiative on exactly the same idea at the same moment. Someone is always first. They are the source."
The Atelier is now a legal entity with a specific operating model. NOT MET.
David has decided on doing a doctorate. NOT MET.
Progress on KPIs
Not surprisingly, given all the above, the detail in the KPI tracker has lots of red. Darn!
But also: self-compassion. This was mostly out of my control. I’ve had some serious learnings (see above).
And 2025?
I will put my intentions for (the rest of) 2025 in the next WeekNote.