Atelier WeekNotes w/c 3 July
Breakfast With Interesting People; Nature Enquiry weekend; Competence in Complexity peer group; Atelier developments.
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’s is a little short on actual work, because I lost a few days to cold+hayfever+humidity. Still, here are the headlines:
Breakfast With Interesting People (and announcing the Atelier).
Nature Enquiry weekend (and regrowing a living culture).
Competence in Complexity peer group (and testing how to get to the larger version of the Atelier).
Developments in Atelier Practices.
Breakfast With Interesting People
Step: 0/DETECTING. Theme: Transforming Systems.
The time since my last WeekNotes has had a lot of community events. This started with BWIP, or Breakfasts With Interesting People. Set up by Kegan Lovely in the mid-2010s, this is a network of people working sustainability, with a boas towards those in the for-profit sector. Before COVID we met on the third Thu of the month for breakfast.
The most recent breakfast was fairly typical. About 15 people. Some start-ups, some VC funds, a lawyer, a banker, some consultants, an NGO person. After introductions, we go round with what our needs are, which people then respond to. Mine was simple: be aware of the Atelier of What’s Next (‘What’s needed? What’s ready? What can we do? What next?’) and subscribe the to WeekNotes.
Others ranged from foundation funding, investment through to contacts to shift buildings management practices and to overcome risk aversion to investing in sub-Saharan Africa. Given the arbitrary grouping, there probably isn’t much to make sense of the content of requests in one meeting. (It would be different if we had a record of all requests over the whole time of its existence.)
My main reflection is about the fact of BWIP. The meeting was called at the last minute, taking advantage of people being over for London Climate ActioN Week. And yet, we had a good turnout and there were new people there. The requests were diverse.
The implication there are more people working in the domain of sustainability than ever.
Also, it was the first time I was explaining the Atelier of What's Next to these folks. As ever, felt a bit exposed but the response was mainly positive.
WHAT NEXT? For the group, reducing the reliance on one person organising (almost) everything. (A common problem of networks is that no one, including me, is stepping up here.) For me, following up on the requests people made. Also, re-volunteering to convene the work-related reading group.
Nature Enquiry weekend
Step: 0/DETECTING. Theme: Transforming Systems.
Also since the last WeekNotes, I had a weekend engaging with nature, and other change folk, in rural north Kent.
The occasion was a Nature Enquiry at the Quadrangle Trust. The Trust exists as a space to reconnect. There's a living space, barn, gardens and a lovely forest garden, which was re-designed to exemplify regenerative methods in 2010 (great video here). The Nature Enquiry weekends are about exploring our cultural, political and personal relationship with the natural world. I had been part of the first ever in autumn 2016.
A few weeks ago I was at the 4SD Living System Leadership immersion are a the technocratic end of things, all about UN processes and multilateral bodies with NGO executives and diplomats (see that week's WeekNote).
In contrast, most of the attendees of the Quadrangle Nature Enquiry are cultural creatives (even those who work in NGOs). So, while there was lots of overlap of content, the feel was very different. Not least because this was an experiment of letting people bring their children. Lots of 5-10 year olds, with a few younger or older. They brought a certain chaos to activities. We just had to accept interruptions and random interjections, even as we were reflecting or writing or whatever.
Most of the specifics (including who else was there) are, I'm afraid, confidential. One exercise I can share, which gives a flavour.
The tradition of the Nature Enquiries is that the second, Sat evening is set aside for a participatory exercise called "Only Wolves and Lions", designed by a past attendee, Leo Kay.
Everyone is asked to bring some raw food. (I brought a bag of organic red onions.) These are places on a table. We are told that Epicurus said that only wolves and lions eat alone. We are eating together. So, what shall we make? The big group is split into 2-3s, who start identifying recipes from the assembled food. Then comes the negotiation. Groups say what they'd like to make. There's a bit of too-ing and fro-ing (the red onions were not in high demand, but the avacados were). Then you cook your bit.
Sounds like a recipe for conflict. But my experience is that it all works out. And the group makes a better menu of food in this way than they would have by planning weeks in advance and getting exactly the right ingredients.
As I type, I'm at home. Earlier this evening I cooked for my kids. My next door neighbour will have cooked for herself. All along the street, every household will have come up with its own meal. And do this every evening. It takes a lot of messages on the street WhatsApp group to organise anything that we might do together.
'Only Wolves and Lions' is a communal ritual, an attempt to swim against the fragmented, individualistic tide of our times. It is of a piece with A School Called HOME's attempts to regrow a living culture. It takes something special for the habits of daily life to be suspended. But when we come back, when I came back, the previous norm returns too.
So much of the weekend was that for me. A moment of difference -- often fun, sometimes with noisy children -- outside of the normal world, and normal time.
The most important question that came up was: "What am I learning about what a generative life looks like for me?". Not sure I've got much of an answer. Yet.
WHAT NEXT? More asking the question "What am I learning about what a generative life looks like for me?"
Competence in Complexity Peer Group
Step: 1/DESCRIBING. Theme: Atelier Practice.
The other community event was a small peer group coming out of the International Future Forum's Competence in Complexity course. IFF has been the crucible for anumber fo system change methods, not least Three Horizons. The Competence in Complexity course leant heavily on 'Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture and Organisation in the 21st Century'.
The group of us who did the latest course have formed a small peer support group. We meet (roughly) monthly to have 20-30 mins each to explain a current situation (/problem/whatever) and then hear others' insights on it.
This week, I shared one of my live questions: how to start now with the larger version of the Atelier of What's Next?
All the way back in the first WeekNotes I explained possible future directions: the small version of just me; the larger version where others start to join in, bringing their own ideas to work on, or being part of the team. The Atelier becomes an on-going incubator / accelerator / supporter of many different 'innovations', initiated by many different people.
Through listening to everyone's insights, I had some realisations.
First, that I've been independent for almost 7 years. Of course, I have worked in many project teams across that time, and still do now. But I'm not used to being in something with others that we, together, decide what to do with. (Indeed, at times over the last 2 years I have wondered if I might be unemployable because I won't just fit in an organisation and do what is decided elsewhere.)
I am massively out of practice with being organised with others.
Which leads to the second realisation. Right now, I am in charge of the Atelier of What's Next. For better or worse, I can write the strapline (What's Needed? What's Ready? What can we do? What's next?) and so on. One person asked how would I feel about other people defining and deciding what the Atelier is?
The honest answer is: right now, I'd struggle with that. So, that's the inner work I need to do. To be comfortable with giving up control of the Atelier to others if they want to join in, and I want them to.
WHAT NEXT? Get on with that inner work.
Developments in AWN Practices
Step: 5/DEVELOPING. Theme: Atelier Practice.
Step: present participle; fuzziness of use.
Back in an earlier WeekNotes I claimed there could be a common process backbone, which had seven steps. A few observations as I have been using these in tagging:
I prefer the present participle. So, 5/DEVELOPING not just 5/DEVELOP. A sense of an on-going activity, rather than a punchy action.
I have found it hard to allocate to just one step. I seem to think projects can be in a several stages at once. This is probably ill-discipline on my part.
The steps can be fractal, in that a project can be in 5/DEVELOPING, but a part of it is in a research phase of 2/DISCOVERING. Again, this might speak to ill-discipline on my part.
Project and portfolio management
I’m trying using Motion, after Paul Miller of Bethnal Green Ventures recommended it.
The purpose behind trying this is that I have many projects to juggle (and more, if the Atelier is successful). My aim is that some kind of project management tool will mean I don’t have to remember all the stuff that is important. That would be a capacity multiplier by reducing the cognitive load of keeping all the plates spinning.
At the moment, my starred email list is one place where I keep things to do. As is an app called ToDoIst. And my day book. Oh, and my head. Result: I become very deadline driven (because that tells me which things have to be done). And so things without a deadline slip. A classic example of the urgent crowding out the important.
Ideally the tool would ‘serve up’ the right thing to do at the right time. That is Motion’s USP. It constantly re-arranges tasks to fit into your schedule, based on the deadlines and time-to-deliver you have given it.
First impressions:
Easy to set up.
A sensible monthly rate for a single person user (unlike Asana, for instance)
No ability to port in from another app (eg from ToDoIst).
The one week free trial is promising. But getting int a specific tool feels like a lot of commitment (of stuff in, and of learning how to use).
Strong vibe of bait and hook (once in, you don’t want to leave because so much tacit content is embedded in the tool). But that’s probably true of all of these things.
I don’t yet trust it to serve up the right thing at the right time. I already was allocating time to specific things (though I would often then ignore that allocation). So, I keep checking if the algorithm is right. Or I try to fix the result by upping the priority of the relevant tasks (which is actually the right way to use the system).
It keeps telling me that it is having to schedule tasks after the deadlines, because there isn't enough time beforehand. Which is both accurate and not helpful. But hardly the app's fault.
WHAT NEXT? Keep experimenting with Motion.