Reimagining organisations
"Nothing can be created outside until it is created inside first."
Illarion Mercuiff
We are living through a huge moment of uncertainty, upheaval, complexity, and challenge. Many of the existing ways of working within organisations feel at best dysfunctional and, at worst, vehicles to reinforce existing societal power dynamics. Meeting this moment we are in requires a radical reimagining and remaking of the way in which organisations are built and run.
With this as my starting point, and tasked with setting up the organisational infrastructure for New Constellations in 2020, I started to think about what it could look like to build a different kind of organisation. I held a few guiding questions close:
What does it take for an organisation to be truly regenerative and not extractive? i.e what does it take to leave the spaces we operate in better than we found them?
What do an organisation's systems and processes look like if they are designed using care, love and generosity as guiding principles?
How can we create the right conditions to enable the scale of change required to meet the challenges of this time?
As I went along, I hit many stumbling blocks. I searched online for inspiration, but often encountered dead ends. I was frustrated that a lot of the traditional approaches to organisational design felt cumbersome, bureaucratic, top-down and void of any human touch. This process made me realise that the ‘how’ is often the part of an organisation that is not made visible. So in 2022 I decided to put out a call on twitter asking the questions above. I hoped to uncover some of these unsung processes, and examples of where new organisational shapes and approaches were being applied in practice - from team practices, employment contracts, procurement, pay structures, gathering and event production, to project management tools, budgeting and more.
I was overwhelmed by the response. It was, and is, clear that there’s a huge appetite out there to explore this territory. I ended up speaking to 40+ people, from every corner of the world and collected stories and examples from those conversations. Everywhere I turned another question opened up - and a possibility.
“The tension of our times is that we want our organisations to behave as living systems but we only know how to treat them as machines.”
Margaret Wheatley
So after 5 years of experimenting, and as New Constellations enters its chrysalis phase, I am taking the opportunity to share what I’ve learnt along the way in the hope it might be useful to others who are asking the same questions I’ve asked as I’ve grown our infrastructure. What follows are some examples of ways we have been experimenting with new kinds of working at New Constellations, weaving other ideas in that were shared with me as part of the inquiry. Where possible, I’ve included links to practical documents - lists, toolkits, checklists - that you are welcome to use. Before I jump into these, I wanted to share a list of what I was looking for in terms of organisational processes that might help us build a materially different way of doing things. I would really welcome any thoughts on, or additions to, this list:
Designed as a living system not a machine
Designed using different principles e.g. care, love, generosity, simplicity, joy
Encourages slowing down and reflecting
Not designed around the industrial economy
Enables a materially different way of prioritising time
Breaks down traditional hierarchical power dynamics
Based on reciprocity and trust rather than risk mitigation
Deeply relational
Models learning in the open as a way of being accountable to those the work is trying to serve
Inspired by nature’s cycles
Regenerative and not extractive
Encourages taking future generations into the planning
I’m excited that since I began this inquiry back in 2022, there is now a lot more content out there on organisational practices and ways of working. This blog is one small contribution to the space to help people move towards more regenerative organisational practices and to provide pockets of inspiration when things may feel tough. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every aspect of organisational development, or offer a solution to solving all organisational ills. My hope is that it will be useful to those of you who are grappling with the challenge of building different kinds of organisations, or to those who have the appetite and ideas for how things can be done differently, even in small ways. There’s a lot in here, so as the Scottish proverb we often reference in New Constellations journeys says: ‘what’s for you, won’t go by you’.
“Trust the people and they become trustworthy.”
adrienne maree brown
As we set out to build New Constellations, our core team of four went through a process of writing our job descriptions ourselves with complete autonomy to shape these in a way that excited us. We then came together as a team to talk them through, make sure they fitted together and were complementary and ensure there weren’t any gaps. This process was empowering and I felt valued and totally trusted in what I was bringing to the table. Here’s a very simple outline of the process we went through.
Beyond our small core team, we’ve worked with a number of people who we bring in for the different projects we’ve run. Rather than entering into a traditional legal-speak transactional contract with them, we designed this collaborators agreement. It is designed to enable each party to be in human relationship with each other, in service of the collective mission of New Constellations and the world around us. We worked creatively together within the rules of employment law to create a more human, living document that truly reflects the type of work we’re doing rather than something long in legal speak that no one really understands. A key component of the agreement is basing the contract around trust and reciprocity rather than starting from a point of assuming something will go wrong. If you are exploring employment contracts in your organisation or work, Beyond The Rules have developed this incredible employment contract portal which has loads of guidance as well as a template employment contract you can download and make your own.
“It is vital that we remember, or relearn, how to read the patterns, relationships, energies, insights, and intelligences innate within life.”
Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins
Nature’s cycles have been a big inspiration to us. We are a team that all works at different hours, each at different life stages, with different things going on outside of work. To try to think about how to have a collective organisational flow that also works for each of us individually, we have experimented with planning our organisational activities around the wheel of the year, inspired by nature’s ebbs and flows. We take notice of the different energies present at different times of year and have built in cycles of work, rest, birthing and composting across our work; periods of high energy, high action, high intensity and also periods of inward times of learning and reflection. Here is a template calendar based on the wheel of the year you can make a copy of and use. As with building the new from within the old, this has not been easy and it’s been challenging to stick to, particularly when we’ve been accountable to external partners.
A couple of other tools I really like that are inspired by nature’s patterns and cycles, are the Long Time Tools - a resource with loads of different tools to integrate long-term thinking and this Tree of Life exercise which is a simple exercise for reclaiming your identity and direction in life through story. I’ve also been really inspired by the amazing work of TealCo who use a Tree Framework (which is described in this talk) to enable them to get a more holistic view of how an organisation is operating.
“Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after.”
Grace Lee Boggs
As part of the journeys we run, I am responsible for ensuring each individual participating feels listened to and is empowered with the depth of care and attention we offer. Care and love is woven into every part of the journey, from handcrafted packs we send out in the post to each person, to the work we do with each participant beforehand to really get to know them and understand what they need to feel comfortable in a space. What this approach unlocks has been talked about consistently in people’s feedback on the journeys. It is one the things that makes our journeys unusual, memorable and impactful for participants. And I believe it’s central to the transformation we need in the world; when people feel valued, seen and cared for it enables them to participate in the process as their full selves and opens space for deep conversations.
In the spirit of extending care to everyone we worked with, we did a piece of work to reimagine the traditional fiscal sponsorship model. We implemented a model that is focused on creating a ‘home’ to nurture a new initiative that is being birthed for a period of time before it can spin out and thrive in the world. We have twice experimented with this for initiatives doing pioneering and experimental work that haven’t easily fit elsewhere. One of these projects was The Decelerator, a support service for civil society organisations looking for information, tools and hands-on support for better organisational endings. We provided them with a legal and fiscal home for a few months as they caught their breath, assessed their options and took their time to make important decisions about infrastructure, legal structure, financial management and more. This went beyond a transactional relationship: we acted a cheerleader for their work, provided them with advice and support and tried to be as useful as we could be to help them get things off the ground.
Some other tools I love in this space are this simple Chain of Complements, the Love Compass and this beautiful practice from the Quaker community called Clearness Committee. I’m also a big fan of this process adopted by Brink who redesigned their team meetings around the central question of ‘how are you, really?’ then layered in a second question, inspired by the work of psychologist Arthur Aaron and colleagues who put together 36 questions that lead to love. He shows how, through a series of 36 simple questions, it’s possible to accelerate intimacy between strangers. The idea is that we get closer to one another when there’s sustained, reciprocal personal self-disclosure. You can see the questions Brink developed in this great blog.
“Gratitude is so much more than a polite “thank you.” It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Without deep, strong bonds between people, I don’t believe it’s possible to do the type of work that’s needed to meet the moment we are in. There are so many organisations doing incredible work in this space. I really like the Manual of Me framework - a Manual that each employee can fill out which helps you discover and communicate your working preferences, motivations and needs. Prototyping Work (an absolute treasure trove of skills, frameworks and tools) have also shared this step by step tool on how to write your own user manual. Building on the ‘Manual of Me’, Dark Matter Labs have developed a ‘Manual of We’ to help those working with them understand better the way they show up. They organised this around four dimensions - decision making, language, planning and uncertainty and organisational structure. You can read more about this here.
Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister, talks about Reverse Mentorship as a way to foster deeper human connection and develop intergenerational solidarity. Taiwan recruits entrepreneurs and social innovators under 35 to serve as reverse mentors to ministers and propose new directions. Tang herself was recruited to the government as a reverse mentor and says this type of approach is badly needed in many of the existing entrenched, analogue style, large organisations. You can read more about the Taiwanese government’s approach here and this paper in the Harvard Business Review also goes into a bit more detail on how to set a reverse mentoring programme up.
There are a few other tools and approaches I have found really useful in this space. The Radical Candour approach is a communication framework for specific and sincere praise and kind and clear criticism. This Wisdom Circle tool is a method for promoting deeper dialogue in group settings. A Deep Listening Survey which helps you to assess your skills as a listener. And this really comprehensive guide to relationship-based fundraising from I.G. Advisors.
“The world seems to spin too fast for us to slow down, but slowing down is just the thing that would help us find our footing.”
Mary Oliver
Each year we’ve tried to hold a summer gathering somewhere beautiful in nature. This is a chance for our team to just be and belong together and to get some nourishment and replenish energies. It’s definitely not brain work. We sometimes invite others we’ve worked with to join us. We’ve done extremely wholesome things like drawing, river swimming and moor walking. I’ve loved these times we’ve had together, and at a time when the world is telling us to speed everything up, it feels like a real tonic to do the exact opposite.
The Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation has experimented with ‘Chimes’. It’s a simple practice to try and change mindsets and ingrained behaviours, to help people be more reflective and more connected. Each fortnight, a group of them from across the Centre gathers, usually online. And while there’s no structured plan for the hour, there are strong intentions. They arrive with the commitment to focus on diverse perspectives of learning which centre “being” as much as “doing” and with a commitment to take the time to reflect on the work they are doing, the people they are meeting and to weave together themes and learnings.
If you’re interested in exploring slowing down, I love this blog from The Rights Studio An Ode to Slowness.
“I should like to think that prehistoric man’s first invention, the first condition for his survival, was a sense of humour.”
Andre Leroi-Gourhan, paleoanthropologist
When engaged with the work of deep transformation, it feels essential to have spaces to experience joy, to laugh about the things that have gone wrong. At New Constellations we have a greatest hits slack channel - it’s a place to share the good, the bad, the hilarious, the ugly.
I love these two practices from Prototyping Work - a Bucket list for work where colleagues can give credits to each other that can be redeemed to make a personal bucket list item come true, and this plan for a 15 minute laughter workshop to energise a team. And this piece by an organisation which measures happiness as a monthly KPI is great.
Inspired by Frederic Laloux’s seminal book Reinventing Organisations, we’ve conducted a biannual team feedback process - a ritual of celebration and inquiry. This is a deeply human process where we have the space to celebrate each other and the contributions each of us has made to New Constellations. It helps us to assess ourselves more truthfully and understand what is working well and how we can improve on things that aren’t working. Through this process, we’ve learnt more about how we can support each other to grow and flourish and it has improved our capacity to listen and give and receive feedback. Here’s a template for this process you can use.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”
John Keats
Our main strand of work at New Constellations has been running journeys. These are journeys of the head, the heart and the gut where we invite people into a world in which they experience living and being in a different way. Throughout the journeys we’ve run, we have a big focus on tactile, beautiful things. Imagine you’re three weeks out from an in person experience that you feel nervous about with a group of people you don’t know. You get an envelope in the post with a handwritten note addressed to you and an inspirational quote selected just for you. You instantly feel more at ease, the process feels more human and you feel valued and honoured as part of it.
Where we hold our journeys is of great importance too. We’ve tried to hold all our journeys in places that feel more like a home or place of sanctuary - places deep in nature or with easy access to green spaces, places that have significance to the communities we are working with. I’ve done a huge amount of research on venues in the UK and it’s hard to find places that tick all the boxes. I’m sharing this list of venues that I’ve come across through research and recommendations so feel free to take a look through. In addition to picking a venue, I’ve learnt (often the hard way!) about the importance of really getting to know the space before you host something there. If you’re someone who produces retreats or gatherings or meetings, I pulled together this production checklist which has some other top tips about what to check for in a space and what to make time for, before your gathering begins.
“What we think is possible is bounded by the tools we use.”
The Decision Lab
There were a few other resources I wanted to make reference to:
Prototyping work - referenced several times above - has an incredible repository of tools, frameworks, processes etc. and is totally free to access.
This incredible inspiration library with loads of case studies and resources on different types of organisational processes.
This beautiful toolkit from Voices that Shake with rituals, tools and practices designed primarily for people of colour who are organising and engaging in arts and activism.
The Common Cause Handbook which is a practical and accessible introduction to the importance of values and frames for organisations working towards a more sustainable and just society.
The Beautiful Trouble Toolbox which is an interconnected web of the key strategies and tactics that have inspired people-powered victories and upended the status quo. It’s all categorised and is easy and fun to explore.
The Decelerator has this workbook for people who are wondering if an organisational ending should be on the table and this toolkit for tending to organisational cultures so loss is explored as part of life.
I love this ways of working canvas designed to help you to get clear about some of the themes that are important for new ways of working.
This website which explores the different types of business models needed to accelerate the transition needed. It has been written with local manufacturing in mind but there’s lots of useful transferable information.
If you are thinking about pay structures, this reimagining pay portal from Beyond the Rules and this really comprehensive piece from Dark Matter Labs about their pay setting formula are very useful. Huddlecraft trialled a transparent pay formula which you can read about here.
This brilliant toolkit from Koreo which brings together the shared story of who they are as a company and contains a library of their organisational principles including policies and procedures that help them do their best work together. I particularly like the way they present their organisational system in a way that reimagines how to map power and how they describe their processes as having ‘just enough structure and process to enable high quality, efficient but fundamentally human work - prioritising impact and our wellbeing’.
And several communities that are exploring organisational practices:
Beyond the Rules which is a practice-oriented inquiry into the governance structures and organising methods - and their underlying rules - required in response to the 21st century's complex social challenges. They hosted a brilliant in person session around Life-Affirming Organisational Practice last year and have done this fantastic recap - so much juicy stuff in here!
The Transformational Governance Stewarding Group whose ambition is a set of interconnected, resourced learning spaces that catalyse, deepen and sustain transformational governance practice. They also have a slack channel where governance related news and opportunities are shared.
I couldn’t not mention RadHR - an incredible resource and community space for social change organisations to share the nuts and bolts - the policies, processes, practices and stories - of how to organise based on values and challenge oppression within groups. They have a range of radical policies available on their website and also host events and lunchtime meets.
“We should work as if we are living in the early days of a better nation.”
Dennis Leigh
You might be thinking, lots of these examples are all very well and good but would be impossible to implement in my organisation, so I also wanted to say a word on what kind of conditions are needed to enable these types of systems and processes to be successfully adopted.
Open-mindness and flexibility: a willingness within the organisation to try, and possibly fail, at doing things a bit differently
A trusting team: this feels vital and has meant we’ve all been given the freedom to experiment and know we have the backing of each other
Appetite to push the boundaries: to not just accept the status quo because that is the done thing but to start from a point of what does the work need
An emergent way of working: not preempting the end goal before you’ve begun, because ‘complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions’ (Nick Obolenksy)
A focus on human relationships: as mentioned above this is vital, and the relationships that underpin systems and processes are just as essential as the systems and processes themselves
Capacity to reimagine: thinking beyond the confines of the here and now and practising the future together
Not chasing perfectionism: but instead adopt a sociocratic approach of ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’
Stationery in the packs we sent out to the Barrow crew
“Organisation is a process not a structure”
Margaret Wheatley
I’m committed to continuing to explore this and would love to talk to anyone who is grappling with this work. I believe this is not the type of work that will ever be ‘done’ - organisations are, or at least should be, continually evolving systems that adapt and shift based on the context they are operating in.
All the examples mentioned in this blog, and a few more, are listed in this airtable. I’d love to chat to anyone who may be interested in building on this, or thinking about how this could be developed into a wider shared repository of organisational ways of working. If there’s anything out there like this that already exists, I’d love to hear that too as I don’t want to reinvent the wheel!
Finally a huge thanks to everyone I spoke to as part of this inquiry, too many to name. I was so inspired by you all: innovating in challenging contexts with shoestring budgets, totally ripping up the rulebook, and experimenting in ways that were completely surprising and new. The future looks brighter with you all in it and I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation.
This is radically generous. Thank you.
What an AMAZING resource! I have so much gratitude 💚