For the last 12 months or so I have been delighted to collaborate with our friends at Outlandish on a new service called Building OUT. With much love and thanks to Outlandish for funding the research and development of this, and particular gratitude to my co-workers Abi, Kayleigh, Pete and Lucy, we are now preparing to collaborate more publicly across our organisations.
Building OUT helps organisations and teams create more collaborative working practices. Together we explore inclusive and effective ways of organising, new ways of making decisions and the redistribution of power.
Agile Collective’s journey to sociocracy
Agile Collective has undergone its own transformation from its inception 10 years ago. As we grew we tried a number of governance structures, each of which worked for a time.
We started playing with some of the core concepts of sociocracy – initially consent based decision making – about five years ago, and over time have fallen deeper down that rabbit hole. We now run the co-op sociocratically - we organise our internal work in “circles”, and make decisions using consent. We’ve found that, despite plenty of room for improvement, the quality of our work and relationships has improved dramatically. Some of us are so converted that we bring in elements of it into our client projects and our home life!
Sociocracy – along with non-violent communication – provides tools that help us align with our core values of co-operation and openness.
We work every day with people who are working on good things, but are hamstrung by the decision-making culture they operate in. We know that we can’t make change in the world without striving towards a more equal and inclusive culture.
What is Building OUT?
Building OUT is a service to build Openness, Understanding and Trust within purpose-driven teams. We know that these are foundations to good teamwork where people can accomplish great things together and feel happy and fulfilled at the same time.
We offer workshops and bespoke support to teams who want to develop their own working practices and communications.
We are learning ALL THE TIME and we aren’t teachers or trainers by profession, we are practitioners – our aim is to preach what we practice. We want to share what we’ve learnt in our journey so far.
Want to know more about Building OUT? Drop Aaron a line, or check out the upcoming workshops listed on Outlandish’s website.
