Reimagine Work, a review

The first Reimagine Work event, The Teal Exchange, was held in London, at the offices of Thoughtbot on 3rd March 2017. Planned as an exploration of the ideas offered in Frederic Laloux's book, Reinventing Organizations, the event itself became something greater, as people from many walks of life, coaching, theatre improvisation, software development, psychotherapy, biology, mindfulness and organisational change came together to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and discover how to initiate a shift in thinking about how work works.

With help from Ash Sheikh, I initiated this gathering, and took care of creating the space, and making coffee on the day. Other than that I was an equal participant. It was a full day, with sometimes 2-3 sessions running in parallel, so it's not possible to give a full review. Instead I'll focus on some a few sessions that I found particularly powerful.

John Wenger opened the event with a socio-drama exercise to explore the principles identified by Laloux as minimal requirements for a "Teal" organisation: Emergent Purpose, Wholeness and Self-management. John had us create three countries, or islands, one for each principle, e.g. the country of emergent purpose, and we discussed what kind of country our country would be, what sort of institutions, governance, education systems would exist, and how the people would show up for life and for each other. Following that some of us went out as ambassadors to the other countries to share and learn, seeking similarities. It's difficult to describe an immersive exercise, but what we got from this was an opportunity to explore these principles beyond the buzzwords they might quickly become into something personally meaningful, and ownable. And perhaps more importantly to begin to view the ideas beyond the work context into all of life.

One of the problems with shifting a paradigm is finding a language suited to it. It is all too easy to fall back on the familiar, i.e. the language we have learned in the traditional business world. The danger of that, given that language informs our thinking, is that we can become stuck in what we know, believing it is all there is. John's workshop took us some way to understanding the need for a different way of communicating.

Ali Wooding's session in the afternoon is probably the one I've been thinking on the most. Compared to some of the busier sessions, Ali's was quiet and gentle. It was alternately alerting, puzzling and thought-provoking. It tripped me up, confronted my expectations. A few weeks earlier I had asked the facilitators to plan minimally and to be informed on the day by what occurred before. Ali took this to heart. Her session was entitled Working with What Is, and it was indeed exactly that. She drew on the energy of the room, carefully creating a human sculpture, and having those in the sculpture become aware of their bodies and their tensions. The rest of us observed. She continually checked in with the question, what's happening for you now? and at one point asked if anyone was checking out. A few people raised their hands, so she drew on the very checking out to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Again, it is difficult to describe this session, perhaps even more than the previous one. It showed me that there is always something important occurring within a group of people, always something to draw on and learn from—and it takes stillness and patience to discover this. In our fast-paced working world we rarely have time to truly listen in the way that Ali demonstrated to us is entirely possible. I left the session not really understanding what had occurred, but knowing that it mattered.

The day included workshops and talks on subjects as diverse as Spiral Dynamics, Clean Language, personal mantras for creativity, servant leadership and embodiment. It also included two experience dialogs, where Laurie from Thoughtbot and Andrew from Sky shared their efforts to shift the culture within their own organisations, and sought input from the group.

Here's the full list of the workshops offered. In addition to these sessions the event had an emergent element, and space, where sessions were created on the fly.

Near the end of the day I facilitated a short session called Liquid Distribution, based on Alan Cyment's LiquidOrgs theory. It's purpose was to decide how to share the income from the entrance fees. Categories were determined, and a self-appointed representative of each offered their reasoning for being given a share. After that it was essentially a process of the whole group, vested or otherwise, of moving sticky notes, each worth 5% into the columns where they thought they belonged. The only rule being that anyone can move, or re-move any note. This occurred until most had settled and there were one or two disputes. We talked more about the disputes, seeking the Why, and moved the notes again. I think it took 3 rounds before they stabilised. As you can see from the picture, some categories received zero.

The final session of the day was a workshop on spontaneity, offered by Steve Chapman. This was an highly energetic session where Steve gradually made us feel less and less safe, and right at the edge of our comfort zones as he slowly took away the innate desire to plan, to know, to be prepared and threw us into Larry's Washing Machine, where all we had recourse to was whatever was going on in our confused minds at the precise moment of speaking. Fascinating, and really quite mad.

After that many adjourned to the pub across the road, to breathe the night air and take liquid fortification. It was a big day.

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The next Reimagine Work will take place on Friday 14th July, at The Foundry in Kennington. It's no coincidence that it occurs on Bastille Day. Revolutions come in many forms, and it seems fitting to commemorate one while scheming another.