Introduction to ‘Ways of Working’

As a team we wanted to explore different ways of working to design and deliver the programme. The design has been covered in Design Approach. This page will focus on how we built and crafted the team and the culture within the delivery team.

As a team and organisation we knew that the relationship between ‘funders’, ‘grantees’, and ‘delivery partners’ or ‘contractors’ is often very imbalanced. Our aim was to experiment with challenging the power imbalance. Our assumption was that the more control that was held in the centre i.e. the funder, the less responsive the programme would be to the community businesses we were aiming to serve. Our hypotheses were:

1. If you push as much decision making as possible towards those closest to the clients (community businesses) you deliver better services.
2. If you create a set of rituals and customs within a team you, develop consistency in approach
3. Investing in building the team and developing a shared mission, purpose and set of principles, is critical to a team, where none where located in the same place and the team was a mix of ‘staff’ and ‘contractors’.
4. If you follow service design approaches, you deliver a more responsive and customer focused programme
5. If you follow service design approaches, you can be more agile
6. If you are open as a team, you build trust and psychological safety. This allows for diversity of thought, constructive challenge and more inclusive practices.

Resources:

<aside> 💡

https://newwaysofworking.notion.site/New-Ways-of-Working-Playbook-dc607e37f7894f4a9be698a6573cb97b

</aside>

The ‘How’

Building the team:

• Investing in onboarding, as the team grew (refer to The People - Delivery)
• Create personal ‘Manual of Me’ Template - Manual of Me
• Invest time in-person building relationships, agreeing ways of working, defining the mission, vision and principles
• Rituals and customs:

  • We had a regular weekly stand-ups (see Meetings below) for customer facing delivery team (6 people)

  • We had bi-weekly ‘whole team’ meetings for strategic decision making (14 people)

  • We followed sociocratic principles for our decision making approach

  • We created a central meeting document that was accessible to whole team. It covered all meeting notes (not minutes), key actions, key proposals and decisions - Template of Central Document

  • We built reflection into the programme via regular retrospectives. We used exercises like Rose, Bud, Thorn and Likes, Lacked, Learned, Longed For.

    How does Rose, Thorn, Bud work? (used for deeper reflections on project elements)

    <aside> 💡

    The board is divided into three categories. Participants are then instructed to reflect on each category and write down their thoughts on sticky notes.

    Rose is the category where positive points will be listed. These can be successes, highlights, or even the most minor wins.

    Thorn is where negative points will be listed. These can be areas of difficulty where someone needs more support or obstacles that will impede the end result.

    Bud is where you would list areas of potential. This can be a new idea or something to explore further.

    </aside>

    Liked, Lacked, Learned, Longed For (used at the end of meetings)

    <aside> 💡

    • Liked - what went well
    • Learned - what did you learn
    • Lacked - what was missing
    • Longed for - thoughts or ideas that would make it more successful </aside>

Meetings:

• Circles - we used a circle meeting approach. This involves:
  • Start every meeting with a check-in
  • Strategic decision were done using proposals (See Decision making below)
    • Each proposal has a lead proposer (person who is bringing the decision to the circle)
  • All strategic decisions via proposals were discussed by going round in circles.
    • 1st round - Any clarifying questions on the proposal
    • 2nd round - reactions
    • 3rd round - Critical concerns (Does anyone in the circle have a concern that means they can’t consent to the proposal in its current format)
    • 4th round - Consent round (After critical concerns have been addressed, can every member of the circle consent to the decision.
• Meeting roles: Roles are assigned at the beginning of each meeting.
  • Roles include: Chair, Note taker, Climate (is everyone ok, is everyone heard), Time keeper