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If this week were a reality show, it might be titled: Six girls and a guy.
Satsuko and Manuela join the team, leaving Jonas considerably outnumbered. A Monday drumming session reveals the changing rhythm of the team. For all their talk about change, can they iterate their own routines? Janey, Yani, and Laura reveal some big news to 71 staff members. And are greeted with shock, tears, excitement, disappointment, and agitation. Sarah and Jonas challenge chief executives to do half-finished work and talk to strangers. By Friday, team members tell each other what they really think of each other.
On Monday, Laura organized our first Kudoz experience. Frances, a staff member for posAbilities, shared his passion for drumming with us. Not so much as a technical skill, but as a psychological outlet. We learned how to listen to our environment, to translate sounds into a rhythm, and to build on each other’s beats. We used this experience to concretely think through what happens before, during, and after a Kudoz learning experience. How do experiences build on each other?
Prior to meeting up with Frances, we mocked up 6 different versions of a participant profile card. To think through what hosts need to know about learners in order to adapt their experience. How would we coach them through those adaptations?
We also began building the Kudoz theory of change. That’s the whole idea of prototyping: to make and test a theory about how change happens for staff, for persons with a cognitive disability, and for families. If a good outcome from Kudoz is a greater sense of self and future, what are the factors that enable this, and what are the factors that hinder this, and for whom? How do we create interactions that maximize the enabling factors and minimize the barriers for different groups of people?
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the studio became a craft den. With green ribbon, paper, envelopes, and hot glue guns. Yani, Laura, and Janey hand-crafted packages for each of the 71 staff members who applied for The Fifth Space. We wanted to put the same attention into following-up with people as they put into their applications.
For the 29 staff we accepted, our challenge was to create a package that projected delight, excitement, and a sense of what is to come. For the 42 staff we weren’t able to accept, our challenge was to create an alternative offer to recognize their interest. We’re came up with something called the Fifth Space Crew. Crew members get access to learning materials, can be matched with a buddy in the Fifth Space, and receive first invites to special events & demo days.
On Thursday, Jonas and I curated our monthly Partner session. This is where the CEOs of BACI, SFSCL, and posAbilities get together to discuss the project direction and connect what we’re doing to bigger strategic and sector-wide priorities. But, we don’t just want it to be a talk fest. We want to immerse CEOs in our new ways of thinking and doing. What would it look like if prototyping was a leadership style, not simply a project methodology?
One hunch is that it means re-sequencing work. It means confronting most leaders’ natural desire to draft a plan, work out all the kinks, and then seek feedback. We gave CEOs twenty minutes to figure out how to get strangers’ to talk about wellness, and then to go have those conversations. Preferably with visual prompts. There were plenty of kinks in their visual prompts. They were half-finished, and literally taped together with popsicle sticks and post-it notes. And yet CEOs came back energized, with many more ideas of what to try next.
On Friday, we rounded out the week with a second Kudoz experience. This time with Carla as the host. Carla is an employment specialist at BACI, who also happens to love natural dying. So she brought her Bunsen burner and all the raw materials, and taught us how to take plants and pennies and turn them into a vibrant yellow dye.
The experience gave us an opportunity to begin to unpick host motivations. For Carla, hosting a Kudoz experience is, in her words, “A perfect opportunity for me to do my passion. It gets me a step further. I’ve been wanting to get back into it, but it’s been kind of a dormant passion, and this spices things up for me!”
We continued to awaken dormant conversations later Friday afternoon. As we gathered to reflect. On Monday, each of us picked a name out of a plastic tupperware container. We were to observe that team member over the week, and share back our insights.
For me, the conversation brought to the surface three tensions:
Delivering versus prototyping?
Sure, we purport to be all about learning & iteration. But, how much do we apply that framework to our team? It’s all too easy to throw ourselves into delivery. To get so focused on doing the legwork required for others to change that we forget to change ourselves. We neglect to understand what shapes our own behaviors, and to add/tweak/take-away interactions so they lead to a better team experience.
I’ve seen too many teams unravel. And for team members to stop seeing each others’ behaviors as contextual, and to start seeing each others’ behaviors as fixed. Which is totally antithetical to the philosophy we publicly espouse. What heartens me about our current team is its bravery. It’s ability to hold the space for those conversations. As uncomfortable as they can be.
Shielding verus openness?
A shit shielder. That’s one function of a leader. To buffer team members from the stress and the uncertainty, and allow them to just get on with it all. Challenge is, I tend to wear my stress like an ill-fitting dress. How can I honestly share the challenges we’re up against as a team, and display the kind of vulnerability that transfers esprit de corps? Not edginess and unease? One thing I’ll try this week is to describe the source of my excitement, and my worry. Rather than just displaying the symptoms of that worry.
Busyness versus idleness?
Teach theory of change; read & debate a social science article; create and critique two Kudoz experiences; shift what CEOs do; make packages for 71 staff members; design a first orientation for 30 staff members; initiate two new team members; recruit for 5 new team roles; and produce a video of the week.
That was our to-do list last week. There’s no doubt we are busy. I will admit to feeling a bit panicked when I look at our team, and see team members without something to do. And yet, this ‘high productivity’ narrative runs the risk of being transactional if we don’t give members the time to make sense of what they are doing. On their own terms. So this week I want to make sure we each find our own way to process what’s unfolding. And get re-energized for what we will do, next.
Because there is plenty of next.