With Brendon Johnson and June Holley, 1 Sept 2022
Summary
This session focused on the issues of integrating and visualizing collaborative “weaving” practices within daily workplace structures and task lists. The group did some problem-mapping to sort shared operational challenges in breakouts, followed by a Fishbowl to discuss the systemic invisible nature of relationship-building, the strain of emotional labor, and the hurdles of communicating non-linear practices to traditional, project-focused funders. The meeting ended with a rapid “peer assist” clinic on donor support for a proposed European bio-regional regenerative initiative.
Key Learning Points
- Weaving operates as an unseen, silent art form
- Traditional workplace workflows naturally marginalize relational processes
- Continuous relationship-building causes real emotional and physical exhaustion
- Rigid engineering and Cartesian mindsets struggle to see relational value
- Over-weaving with too many threads stalls early-stage project solidification
- Analog, hand-drawn paper mapping captures a vital messiness lost in digital platforms
- Mainstream funders require relational value to be framed around established organizational research
Microprocesses
- Practice “speed networking” to quickly build foundational connections across a network
- Dedicate explicit time to practicing and refining collective listening skills
- Execute “closing triangles” by discovering peoples’ gifts and connecting them to others
- Utilise clustering to bring pairs together to learn and do things collaboratively
- Snowball small clusters into larger groups to effectively move people into action
- Introduce concrete microprocesses to actively shift workplace culture away from rigid hierarchy
Key Action Points
- Contribute microprocess examples directly to June’s shared interactive slide deck
- Publish the completed microprocess compilation to the Network Weaver resource site
- Explicitly call out weaving operations aloud during team meetings to alter workplace culture
For Bioregional Weaving Labs
- Frame relational weaving through established organizational development paradigms
- Reference academically rigorous, public domain work to win corporate buy-in
- Use Daniel Kim’s core theory of success to validate focusing on relationships
- Highlight a lack of relational focus exhausts a team’s creative capacity
- Incorporate Nancy Kline’s work to support the value of a thinking environment
- Leverage the emerging field of relational welfare as a useful strategic reference
- Map outcomes into the Common Land “four returns” framework using the inspiration metric
- Allow the community to decide their own KPIs and bottom-up reporting metrics
References
Academic Frameworks:
- Daniel Kim’s Core Theory of Success
- Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment principles
- Common Land’s Four Returns Ecosystem Framework (Inspiration, Social, Environmental, Financial)
Methodologies:
- Breakout Problem Clustering
- Virtual Fishbowl Dialogue Structure
- Rapid Peer Assist Consulting Process
Organizations:
- Ashoka Network
- Bio-Regional Weaving Labs (Ireland/Europe)
Knowledge Base Categories: 1) Funding & Strategy 2) Regeneration & Universal Wellbeing
