Participatory Process - Edition 4 of Exploring, Inviting, Pondering

Hello, or perhaps hello again! Either way, I welcome you to this of my monthly letter.

Here I outline a concept I'm exploring, extend an invitation to a gathering I'm hosting, attending or advocating for and offering you a question to be with and ponder.

Here's what I'd love to share with you this month...

Exploring - ever since founding 4i in 2016 we've been experimenting with participatory process. These practices nurtures autonomous, self-organising activities that function to enable effective network-based workflows within living systems. As time has gone on, we've deepened our practice within our collective within our product development process, how we engage with clients, and in the way we run generative learning and transformation programs. At the heart of participatory process are ways of being which are deeply inclusive and democratic, which we have found to generate highly innovative, creative and effective outputs. Within organisational development, and broader social change within our cultures and societies, we have witnessed the increasing emergence of these patterns. A few examples are self-organising 'Teal' organisations such as Buurtzorg & Patagonia, collective networks such as Enspiral and citizens' assemblies informing conventional democratic decision-making. In my opinion, the ways of being together across all of these movements are largely consistent and produce profoundly different experiences and outcomes to more familiar, hierarchical, expert-centred ways of organising.

Inviting - as an organisational change practitioner, I've found the work of Samantha Slade at Going Horizontal to provide super practical, accessible and powerful examples of practices which enable participatory process. My dear friends at Percolab Au are hosting a series of events with Samantha, bringing her work to Australia for the first time. Throughout February 2023 you can engage with this work across a series of single or multi-day workshops in VIC, NSW and QLD. If you're curious around activating self-organising teams in your workplace, or bringing more inclusive practice to your community - one of these events could be of great benefit. See the event page here to explore further and register. I'll be attending the Shoalhaven event, and hope to see you there, or hear of your experience of attending one of the other events!

Pondering - inviting you to consider this prompt as you practice your way of being in work and the wider world...

What might be possible when I and all in my team feel fully seen, heard and included?

Here I rest the fourth edition of this letter, and as always thank you for your time and attention considering what I've offered here.

I'd love to hear from you if there's anything you'd like to share that's come up for you whilst you've been with this letter. Please feel free to comment here or to message me directly.

Until next month, and always,

Be well, lead well and keep on co-creating better futures,

Tim