Open Org Journal- August Update

"Don't get so busy making a living, that you forget to make a life" - Dolly Parton

What would we do without you eh Dolly? Although I have to say, if only it was really as easy as only working 9 to 5...and they say August is supposedly the 'quiet month!' This has undoubtedly been the busiest yet at Open Org, and it's only going to get busier as we head into September, a month we've been excited about for a long time!

Not only because it's my birthday on the 7th (??) but because our first ever Open Org cohort kicks off in exactly one week on the 12th! ??

Dolly's quote above is particularly spot on for me because August has seen me trying to juggle both terribly. Planning for the cohort, and juggling school holidays (plus my co-founder ?? John Faulkner-Willcocks has been dealing with a house move!), … it's enough to drive you crazy if you let it...??... ok enough of Dolly.

Before we jump in to what's happened in August, a reminder...

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• Are passionate about building better workplaces
• Believe in transparency as the best way to build trust
• Are a 'People' professional who wants to improve employee-employer trust
• Are a Founder who wants to follow another Founders journey; the ups, downs, learnings...

? Dont subscribe to this if you:

• Have no interest in hearing the ramblings of a tired dad of 2 (almost 3) who is trying to change the world of work
• Don't believe that transparency can improve workplace culture
• Don't believe in Open Org's mission

?? What's happened at Open Org this month?

August has seen us double down heavily on getting ourselves ready for our first ever cohort (OOC#1) which kicks off on 12th. We're over the moon ?? to have 8 fearless, passionate People Leaders join us for the first one and John and I have been working all hours to try and prepare. What's that looked like?

?? Organising Speakers

?? Sourcing, and ordering Swag (enough on that before John's PTSD starts again- it's been a journey..)

?? Planning schedules and calendars

?? Writing, and organising content

?? Curating resources (oh so many resources)

?? Filling up the cohort with some amazing people people

We're t-minus a few days away and I think we are just about there but I honestly did not realise just how much work goes into setting up these things, so to everyone I know out there who does this ( Ruth Penfold-Brown, Luke O'Mahoney , Lars Schmidt and others... my word I salute you ?)

Of course in typical fashion, we haven't exactly helped ourselves either. We've come up with more mini-pivots, products, and resource ideas than you could ever imagine, and it's been hard to stay fully focused on the cohort, but we have allowed ourselves a couple of dives into new pathways, specifically the creation of our Open Leader 'personal' accreditation.

This is something we realised very quickly was high in demand when we spoke to People Leaders who loved the mission we were on, but their employer perhaps wasn't quite ready for a full-blown company accreditation right now.

Excitingly, we already have a handful of People Leaders joining us for personal accreditation in Sept and Nov. ??

We also created and launched two more free resources for the People world; our Open Policy Index, 100's of curated, open source modern people policies for you to access for inspiration, and also our Transparency Policy template which should be a foundation for any business looking to become more transparent. We also updated our already MONSTER employee handbook template too! You can view all of these here

?? The Wins

• We hit almost 2000 followers on this newsletter after launching it! ????
• We're approaching almost 2000 followers on our LinkedIn Page (hit follow here if you're not already!)
• We had 150+ subscribers on our 'Open Works' newsletter, which if you haven't subscribed to yet, you really must! ?? Here ??
• We confirmed 8 awesome People Leaders / Orgs for our 1st ever Cohort
• We got our calendar invites out and locked in for the first cohort (felt great!)
• We announced 2x November cohorts for US and UK/Europe Time zones!

?? The F*ck Ups

• We f*cked up a prospect call with one of our dream customers. It was a US business, the call was at 10pm and both of us were zapped after putting kids to bed. We weren't at the races, and didn't articulate what we were doing and why we were doing it well enough, and they've gone quiet (for now ??)
• We lost a cohort member due to miscommunication on pricing. We took it for granted they had seen what they needed, but it turned out we could have been more explicit with re-affirming costs involved; instead both sides got a little carried away and excited, and eventually realised that cost would be an issue.

?? The Learns

• Understanding sweet spot for our ICP when it comes to Personal vs Company accreditation
• More thorough reinforcement of pricing during the sales process
• When we started the first proper accreditation for a company we realised we needed a big change to our verification process, which we thankfully fixed quickly and well (Thank you John Faulkner-Willcocks)

?? The Thank You's

There's a lot here, so I won't detail the why's but huge thank you to the following, even if you don't know why I'm saying it!...

?? Charlie Hunt , Kaylie Boogaerts , Kasia Triantafelo , Lars Schmidt , Alex Hilleary , James Hems BEM , Elena Liutkute, Mikael Nilsson ?? , Luke O'Mahoney , Philippa Munitz , Ally Jones , Bryan Adams , Max Shepherd-Cross , Pavania Naidu , Samuli Salonen , Emily Sivey, Morgan Williams