Open Org Journal: Feb Update

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." – Margaret J. Wheatley

I stumbled across this awesome quote the other day, as we prepare to embark on one of the most exciting phases of our growth here at Open Org. In March we'll be opening the virtual doors of our slack community to 500 of the worlds most passionate, progressive People & Talent folks. We're so excited for that step. I'll talk about why further down, but we'll also be formally launching peoplemetrics.fyi too, alongside a Fractional Cohort which kicked off this week... Lots ahead! But let's look back at what happened in Feb...

TL;DR..

• We wrapped up our first EVER bootcamp (OOB#1) with some amazing people people.
• We Shared our Open Culture Framework with the world to awesome reception!
• We picked up a couple of new companies who are starting their certification process with Open Org ??
• Did a podcast recording with the awesome Kaleem Clarkson at RemotelyOne
• Signed up to speak at a couple of events in March (Attune London) and an evening roundtable dinner hosted by Figures and Remote ... two of my fave companies.
• Decided to expand & launch our community to 500 folks globally!
• I got a chance to get more hands on with our peoplemetrics.fyi beta group - ?? John Faulkner-Willcocks was knocked off his feet with a pretty severe bout of flu... so it's a wonder we're still here to be honest.
• We continued to fill our 2x May Cohorts (US/Can and UK/EMEA). There's some spots left- you can apply here
• We're also filling spots for our July bootcamp for those interested in that too, you can apply here
• I learned how to get hands-on with Webflow, and proceeded to tinker a little with our site, messaging, and content, which we are still trying to perfect in all honesty. But we think we are getting there.

Ok below I want to dive specifically into the work we've done around launching our community, as well as our peoplemetrics.fyi beta too for those interested... because both took a lot of time in Feb, and will drive a lot of our work in March too...

A reminder....

? Follow and subscribe to this newsletter if you:

• 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 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 happened at Open Org in Feb?

Two things I want to focus on; Building & launching a community, and building & launching a Benchmarking platform! ..

The Open Org Community

We've always had a slack community, but truthfully it was originally intended to help create an alumni group for people who have done our cohorts & bootcamps. That has worked so well. But...

We speak to so many folks globally who resonate with our movement and cant get involved as they can't do certification with their employer, and find cohorts & bootcamps tricky due to time zone or budget.. so the community felt like the perfect lever to pull to enable us to make the Open Org movement more accessible to those folks.

We're only too aware there's so many free, 10,000-person communities out there that actually offer 100% noise, and 0% value. We don't want that. So we took time thinking about what this looks like for us.

We decided to make this a paid community, capped at 500 paid members (additional to our programme alumni). We wanted to keep engagement high, and we think the paid element, and the cap will help.

We've mulled for months about the best platform to use for community- Slack, Circle, MightyNetworks, Kajabi.. theres a heap. We're sticking with Slack for now. For all it's possible downsides, we think keeping the group small will help. It's familiar, and has worked well for us so far. We'll complement the chat element of our community with a buffet of regular content people can get involved in too...

?? Monthly Roundtables

?? Paid Guest Speakers

?? Quarterly #BuildInPublic style live-events ??. Intrigued?

?? Discounts on all Open Org Programmes, Products etc

We're excited to get going! Plan is to start onboarding folks in March. We're building waitlist now so if you want to be in that 500, get on it here

Peoplemetrics.fyi

It's no secret we've been building this for a while, and have been in Beta since Jan. We had 300+ companies sign up to beta, and another 150+ on waitlist post-launch too. I have to give a huge hat-tip to ?? John Faulkner-Willcocks who has been an absolute machine in getting this built, but also iterating on the feedback we've had from the beta group. He's fixed bugs, and implemented new features at lightning speed ?

Excitingly we recently added 6 new metrics to the dashboard too so as it stands you can track and benchmark 18 metrics vs other companies, including my all time favourite... Org Transparency ??.

If you follow Open Org, you'll know how much we care about making transparency tangible, measurable... and we have found a way of doing that now. For us, we believe Org Transparency as a metric can become an incredibly powerful one- understanding not only 'how' transparent you are as a business, but how that affects your other core metrics is what we think will help people leaders to build the ultimate care for transparency. If you can visibly compare your own transparency and linked metrics to other companies who are more open... who likely have healthier metrics attached... then it's case closed.

Exciting, but early days and we're enjoying seeing the data build in front of our eyes already. FYI, we plan to launch formally in March, so if you want a 60% discount on year 1 access then head to the site - www.peoplemetrics.fyi

?? The Wins

• Managed to keep the business alive whilst JFW was unconscious with the flu
• Learned how to navigate Webflow without breaking our site.
• Peoplemetrics.fyi beta is flying! post-beta waitlist is on the site if interested!
• Accreditation conversations are building which is encouraging, and a few more companies in Jan embarked on the journey with us!
• Made some real progress on messaging, positioning and also launch preparation for our community & peoplemetrics.

?? The F*ck Ups

• I sent out a couple of e-gift cards as thank you's on amazon... and didnt realise that it auto-selected a template called 'you're so hot', which had an image on it with a lit match...

Luckily.... I spotted it JUST before I hit send, otherwise I think I would have packed up and moved to the remotest part of the world I could find.

?? The Learns

• Almost a Webflow Maestro (sort of) now which is cool
• We've done a lot of work on our messaging and positioning of Open Org, particular the certification. Who's it for, what's it mean, etc. We're pretty happy with where we have landed

?? The Thank You's

Big list this month as always!

Richard Rosenow , Virgile Raingeard , Andreas Eugensson , Kaylie Boogaerts , charlie hunt , San?ar Sahin , Bonita Matthee , Han Szurek , Amale Ghalbouni , Ashley S. , Brianna J. , Chuck Gose , Kaleem Clarkson , Andreea Vihristencu , Dorota Gordon , Danielle Raghuwan , Luke Slaney , Leta Lista , Ryan Reichert-Estes, CPCC , Roman Matyushkin , Rafael Guper , Toni Finnimore , Tash Bristowe , Gabriela Alejandra Sanchez , Jill Felska , Joe Atkinson + the 350 folks who are on our peoplemetrics.fyi beta , and all the folks who have joined waitlist for our community!