[Street] How we're going to rock (creating a culture of innovation and learning)
Ravi Mishra
ravi at occupyboston.org
Wed Dec 7 00:19:38 EST 2011
Hi all,
At the meeting today, we seemed to agree that we want to create a culture
of creativity, innovation, and learning that would guide (and enhance) our
overall actions as a group. However, creating such a culture doesn't happen
naturally - we need to think critically about our actions and
build procedures into our group that cause us to reflect and learn. This
thread is meant to brainstorm what some of those procedures could be. To be
clear, these "procedures" are tangible processes we undertake on a routine
basis and protocols/best practices we develop over time. Instead of droning
on about theory (which I may do in a future email :), I figured I'd just
start by throwing some out there (you'll get what I'm talking about with a
few examples):
1) Post-event reflection. After each event, the core planning group will
hold a meeting to discuss how the event went and then consensus on a list
of at least 3 ideas/dynamics that were helpful to the event and at least 3
mistakes that were made. (Obviously, this is done with the intent of
pooling together collective wisdom on actions, so brainstorm accordingly.)
2) Building an action checklist - what is every single thing we need to do
before holding an event or action? This spans the gamut from social media
and press releases to making sure we have permits to anything else. Started
a google doc here (lmk if people want to do it a different way):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ah3pFB7dtoJJdFR3bEN0RUxncVRBaHViMzdoSHd0aUE&hl=en_US#gid=0
3) Clear action proposal process. Something along the lines of asking
people to write up a fleshed out action proposal and specifically highlight
certain important points. Examples include what/where/when/etc., specific
goals of the action (how does this help the movement?), and maybe even
measures of success (how can we judge the efficacy of this action after the
fact?). Obviously, some of this stuff is difficult, and we should try to
come to consensus on what we want out of event proposals.
*
*
*Ideally, we agree on a few of these learning exercises and then integrate
them into our group operations. We want to keep it lean and efficient so we
can focus our energy on actions. These are just some though - what are some
other ideas we can add to this list?*
Finally, one of the trickiest things when it comes to building culture is
the role of feedback. Group learning requires we have dynamic and healthy
feedback loops - if we do something, we need to make sure we understand the
consequences of that action (and then learn accordingly). At the individual
level, it's easy to get defensive, but we need to fight this urge by 1)
being tactful and constructive when giving feedback, and 2) not taking
feedback personally. We're all here to get better.
Awesome day of action on Saturday, looking forward to many more with all of
you.
--
Ravi
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