The open organization community is spoiling us.
For months, writers have been showering us with multiple, ongoing series of articles, all focused on different dimensions of open organizational theory and practice. That's led to to a real embarrassment of riches—so many great pieces, so little time to catch them all.
So let's take moment to reflect. If you missed one (or several) now's your chance to catch up.
Open organizations and mental health
Open Organization Ambassador Sam Knuth just wrapped a visceral and moving series on working openly with anxiety. "Living with anxiety and other mental health conditions feels personal," Sam writes. "It's not something I've talked about at work. It's not something I generally discuss, and it's something I've always felt I was coping with as a private part of my life." With this series, that changes.
- Part 1: Never enough: Working openly with anxiety
- Part 2: Stuck in a loop: 4 signs anxiety may be affecting your work
- Part 3: Spilling over: How working openly with anxiety affects my team
Communities of practice
Returning contributor Tracy Buckner recently capped a three-part series on communities of practice, cross-functional groups of passionate people all committed to sharing and collaborating on a common interest. "In open organizations, fostering passionate communities can increase collaboration, accelerate problem solving, and lead to greater innovation," Tracy writes. By the end of the series, you'll be well on your way to building your own community.
- Part 1: What is a community of practice in an open organization?
- Part 2: What communities of practice can do for your organization
- Part 3: Building a community of practice in 5 steps
Adopting new technologies
Adopting new communication technologies can help your teams work openly—but technological change is hard, because it always involves people too. Open Organization Ambassador Ron McFarland's recent series aims to ease the work of those changes. Bonus: Ron developed a downloadable worksheet open leaders can use to assess their teams' preparedness for technological change.
- Part 1: Communication superstars: A model for understanding your organization's approach to new technologies
- Part 2: How to assess your organization's technological maturity
A guide to learning agility
Learning agility may be "the game-changing key to acquisition, retention, engagement, innovation, problem-solving, and leadership in this emerging future," writes Jen Kelchner. Jen's series—still ongoing—explains the benefits of hiring for flexibility and adaptability when building open teams and organizations.
- Part 1: A brief introduction to learning agility
- Part 2: A human approach to reskilling in the age of AI
- Part 3 is coming soon!
An open organization at Greenpeace
If you missed this one, then you've been asleep since last decade. In one of the community's most elaborate storytelling efforts to date, Open Organization Ambassador Laura Hilliger explains her work helping Greenpeace become a more open organization. "'Open' isn't just a way we can build software," Laura writes. " "It's an attitude we can adopt toward anything we do. And when we adopt it, we can move mountains." She combines text, audio, and video to spin this epic yarn about that very power.
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