Networking

We are not in this alone. There are dozens of people doing the 2x journey not far away from us here in Donostia. In Bilbao but also in the Arrasate-Mondragon area, in which there is a tradition of 1x and 2x practitioners.

Today we made time for a short connection between our ReTReAT ulab 2x team and the Fagor Automation one, which works around organizational culture in a rich learning environment linked with cooperatives. It was a pleasure to share experiences and insights with Fred, Isabel and Ion. They have done the 3D mapping and have begun, as we have, doing stakeholders interviews.

A common interest that appeared in both projects is how to frame what we are doing, so that we do not antagonize with stakeholders, they understand the point of the process and we are able to hear a diversity of voices. We are also  interested in the concepts of living organizations and communities of practice.

And in both our projects we agreed that it is important that the institution provides legitimacy to participants, so that we/they can feel "allowed" to engage in transformative projects (including research). In a way, that is precisely what the Presencing Institute and the MIT do: co-create a holding space in which people feel authorized to invest time and energy in a project. One thing is to engage in a "personal innovation week" by yourself, a very different one is to join a program that your organization has endorsed or recommended. The later case, one feels more legitimazed to spend time.

I mentioned the Personal Innovation Week in Kaleidos as a source of inspiration for me, and the research we did with the Women Writing Weeks (which is probably the best thing I have ever done for my campus).