View by:
Experiment | Date & Team | Design & Data Summary | Lessons, Decisions, Questions | Newest Comment | ||||||||||||
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Return of the Virtual Office Hours |
April 6, 2020 – April 17, 2020
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Practitioners in my community curious to reconnect with me, others. (Third iteration. See first and second.) Invite people to virtual office hours for the next two weeks. No agenda, no need to show up to both, no need to show up at a particular time, and no need to stay on for the whole time. It’s just an opportunity to say hello, reconnect, and talk for as long or as little as you’d like about whatever you’d like to talk about with whomever shows up. Send invitation to Colearning, my newsletter, Bay Area practitioners list, non-Bay Area practitioners list, Twitter, Facebook, and The Value Web Mighty Networks. Share previous notes in my invitation. Continuing taking shared notes during office hours. Share aggregated notes to participants after office hours, broadly after this two week experiment ends. |
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Tweeting Office Hour Invitations |
March 30, 2020 – April 3, 2020
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: If I announce my office hours on Twitter and Facebook, I will get at least one participant. Invite folks to office hours on Twitter, Facebook, and The Value Web’s Mighty Networks one day in advance. Send a reminder an hour before office hours starts. In order to avoid Zoom bombing, going to ask folks to @ me for the URL rather than sharing it publicly, recognizing that this is an additional barrier to participation. In my initial experiment, only five out of the 11 who showed had RSVPed. |
No one showed up from Twitter, Facebook, or The Value Web, although two people from The Value Web said they’d like to show up to future office hours. My personal Facebook post got two likes, but they didn’t ask for more details and didn’t show. In general, I haven’t found my Faster Than 20 Facebook or Twitter accounts too fruitful in terms of engagement. That doesn’t mean there’s not potential to activate those followers. I could try creating a landing page for office hours to make it easier for folks to find them. On a separate note, I had 8 participants overall:
The conversation was lovely, and the distribution of when folks joined was more even this time. We actually went almost 10 minutes over! I also tried having folks “sign-in” via Google Presentation, and I took notes throughout. It was a little wonky. One person didn’t want to stare at the Google Presentation the whole time, preferring to see people’s faces. Another person did help take some notes. The notes themselves made for a nice after-the-fact artifact. I’m going to do two more of these, then probably stop. I’ll continue to advertise over social media and The Value Web, although it’s probably not worth my effort to do a landing page. (We’ll see if I change my mind.) I’m going to have folks opt-in in advance to sharing the notes (including attendee lists). At the end, I’ll have done four total weeks of these offices hours, and should have some interesting synthesis to share with the broader community (in case they’re interested). |
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Virtual Office Hours |
March 23, 2020 – March 27, 2020
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Practitioners in my community want unstructured connection time. Invite people to virtual office hours. No agenda, no need to show up at a particular time, and no need to stay on for the whole time. It’s just an opportunity to say hello, reconnect, and talk for as long or as little as you’d like about whatever you’d like to talk about with whomever shows up. Send invitation to Colearning, my newsletter, and Bay Area practitioners list. |
People came! Metrics from where listed below in the comments. The dynamic was definitely a little bit awkward, but people were great about it and went with it. Ideas on how to adjust below. There are a few opportunities that might emerge from this conversation (also see below in the comments). One is for more intentional network weaving, which wasn’t one of the original goals of this, but might be a fun outcome. Repeat this experiment one more time. This time, try advertising on social media as well to see if that pulls in folks. Use a shared display to help moderate, get people caught up. Sign-in sheet (perhaps via Google Presentation):
Maybe do it video off? See if folks are interested in a tech buddy matchmaking system. How best to advertise? How to prevent trolls? How to reconcile with all the other office hours offerings in these crazy times of COVID-19? Working agreements? |
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Sell My Jersey! .sig Edition |
September 13, 2019 – September 20, 2019
Eugene
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Hypothesis: People I email are interested in my workshops. I think my emails are an underutilized opportunity to share what’s happening for me, whether it’s an offering or a blog post. I want to experiment with using that space as a subtle way to share. I’ll start with a very simple experiment: 1. Create a bitly link for my Success Spectrum peer coaching workshop. 2. Add it to my email .signature:
3. Leave it up for a week. Track clicks and registrations. |
9/17 — Sent 20 emails, 17 of which were about the Success Spectrum workshop. 4 clicks on a link (a little surprising given the content of those emails). 9/18 — Sent 8 emails, 3 of which were about the Success Spectrum workshop. 1 clicks. 9/19 — Sent 3 emails, 1 of which mentioned the Success Spectrum workshop. 2 clicks. Total click conversion was 22% (7/31), much higher than I would have expected! No registrations though. Continue using the .sig. Glance at the bitly stats, but don’t do intensive tracking. See what happens when send a higher volume of emails. |
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Standing Coworking |
September 6, 2019 – September 30, 2019
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Hosting standing coworking days in my home will combat isolation and build connections without requiring a lot of extra work. Initial pilot:
This is based on the two-day colearning strategy and visioning retreats I’ve been a part of for the past three years. The main difference is that there’s no explicit strategy and visioning focus — work on whatever you want to work on. It’s especially inspired by the third iteration of the experiment, where I realized how much I enjoy hosting people (as opposed to finding a retreat space somewhere). |
No participants. Ended up canceling. Didn’t advertise widely. At least one person thought two days was too much to ask. Maybe try offering one day coworking at some point. Not motivated to do this right now. |
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Photographer + Facilitation Shadow |
April 12, 2019 – April 19, 2019
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Packaging my offerings with photography will enable me to offer something impactful, but non-traditional with minimal cultivation overhead.
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6 inquiries, including one within five minutes of sending the initial email. First gig happened last week. There was a possibility for this week that would have required travel, and it fell through in the end. One inquiry for next week. In addition to the inquiries, 9 people responded to the email, mostly sending support and mentioning possible opportunities and partnership. 2 were of the “not interested / relevant” type. 15 responses / 56 invitations => 27% response rate At least among my colleagues, there’s a market for having me in the room / providing design coaching. Packaging this up with photography made it much easier to sell. I feel good that the design / facilitation shadowing was a big part of the appeal of the package based on the conversations I had with folks. I may need to adjust pricing based on demand. Will continue to monitor. Send a followup email to initial invitees summarizing results, inviting other inquiries. Craft a new invitation that’s more easily shareable with folks who don’t already know me. Monitor demand / pricing. How should I handle IP? |
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You Are What You Track |
January 7, 2019 – February 22, 2019
Eugene
Eugene, Amy
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Hypothesis: We’re doing better than we think we are Start an internal blog where we log success stories related to the DIY Strategy / Culture toolkits. Import data we already have. Commit to logging new stories regularly. |
I imported 24 posts. Within the experiment time frame, I posted 4 posts, Amy posted one. Afterward (through August 2019), I posted 20 posts, Amy posted one. Both of Amy’s posts were at my urging; she told me those stories during meetings, and I asked her to write them up. Simply having the shared accountability motivated me to track more. But I already had at least some muscles for tracking, which helped. Amy didn’t have this foundation, she didn’t track on her own, and she didn’t read my posts. That made me lose motivation to track here, and it’s a higher bar for me to record here than it was on Bear. So I’m switching back to Bear. As far as the original hypothesis, however, I think this definitely supported it. Tracking really helps you see the impact that you’re having much more than if you just hear the stories. It’s its own muscle, but it’s worth it. Migrate these records back into Bear, and keep tracking. |
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Post-Meeting Drawing |
November 12, 2018 – December 7, 2018
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Drawing a picture after a meeting will help me remember what happened at the meeting Refrain from taking notes during meetings beyond Next Steps / Decisions Made. Draw a picture within 24-hours of the meeting. |
I did seven drawings after meetings during this time-period. I wasn’t disciplined about testing the Forgetting Curve afterward, as I had originally planned. But I do have some takeaways:
I want to try a work project with a team where we do after-the-fact notes rather than real-time. I want to keep up this practice for myself personally. |
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Alignment Accounting |
August 29, 2018 – September 28, 2018
Eugene
Whomever I can recruit
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Hypothesis: Logging our group activities regularly will help us find the right balance between task and process work.
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This experiment was a fail. Wasn’t able to recruit anyone, and didn’t do it myself. However, I got good feedback from Renee, who really reinforced for me the challenge and mindset of not feeling like you have time for anything other than “the work.” Asking these folks to spend 15-30 minutes / week tracking was a challenging ask. Put this to bed for now. |
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The Podcast, Take 2 |
August 20, 2018 – September 28, 2018
Eugene
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Hypothesis: A three-question format will achieve my desired sweet spot around intention, reach, and effort. Interview and share five audio recordings of practitioners answering the following three questions:
I want to highlight practitioners who are:
Production constraints:
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Will hopefully revisit again, but putting it to bed for now. |
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Monthly Inbox Zero – 1 |
July 2, 2018 – October 5, 2018
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Two months of Inbox Zero a month at a time will enable me to get a handle on my email overall. Goals:
This is basically a test in chunking email management. Rather than DMZ my email (which I’ve tried before), I’m committing to being at Inbox Zero at the end of each month for that month and the previous month only. In other words, by August 1, 2018, I should have zero emails from June and July 2018 in my inbox. This not only means I’m caught up for that month, but it also means I’m gradually shrinking my inbox (versus doing Monthly Inbox Zero only, which would keep my inbox at more or less its current size). I’ll try this for three months to see how it goes. |
I didn’t achieve total Inbox Zero for the months I did this, but I did zero out some months, and my inbox has been manageable for the first time ever really. I think this is Yet Another Example of how tracking (in combination with goal-setting) is a powerful change agent. Continue this through the end of the year. |
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Trellocize It! |
June 26, 2018 – July 27, 2018
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Quickly and easily converting checklists into Trello tasks will get me into the habit of using them. Create a Google Spreadsheet app that converts a checklist into Trello items. Timebox development to one-day. Use the checklist for one upcoming project. |
I was more or less able to create the app in the time allotted, but I got stuck when trying to implement a generic authentication mechanism for Twitter. If I had hardcoded authentication, I probably would have had something working. Because the app’s not done, haven’t gotten to test it yet! I’ve felt on many occasions that I’d like to have an app like this, so I feel like the use case for me is strong. Not sure when I’ll be able to prioritize this, however. |
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Weekly Clarity |
April 16, 2018 – May 14, 2018
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Duende’s Clarity alpha template will help me manage my daily and weekly priorities more skillfully. Use two sheets of Duende’s Clarity alpha toolkit for two weeks. Log real-time reactions, reflections upon completion. |
I didn’t end up using it more than once. The data I captured in the Updates is complete. I didn’t carry it around with me, and I happened to be gone a lot, which probably contributed to me not using this more than once. However, even doing this once validated the value of a more rigorous weekly practice of examining (and documenting) my high-level priorities. It’s hard to build that habit! Would love to try other things. |
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More Collisions! |
April 2, 2018 – June 1, 2018
Eugene
Becky-Stuart, Roy-Eric, Rob-Eugene, Sven-Linda, Jonathan-Peter, Darcy-Aubrey, Karen-Jake, Anna-Donata, Jeff-Cat, Lisa-Mathan, Allan-Alexa
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Hypothesis: More frequent contact will enable us to collaborate more effectively and quickly Each of us will pair up and check in with each other for one hour/week for eight weeks. |
Survey results:
What was valuable?
Do differently?
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Colearning Strategy Retreat 4 |
February 1, 2018 – July 31, 2018
Eugene
Eugene, Odin, Anya, Kate, Greg
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Hypothesis: Pulling off an actual retreat (i.e. not at someone’s house) requires committing to dates / location at least four months in advance. Commit to dates (July 26-27) for next retreat at end of current retreat. Announce the dates, and give people ~1 month (by March 9) to commit. Once we have a number, reserve a location, and collect the money. Do the retreat! |
Despite heroic efforts from Kate, Odin, and Anya, we never landed on a retreat location. On April 6, we ended up changing the retreat dates to July 19-20 on Odin’s request. We ended up deciding to do the retreat at Odin’s house. |
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Colearning Strategy Retreat 3 |
December 4, 2017 – February 2, 2018
Eugene
Eugene, Cherine, Odin, Anya, Kate
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Hypothesis: Individual practitioners will want to participate in a two-day, self-organized retreat at least an hour away from where we all live (i.e. NOT held at someone’s house). Pick a date (January 30-31) and location (Bay Area), and invite the other colearners to:
Do the retreat! Debrief at the end of the retreat. |
This time, we picked new dates at the end of our retreat (July 26-27). We’re going to ask for commitments by March 9, then will find and commit to a retreat location. The idea is that if we all commit early and pay in advance, we’ll be able to pull this off. |
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Biorhythms |
July 26, 2017 – August 1, 2017
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Tracking my energy, focus, and mood every hour for a week will reveal natural rhythms that will help me optimize my day. Every waking hour for seven days, track Energy, Focus, and Mood on a five point scale in a Google Spreadsheet. Set a calendar reminder to make sure I update the log. Carry around a small notebook when I’ll be away from digital devices. After seven days, analyze the data and see if there are trends. |
I only managed to successfully track for 3.5 days. When I was home, it was fine (but still difficult). When I was traveling, it was impossible. Over the weekend, I went to a wedding that was far away, and that completely disrupted my logging. Still, one pattern was clear. I didn’t notice any cycles per se, but I did notice a strong, steady focus in the morning through lunch, then a gradual decrease in energy and focus, with no up-swing afterward. Possible future experiments: What activities could I do to create an up-swing after my post-lunch decline? Try to move all meetings (especially non-essential) to the afternoon, so I can reserve my mornings for focused work. |
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LinkedIn Re-publishing vs Linking |
June 20, 2017 – June 30, 2017
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Linking to Faster Than 20 blog posts on LinkedIn will result in just as much engagement as re-publishing.
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I definitely have an engaged audience on LinkedIn that I've been ignoring. Either sharing a link or republishing will result in views I wouldn't otherwise get at low cost.
However, republishing seems to result in a lot more actual views (i.e. people reading the article itself, not just seeing a reference to a link) than just sharing a link. Keep republishing articles on LinkedIn for the time being. Maybe track the best days and times to post.
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Medium Crickets |
June 20, 2017 – June 30, 2017
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Three Medium recommends is enough to start getting visibility without more broad sharing.
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I only ended up testing with one solicited Recommend. Views and engagement definitely went up significantly. I got no click-throughs to my website that I know if.
I suspect that Medium does have more potential for virality then my blog, but I would have to put more effort into sharing it up-front. Not sure I want to publicize Medium over my blog (which increases the visibility of my website and the potential for folks to see other links there) or that my social media feed has enough traffic to justify publicizing both links. I'm going to stop posting to Medium for now. I don't see any immediate low-overhead benefits, and I'm not wanting to invest in longer-term benefits there for now.
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The Martian |
May 1, 2017 – May 5, 2017
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: One person sharing a short video takeaway every day for five days will inspire others to share as well Eugene will record and share a short video takeaway of what he’s learning and thinking about every day for five days. He’ll share the videos on the E3 WhatsApp channel and on his Faster Than 20 #colearning channel. He’ll then see what responses he gets after another week. |
More people followed my videos than I expected, including some people who are following my YouTube channel. I put in almost no effort in publicizing, so it was a good reminder that I do have an audience, and even leaving lazy trails can be valuable.
Nobody was inspired to share their own video takeaways, although people did respond to the content of some of the videos.
My biggest takeaway was a bit of a surprise. I always thought my sharing muscle is strong. It's not. It's toned, but it could use more maintenance to stay strong. Experiment with other ways to share more aggressively as a way to build my sharing muscle.
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A Way Forward III |
May 1, 2017 – May 31, 2017
Elissa
Elissa
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Hypothesis: If I make space for poetic reflection twice a week then I’ll feel more grounded and be more present in my work. Elissa will take time for poetic reflection, written in her notebook, twice a week. |
Not documented |
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Spire |
April 27, 2017 – May 3, 2017
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Spire is unobtrusive, easy-to-use, and provides useful, timely stress data. I'll wear a Spire during business hours (more or less) for six days (in theory, one charge and also covers the weekend trip I'm about to take), and I'll capture what I learn here. |
How obtrusive was it?
Surprisingly unobtrusive. For the most part, I forgot about it. I forgot it going through security at the airport, I forgot to take it off my pants. Apparently, it's washing machine proof, which is good, because I could easily see me mistakenly putting it in the wash.
For some reason, it was a bit obtrusive with one particular pair of shorts, but not overly so, and I'm sure I could have adjusted it.
How easy was it to use?
Very. Didn't have any connection issues, battery life is great, charging is easy, app is more or less straightforward.
What did you learn?
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Colearning Strategy Retreat 2 |
April 24, 2017 – July 5, 2017
Eugene
Eugene, Brooking, Odin, Anya, Renee, Kate, Travis, Shirley
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Hypothesis: A two-day, self-organized retreat will give all of us enough time to do our own individual strategic work while also benefitting from each other’s feedback. Pick a date (June 29-30) and location (Bay Area), and invite the other colearners to:
Do the retreat! Debrief at the end of the retreat. |
Do it again in January 2018. More well-defined recommended designations of solo vs peer time. See if we can drum up interest in doing a real retreat (i.e. not at someone’s house). |
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Untapped Social Media Potential |
April 10, 2017 – April 21, 2017
Eugene
Eugene
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Hypothesis: Re-publishing my blog posts on LinkedIn and Medium will reach more people without having to do any additional work.
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Success! LinkedIn is a great, underutilized channel! Medium, not so much, at least without additional work.
Keep re-publishing to LinkedIn (although test other dimensions — see questions below).
Try removing first paragraph referral to Faster Than 20 on Medium to see if that has any impact. What impact would the following factors have on engagement for LinkedIn?
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Kardashians |
March 27, 2017 – April 7, 2017
Eugene
Eugene, Jodie, Alison, Mark, Elissa
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Hypothesis: If we share short videos with each other five days a week for two weeks, then we will find sharing with each other easier and more compelling. Each person will make a video on WhatsApp of their learnings once a week. Monday: Eugene Eugene will set up an automated email reminder to you on the day you are supposed to share the video. |
Technically, we hit minimum success. However:
We have not yet tested a version of this experiment where we broadcast videos publicly (or at least with a larger audience). Something to think about for a future iteration. |
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Umm… |
March 24, 2017 – March 24, 2017
Eugene
Eugene, Mark, Alison, Elissa, Jodie
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Hypothesis: If my peers throw paper at me whenever I say, "umm," I will eventually stop saying "umm" so much. At the beginning of our day-long meeting, ask everyone to make a paper airplane or crumple up paper, and throw it at me throughout the meeting every time I say, "umm." |
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Spacious and Free Work 2 |
February 27, 2017 – March 3, 2017
Mark
Mark
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Hypothesis: If I intentionally increase and track my use of leaning in and handshake practices in meditation, then I’ll experience less overwhelm / anxiety in my work situation. (I might also notice an objective shift in work efficiency, improved sleep, diet, and exercise.) Every day during for one week, Mark will mediate. He will incorporate lean in and handshake practices. Email notification and link with Whole Life Challenge for documentation. |
There’s NO good reason to not take the time to meditate every day. My whole week and felt sense of things being OK was palpable. Documentation during first part of week increased my sense of commitment and focus on this experiment for later part of the week even though documentation fell off some. I will build calendar/e-mail reminders and live link to documentation into future experiments.
I don’t think I'll do another iteration — seems fairly self-generating at least for now. Might shift to an experiment to increase daily exercise — which I’ve been doing poorly at despite it being a Whole Life Challenge commitment for which I regularly lose points for non-performance! How to take micro-level personal experiments and translate to org’l/movement context? How might I increase even further my follow-through on documentation? (Imp’t. Because I think documentation is a key to greater follow-through, at least for me.)
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Spacious and Free Work |
January 10, 2017 – January 17, 2017
Mark
Mark
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Hypothesis: If I intentionally increase and track my use of leaning in and handshake practices in meditation, then I’ll experience less overwhelm / anxiety in my work situation. (I might also notice an objective shift in work efficiency, improved sleep, diet, and exercise.) Every day during for one week, Mark will meditate. He will incorporate lean in and handshake practices. |
Trust my practice not my feelings.
Writing down a reminder of the things I can do and having it on my altar to remind me.
When I have my practice, I was craving less caffeine.
Had familiar learnings before yet don’t always apply them. List on my altar of things that are good for me.
Take list with me when I’m headed on the road. Is there some way I can send myself a daily reminder to fill out the documentation? (eg get a calendar invite to send an alert with the link to the design document, that gets delivered when I’m online, mid day- as a .)
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P3 (People + Projects + Principles) |
January 3, 2017 – March 17, 2017
Eugene
Eugene + anyone who happens to follow along
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Hypothesis: If I spend one-hour a week openly documenting what I’ve learned from key people and projects, then I’ll have a good-enough first draft along with constructive feedback from other practitioners. Spend one hour a week (timeboxed) for 10 weeks trying to free-capture learning from different people and projects on Faster Than 20 wiki. People: Projects:
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Finished on-time after 10 weeks. Ended up cutting a project (for content not timing reasons) and also skipping a week, but it all worked out.
For the People, I needed to up my allocations to three hours a week, and in reality, it took longer, because I found myself thinking a lot about these folks throughout the week and jotting down notes so I wouldn't forget. The main reason it took so long, however, was that I felt the need to include more narrative and context so that others could understand the piece. This may have felt of greater importance, because I wanted to let my peers read my descriptions of themselves.
I decided to just go with bullet points with my Projects, and I was easily able to finish the work in an hour a week.
The approach made it doable in bite-sized chunks, and it resulted in principles grounded in experience, which raised my confidence in them. I've been wanting to do this for several years, with several false starts, but this is the first time I actually finished the work to my satisfaction!
It was relatively easy to pull together a set of draft principles after completing 10-weeks of free capture and engagement. I simply aggregated all the lessons, clustered, and pruned. I then did another iteration where I cross-referenced the work with previous attempts to pull together principles, and settled on five high-level principles.
I posted links to my descriptions on Loomio, then shared links to Loomio on the E3 WhatsApp group (five people) and on my Colearning Slack (seven people, not counting three also on WhatsApp). In a few cases, I emailed links to specific people.
As far as I could tell from limited and (in some cases) indirect feedback, everybody in E3 read at least some of the posts. Both Jodie and Alison said that reading these helped them understand the approach I was taking to our STP work together.
I heard from nine people overall. Most of the feedback was a simple acknowledgement, but some of the feedback surprised me in their depth. The feedback didn't end up helping me pull together the principles, but they did deepen relationships and other people's understanding of me and my approach. It was a nice win, although because the People write-ups ended up taking three times as long, it didn't come for free. Test the draft principles on as many practitioners as possible, both colleagues and people who barely know me. Iterate.
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Video Storytelling |
December 14, 2016 – January 17, 2017
Elissa
Elissa, Jodie, Eugene, Alison
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Hypothesis: If we create a narrative video about E3 with multiple voices and share it, then we’ll learn what portions of the narrative are compelling to people. Participants will make a short video selfie (2 min max) about E3 in a storytelling format by 1/11/17. EP and AMB to have video call and record it so that Adrienne’s voice will also be included. The prompts that we came up with on our last call were:
Elissa will then compile these into short video by 1/16/17. We will share the video in multiple settings to multiple people:
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Not documented |
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Colearning Strategy Retreat |
December 5, 2016 – January 23, 2017
Eugene
Eugene, Anya, Kate, Kellee
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Hypothesis: A one-day, self-organized retreat will give all of us enough time to do our own individual strategic work while also benefitting from each other’s feedback. Pick a date (January 20, 2017) and location (Bay Area), and invite the other colearners to:
Do the retreat! Debrief at the end of the retreat. |
Do it again in six months! Go for two days next time, and see if we can attract more people. |
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Values Agenda |
June 30, 2016 – September 1, 2016
Elissa, Jodie
Elissa, Jodie
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Hypothesis: If Jodie & Elissa take Elissa’s value survey, analyze survey results together, and cull out foundational vision and values, then we will understand more about what our common values based agenda could be. Jodie will take Elissa’s Values Survey Jodie and Elissa will meet to do analysis together! (7/18 at 12:30 - 2pm),
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Incomplete / stalled
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Emergent Agendas |
June 18, 2016 – July 25, 2016
adrienne
adrienne
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Hypothesis: Rating and tracking my experiences sharing this work with others will help me understand what works and what doesn't. Documenting feeling at end of agenda for self and by folks I served. |
adrienne did not formally collect this data. The structure of experiment templates doesn’t fit with adrienne’s modality of work. This process feels difficult to participate in as it is not part of formal paid work.
Emergence needs feedback loops but/and hard to structure for it.
Some people need a lot of data, but this doesn’t align in situations of quick emergence. How do we support people in emergence, moving through values alignment, emotional landscape, etc?
How do we build embodied trust in emergent processes?
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Joint Landings: Funder Talking Points |
May 10, 2016 – July 25, 2016
Elissa, Jodie
Elissa, Jodie
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Hypothesis: If we create shared talking points about each other’s organizations, then we’ll be able to weave in connections, speak with confidence about each other’s work, and create more opportunities when we talk with funders. We’ll meet to share what we’d like to have shared about our own orgs by the other person. When opportunity arises we will share about the other’s work with funders. |
We tried out working in a culture of abundance rather than scarcity, walking the talk of collaboration over competition. And it worked! Indicator of level of trust is a joint staff retreat so relationships are deepened.
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Doodle Insights |
April 26, 2016 – July 22, 2016
Eugene
Eugene, adrienne, Mark, Alison, Elissa, Jodie
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Hypothesis: If I share something handwritten to the group about the STP network strategy process once a week without context, then those who already don’t know much about the project will learn enough to care and get up to speed on context and those who already know a lot will reflect on what I share. Doodle something about the STP network strategy process for 15 minutes once a week, then share the images on cel.ly group, Creating Conditions. |
Many things were validated.
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A Way Forward |
April 26, 2016 – July 25, 2016
Elissa
adrienne, Mark, Jodie, Eugene, Elissa, Alison
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Hypothesis: If I share a series of poems about our internal experimentation/innovation process at MAG, people will 1. Want to know more; 2. Have a fuller although still fuzzy understanding of the changing landscape and our experiments going forward at both the felt and intellectual levels. I will continue to reflect in creating writing form, our experiments and my reflections on them and share at least 5 pieces in text and audio (and possible visual) form on an ongoing basis and completing the sharing more than 3 days before our next in-person gathering. Everyone will be compelled to respond to at least one of the pieces at least once. I will post links in Adrienne’s cell.y group. And later more select links here for archival sake (unless we storify). Audio (pieces 1-5) Text (pieces 1-8) Completing the sharing more than 3 days before our next in-person gathering |
Giving a specific number of poems is irrelevant. It’s the impact that is relevant. That impact could come from one poem or 16 depending on the poem. Also, writing the poems is not just a function of making time. There is an internal process of arriving at that place that does not really have a relationship with linear time. Sometimes the poems appear quickly and seemingly out of nowhere. Other times the well feels bone dry, the field fallow even though we know there is momentum in stillness. With the help of some words from Eugene, I’ve come to realize that importance of understanding what experimentation of this kind requires of us on a human level. I’m curious how we combine this way and depth of knowing with our more “photo-real” log-like sharing of what we are actually doing in our experiments.
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Joint Landings |
April 26, 2016 – July 25, 2016
Elissa, Jodie
Elissa, Jodie
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Hypothesis: If we talk more often and in a focused way, then we will gain traction and have next steps to move forward in at least one of four areas. Elissa & Jodie will meet via phone (if not in person) at least twice exploring potential areas of joint experimentation and landing on a joint experiment (or more than 1) to carry forward with next steps identified. The rest of the group will be curious, ask questions, and have ideas beginning to percolate that may support the emerging experiments. We will share video clip within a week of each meeting and update the group on Celly. We will update the group in our full group calls so that they get documented in our meeting notes. |
Being in a rigorous practice with support and accountability moves work. Give it resources if you want it to happen.
So we give it more meaning and resources and that matters.
Using an experiment frame helped give work between Jodie and Elissa (MAG and STP) more flexibility and space to explore what it could be without committing.
Trust was built. STP not committing to be a main partner in spring of 2017 with MAG because of capacity, will lift it up to funders and STP will participate
OD Network Development - there is interest but not a priority so on pause.
Practice Sharing our learning. Start that with values based work.
We should have funder talking points around each other’s work and spread these memes of how our work weaves.
Move forward with another experiment around values based agenda.
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Tender Transparency in Action |
April 26, 2016 – July 25, 2016
Alison
adrienne, Mark, Jodie, Elissa, Eugene
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Hypothesis: If meeting notes are open by default from now until the next in-person meeting, we will find that (a) they get shared one time outside of the group and everyone in E3 feels good or not harmed; (b) Convos that don’t happen because of self-censoring are minimal; (c) there is collective responsibility to tender transparency (eg. do you want to share this?). Alison will make a new meeting log, track reminders of tender transparency and responses to prompt post meeting. If people share the meeting log with another person, they will give that person specific permission to view the google document and inform the group that they have shared the notes with this person. |
Reminding people about tender transparency at beginning and end of calls was helpful.
It was a breakthrough to realize that tender transparency didn’t mean that it was going public, rather we could share it with people we trust and so that people can learn and grown this work with us.
Tender is that we want increase the space for learning, not cause drama.
Because we had agreed at the beginning to make meeting notes tenderly transparent it made it easy for Elissa to share them, eg. we didn’t have to put in extra work to share about our meetings! Keep tender transparency going.
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Celly |
April 26, 2016 – July 25, 2016
adrienne, Alison
adrienne, Mark, Jodie, Eugene, Elissa, Alison
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Hypothesis: If i create a text thread on Celly for our group and invite people to post links, pics and whatever form of sharing they want to indulge in, then we will share and form / deepen our culture of sharing and learning intimately with each other (and increase good feelings). Adrienne will make a Celly group. People will text when they have an update to share about their experiment. |
Using a shared messaging platform was unifying and accessible.
Having Alison to track the data was key.
Cell.y helped E3 members feel unified and connected.
Provided scaffolding for communication that we needed. Helpful to have thread and narrative all in one place and on our phones.
Allowed some mirroring and reflection that was in real time or much closer to real time than scanning across google docs on our computers less frequently. Liked that it was on phone, felt different that getting on computer.
The scaffolding and Alison as support in moving E3 along helped E3 group be more generative and say yes to trying more things. E3 will move from using Celly to a WhatsApp group.
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Journaling Reflection |
April 18, 2016 – April 24, 2016
Mark
Mark, adrienne, Alison, Eugene, Jodie
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Hypothesis: Sharing meditation-induced diary entries with E3 will change how I use my diary Building on my initial idea of sharing meditation-induced diary entries about feelings and thoughts related to deep culture change at MAG, I've come to clarity on the form for my experiment. It's 5 days long, starting today, with each day focused on the 5 ingredients of MAG's "special sauce" — Multiple Ways of Knowing; Inner Work; Systems/Complexity; Leadership Spectrum; and, Equity. |
It feels pretty vulnerable to share like this but I'm committed to doing it and trust you all to not share these around. (Thanks!)
Thought that experiment might change the way he uses his diary but it did not. He trusted group either through personal experience or through other’s recommendation.
Late to start the experiment, yet successful in that there was response and he completed it mostly as he designed. This could be in part because of the time constraint, it was a one week experiment.
C+ = others read and reacted, intimate view
F = prompting macro level group learning
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Vlog |
March 1, 2016 – April 24, 2016
Jodie
Jodie, Elissa, Eugene, Alison, Mark
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Hypothesis: If I share a series of 1-2 videos logs of what I am learning through our network planning and experimentation process, then it will help me to capture my learning and support me in sharing the learning beyond my organization and specifically with this group. |
Verged on feeling like a to do and that was originally what she’d defined as failure.
Learned that she doesn’t have enough time. Needs time to do this, to feel abundant and a sense of possibility, to be creative.
Felt great saying I failed.
Intention of sharing helped bring thoughts together.
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Photography Trail |
March 1, 2016 – April 24, 2016
Eugene
Eugene, Alison, Elissa, Jodie, Mark, adrienne
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Hypothesis: If I leave a trail of photographs and other short nuggets about the Social Transformation Project network strategy process without much context or explanation, those who follow the trail will learn enough to: 1. care; and 2. get more rapidly up to speed on the surrounding context. |
Started with the idea of fun with photography and ended up posting meeting pics. Didn’t yet check in via a pop quiz to see if people were paying attention. Will ask about caring.
Self Grade: F (w/scream face)
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Poetry |
March 1, 2016 – April 24, 2016
Elissa
Elissa, Alison, adrienne, Eugene, Jodie, Mark
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Hypothesis: If I share a series of poems about our internal experimentation/innovation process at MAG, then people will 1. Want to know more; 2. Have a fuller although not thorough understanding of the changing organizational landscape (I’m pretty sure that’s a nose but it looks like it’s where the ear should be…). 3. Be able to connect that organizational landscape to the world outside of MAG and what’s happening in it at both the felt and intellectual levels. |
Enjoyed doing her experiment.
Reconcile murmuration and structure. Posted at the last minute, learned how to use soundcloud. Was a constant point of reflection. Feels fine with vulnerability ( Apple, Sauce, Poop and MAG).
Failed on sharing. Was aware of the group and process. Engaged with self and the intersections.
Alive with learning.
Toy with idea of opening to a followership with trust and common purpose as the core rather than belonging and control.
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Instagram Group Sharing |
March 1, 2016 – April 24, 2016
adrienne
adrienne, Alison, Elissa, Eugene, Jodie, Mark
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Hypothesis: If I create a group on Instagram for sharing emergence and experiments with each other, we will hone our sense of what we are excited about. This will depend on whether this is the right outlet. Adrienne added E3 members to Octavia Brood’s Emergent Strategy FB group and also sent private pictures on Instagram. |
Feels like there isn’t time for unpaid play, when has down time needs to unwind.
More nudges for experiments
Didn’t see where and when experiments were happening.
Felt that people weren’t engaging or paying attention to her experiment.
Desires interaction and conversation.
Test didn’t work well, didn’t have measures defined in advance.
Prompted discovery and design of Cell/y experiment.
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SEEK 2 |
October 2, 2013 – December 13, 2013
Eugene, Seb
Eugene, Seb
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Hypothesis: Talking weekly for eight straight weeks will be enough to establish a habit Building on SEEK, Eugene and Seb will continue their weekly checkins through the end of the year. |
Talked a few more times and enjoyed it. Wanted to do another round, but Seb was too busy. Try more experiments like this with others. |
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SEEK |
July 31, 2013 – August 9, 2013
Eugene
Eugene, Seb
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Hypothesis: Talking more frequently will lead to exponentially deeper learning (and lots of other good stuff). Eugene and Seb will talk once a week for four weeks for an hour. They will spend roughly equal time talking about what’s on their mind. Beyond that, there will be no agenda. After each call, they will record a 2-4 minute video of their “jazz hands moment” from their conversation, which they will share publicly. |
Outcomes
Process
Relationship
Synthesize what we learned in these four weeks. (Seb: contextualize in my own story) Repeat the same experiment for another four weeks. Potential variations:
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More feedback: