Do you have a place to bring your teams where you can work out the really thorny issues?
Alongside the James River in Richmond Virginia there is a special space that exemplifies what I mean when I speak of "habitat".
Sometimes I get push-back by the Edgar Schein purists who say that "artifacts" have little weight in organizational #culture.
👉 I say - humans are inextricably linked to their surroundings. A space can evoke excitement, productivity, or trust.
A truly engaging space can even elicit belonging.
Mark Brown, Christian Markow, and Alexis Spain showed a profound awareness as they facilitated moving more than 30 of us from space to space, room to room, in order to get at the issues dominating workplaces today, and how we might disrupt them through #thoughtLeadership and direct #engagement.
DisruptRVA
🟦 One space suggested a focus on productivity, process:
Roll up your sleeve and solve problems.
📐 The next space connected us with technology:
It's a tool, how can we use it to bring about the future we hope for, and avoid the future we fear?
🟣 The last space was human. It felt like a library in someone's home:
Five other strangers who had never met before that night begin exchanging in a way that only friends with shared experiences would.
Alysse Ballou - contributing "perspective" - finding how the stories weave over each other to sum up how a collective in a work environment can grow. Together.
Roxanne M. Brown closed the night by posing a profound question:
❓ "What if everyone in the company, on every team regardless of its individual function, was focused on doing one thing?
And they all knew what that thing was because the purpose of the organization was so clearly communicated at all times?
It begins with us thinking that something can be different. And then making it that way."
🎤 💧
If your company is within driving distance of Richmond, you owe it to your teams of people (not to mention the sustainability of your mission and purpose) to utilize what Lost Office Collaborative has created.
(visit their page in the comments below. Their photos are much better than mine 😉)
The science behind "habitat" - careful consideration of everything from light, color, sound, movement, even the food - gets planned into this experience.
Think ➡️ Learning & Development workshop meets ➕ Event Planning on steroids.
Tap the expertise of its founders to craft an experience that facilitates the kind of #designThinking that draws from the experience and ideas of your people like never before.
Imagine the questions that come out of it, begging for an answer.
Imagine the impetus toward applying answers to those questions.
Visualize the engagement that sprouts from such a #Growth Laboratory.
☝️Engagement creates belonging.
✌️Belonging builds resilience.
🤟Resilience means you and your mission will stick around a long time, and affect the most people possible.
