Let's keep doing better work together
Back in early 2019 (feels like decades ago…) a group of us from Enspiral published Better Work Together, a book about using the principles of community to build radically different businesses. It has since sold a few thousand copies, received nice feedback and helped guide and provoke the thinking of many people.
In the 3 years since we all have experienced a seismic shift in society.
In 2022 as we take steps out of pandemic isolation to global reconnection, we walk into a different landscape. The great resignation has shaken up expectations of normal. Assumptions about working in offices have dissolved. Online community building has established a meaningful foothold. The Web3 wave continues to loudly experiment with decentralised models of everything.
In short, I think the ideas in the book are more useful today than when first published.
So, we're expanding the project.
Sharing tools, methods and stories from the frontiers of collaboration and organisation building.
Better Work Together is a provocation for people wanting to build startups and grow organisations differently, where mission and culture leads.
On the new website and blog you’ll find curated links to books, courses and learning resources from organisations working at the edges of collaboration and collective leadership.
We’re now distributing new versions of Better Work Together that make it much easier and faster to get anywhere in the world:
You can follow along on twitter, join the (occasional) newsletter, and if you have resources, people or organisations that we might feature, be in touch.
We can achieve better outcomes by changing how we organise ourselves.
As the name implies, the original Better Work Together book was written collectively. We did this to share a decade of learning and insight from building Enspiral, a decentralised, self governing, self managing community of interdependent entrepreneurs. Read more about the book background here.
There are many movements growing today that are building towards a similar vision of positive societal change. Over the coming months we'll be sharing more content from great work happening in:
- Decentralised organising.
Building organisations where power and decision making are transparent and structurally distributed. The continued rise of Web3 is pointing towards a new normal where ownership is shared and everyone is enabled to lead and act entrepreneurially. - Mission led ‘teal’ organisations.
Teal organisational structures and processes are explicitly designed around self actualisation of individuals, peer relationships and participatory decision making in order to enable the higher purpose of the group. - Effective remote, hybrid, asynchronous work.
A post pandemic economy demands organisations to develop and maintain inclusive remote and hybrid working methods that enable people to engage and contribute fully. It’s now normal to have teams spread around the world who may have never met. We all have more to learn about how we can navigate collective uncertainty, manage asynchronous work and thrive. - Belonging in community.
Where the effort required to look after each other and build deep, long lasting relationships is recognised and celebrated. Where the value of belonging transcends the jobs we do or the teams we work in.
Ultimately, for people trying to change how we change the world.
At its core the Better Work Together project is about nurturing collective intelligence, community resilience and purposeful entrepreneurship.
It's for builders, leaders, innovators and activists who are applying imagination, optimism and principled experiments to how we organise ourselves.
If it strikes a chord with you, get in touch!
Now, onwards to the work.