Putting Relationships First: Turning organisations into communities

The topic discussed was how to turn organisations into communities, not machines, following on from the topic considered in February of how to make relationship-building the purpose of organisations. We started the meeting by asking everyone to give examples of this, good and bad, from their experience.

In the discussion, four main ways emerged to unlock humanity at work:

• Creating new activities that bring staff together in informal ways, eg over cakes and coffee without a formal agenda, or engaging everyone in a common task where new relationships could form.

• Sharing our whole selves in every aspect of what we do at work, often through intentional one-to-one conversations.

• Finding the right ‘touch points to demonstrate a different, more human way of doing things, for example, understanding that some forms of communication may be impersonal or even threatening and using more personal approaches.

• Creating structures and formal practices which create a sense of community.  This is not about dismantling hierarchies or pretending that everyone in an organisation has equal power.  What seems to work much better is creating ways in which people genuinely get to know each other and look out for each other eg shared work lunches and making sure people who need a bit of extra support get it.