Sure, it is well known. And of course we agree, and no one ever tried to make Edge structureless. It is about making structures that work for those who need to use them. Adding new structure instead of fixing the existing one leads to org rot: the harmony fragments into a mosaic of islands that make some internal sense, but then cannot move forward because they need external output. Right now, in the RezNet I am hearing @nadia saying “I can’t engage because I was not given evidence from the coding in year 1” and Jan saying “OK, but now we need the engagement to get better material to code”. I do not recommend you guys go off into any more rabbithole, especially at this point.
Additionally, there is major issue with having regular calls in a fluid working reality: Alice agrees now to having meetings with Bob on the second Thursday of every month. Right now, her calendar is empty: no problem. But next month she might struggle to accommodate some other important meeting; or be on holiday; or be in the flow of writing some piece of text, and knows that stopping for the meeting is going to cost a lot in terms of concentration (I experience the latter a lot).
But, here is an alternative solution that (a) builds capacity in the team and (b) re-uses existing structure:
-
Make a (one-time, for now) training for CMs on how to use network tools. I mean, how could I be against such use? My Ph.D. thesis is called The management of online communities. A social networks perspective! A lot can be accomplished simply by using Graphryder. I also have created, documented and published a Tulip perspective to create rapid social networks exactly with the idea that then CMs would target all the “singleton” nodes that have zero connections, without having to tamper with fragile updating of GraphRyder. I even used to produce lists of those, but then I stopped in early 2020, after the mess with Natalia etc. A training would empower CMs to explore the network under their own powers.
-
Make these observations part of the bi-weekly meetings. I don’t expect a firehose of novelty. Observations like this do not come every week, and even when they do they could well be part of reporting into the bi-weekly. If a longer discussion is needed, we schedule one on demand, but do not make it a new ongoing commitment.
-
In general, I would rather invest on the bi-weekly. Let’s put there everything by default. Let’s make it more juicy and fun. And let’s keep it trans-projects, within the ethics of maximizing mutual learning. Activities that need their own space and do not involve everyone (like coding) override the default and result in their own meetings, as always.
What say you?