Welcome to the ShapeUp Reading Club Integration Circle

The ShapeUp reading club seems to be taking off, last minute ... but some groups are forming.

This group is made up of the representatives of the other reading groups. It is intended to be the integration circle where the representatives from the different groups can share reflections from their group and carry back reflections from the other groups into theirs.

I started all the other groups with the initial reading assignment and prompts. For the next reading assignments I will be sharing the instructions here with the representatives and you will be asked to carry those instructions back into your groups.

Once the dust settles and we see which groups have formed and are on track we will communicate here about the sharing process that will take place in this circle.

What are the dates for the readings and gatherings?

Here I will provide the monthly instructions for you all to share within your groups.

@Caroline Woolard that is up to you to decide in your group how you want to do the readings with any combination that works for you sync/async.

Hey @Caroline Woolard @Shannon Wray & @Kayla E I would like to invite everyone into the second month of the ShapeUp reading club. For you, as representatives of your reading clubs there are two tracks to follow: inviting your group into the next reading assignment and sharing feedback across groups.

Track 1: Guide your reading group

You need to share the next reading task with your group.

For the product reading group I created a new thread titled:

Reading Assignment #2: Shaping part1 - Principles of Shaping & Setting Boundaries

And these are the instructions I posted in it, you can adapt them to your group (the only unique information to our group is the schedule for our sync call schedule) and deliver them in whatever way works best for your group.

The reading assignment for the month of April is pages 20 - 35 which includes the first two sections of the "Shaping" Chapter:

1. Principles of shaping

2. Set Boundaries

We will dedicate the weekly Product & Design call on April 20th (to avoid colliding with the Easter week) to a discussion about this part of the text.

Between then and now you are invited to add async reflections here. You are welcome to use the same reflection prompts:

What were you personally most drawn to in the reading?

Is there anything you encountered that made you reconsider how you personally work?

Is there anything you encountered that you intend to apply to your own work?

From what you read, what do you feel we already do well at Open Collective?

From what you read, what do you feel we can and should improve at Open Collective?

Did you encounter anything that you feel we should not apply at Open Collective? If so, what?

Track 2: Integrate

The purpose of the integration effort is to:

1. Share back reflections/thoughts/questions from your group with the other representatives.

2. Carry back to your group the reflections/thoughts/questions from other groups.

I have created a dedicated Loomio thread here in our integration group for sharing your feedback from reading assignment #1.

My original intention was to also have a sync call of us, the representatives. However my impression is that most people are currently way to overloaded and that it may be difficult to schedule due to our geographic dispersion. So please respond to this comment and let me know what are your thoughts and feelings about coordinating a sync call for us.

@Ronen Hirsch I definitely think a sync call would be great, though yes, overloaded is true.

I guess it could be helpful to clarify if there are any goals in this 'Shape Up Reading Club' - something to help us identify a direction we can move these conversations in...? Are we trying to do any problem-solving in this club? Are we just trying to make the team more aware of the systems we currently use? Do we want to better align Shape Up to OC? Do we want to better align OC to Shape Up?

@Kayla E the prompts I offered point to directions of exploration. It is an invitation to reflect and explore:

• the ShapeUp perspective of how work can be and how we feel about that perspective

• how to converge on a shared vocabulary that is used in ShapeUp to talk about how we work

• how work actually is, how we feel about it and how it compares to the ShapeUp perspective

• how we want work to be, are there things we can take away from ShapeUp to add, remove or change from how we work

• what can each of us do personally to reflect changes we wish to see

and if we are lucky it will lead to some unpredictable emergent outcomes :)