Co-designing Evolutionary Organisations

This workshop is a space for conversation and ideation about ‘evolutionary organisations’, facilitated using co-design tools.

Evolutionary organisations, also termed ‘self-managing teams’, is a concept championed by Frederic Laloux and extended by Corporate Rebels.

Evolutionary organisations defy the efficiency logic of the hierarchical organisation and empower teams to make decisions together. The ideal is that by changing our work patterns towards relationality, we might make a deeper shift in our culture and society.

However, adopting the approach can be difficult, as teams and managers can be set in hierarchical patterns of thinking and working.

Changing work patterns can be confronting: the role of the manager is challenged, and teams can find it hard to take on the ownership of decision-making. While the approach is not for everyone, co-design methods can support the conversations needed to explore these concepts.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together people interested in self-managing organisations to share their stories of barriers to adoption, as well as successes and failures in implementation. Participants will visualise their stories, explore self-managing concepts using co-design tools and learn from each other’s experiences. As a collaborative workshop, participants will contribute to the further development of the conversation cards.

The co-design toolkit featured in this workshop, called ‘conversation cards’, was initially developed during the facilitator’s PhD research to support teams in planning and adopting self-managing practices.

Two workshop events are available: in person at RMIT University and online via Zoom and Miro.