Structure & Process’ “Partner Meetings” are bimonthly get-togethers of the team of Structure & Process. From being “internal meetings” originally, they have evolved to include clients, prospects and business partners.

In November 2016, we took the next step and opened up our structure even further, showing what was “internal” to clients, and what was “client-only” to business partners and our wider network. We also invited our community to contribute to and become part of the meeting.

It turned out to be a wonderful format for doing joyful, inspired and effective work – so much so that we’re doing it again this February! View all the details here (in German).

Every Partner Meeting is different, but the rest of this post is meant to give you an idea of what it can look like…

DAY 1

Monday morning.

The place:

Welcome:

People start to work: Conversation between Rob and Martina about the future of Partner Meetings, their sustainability, probable profitability and their integration into the structure.

Kind of a tradition at Partner Meetings: Lunch at an Asian place.

More people show up, the team is almost complete – setting up the space.

Ready, set, go! @strucproc first OPEN partner meeting starting tomorrow. Space prepared, arrived in Dresden. Good. pic.twitter.com/orR5G3a1ki

— Lara (@LaraListens) November 7, 2016

DAY 2

After arriving, settling in and putting up the space, the Open Partner Meeting starts with a check-in round:

Agenda Building:

 

Martina calls for a session about Organisational Purpose Shift:

The next session for most people is about Partner Community and Applicant Processes  –exploring whether a membership system is an option to develop.

Very closely related is the development of Partner Meetings as a (core) product of Structure & Process:

The first guests arrive: Luca and Julia from Reinblau join our Meeting. They are clients in a consulting project from Martina, Lara and Rainer.

After lunch for some participants and a nice walk along the Elbe for the others – the meeting resumes with a Governance Meeting of the GCC. This is a good observing and learning opportunity for some of our guests. Lara explains procedures and gives background information. The minutes of that meeting can be found right here in our Glassfrog.

 

 

 

 

 

More guests have arrived: Tobias already joined our last Partner Meeting. He was a coaching client of Martina’s for a while and is interested in our work. Nora is a consultant and knows Rainer and Martina. She came all the way from Bratislava to join.

Rainer and Nora catching up:

Lara prepares the check-out round for the day:

DAY 3

New guests have arrived: We welcome Anja and Gregor. The third day starts with planning mode again. Most of the people decide on an introduction to Teal from Nora.

The next session is hosted by Rainer who has a business idea he wants to develop. His basic assumption is that there is not enough consulting competence in clients’ companies. They are consulted by us, but they need to consult with their clients as well. This  is enforced when transformation processes within the company affect their clients, too.

In a second session in the afternoon interested people start to get into operational details for a consulting workshop offer that would increase consulting competences with clients.

Later, Rainer offers a session in Action Learning:

Rainer's super fast introduction into #ActionLearning visualized #madewithpaper pic.twitter.com/Opo0bhDyW1

— Lara (@LaraListens) November 9, 2016

Reflections on our #ActionLearning session; 'geduld bewahren, gruppenintelligenz vertrauen' #abundance of support pic.twitter.com/wvzkSICbyD

— Lara (@LaraListens) November 9, 2016

Day 3 closes with a check-out round and some reflections of the core Structure & Process team.

Day 4

On day 4 more Holacracy meetings take place, where some of the learnings from this Partner Meeting are already being captured into the organisation’s governance records:

Lara gives a mini-workshop on her specialty: drawing and graphic facilitation.

After 4 full days our co-created graphic overview shows the richness of the meeting and what came out of it.

Partner Meetings are one of the core activities of Structure & Process and they embody our way of working. Please join one of the next ones to experience it for yourself!

Shoutout to Annette Mehlhoop who created the first version of this post!