Thriving Networks is an 8-week immersive online course that will help you take your collective, community, or distributed organization to the next level and find support from peers to address common challenges around money, value and resource flow.
In the last ten years, our world has changed at a dramatic pace. Fueled by urgency, passion and technological breakthroughs, we are seeing new ways of organizing pop up all over the globe, challenging the notion of traditional organizations: from freelance collectives, to impact networks, to distributed communities and DAOs. But to truly fulfil their potential, these network structures and group cultures need to face difficult questions around money, power and value flow. And they don't have to do it alone.
From our experience working in such networks for a decade, we have seen certain challenges surface in networks repeatedly: power and workload imbalances, tensions between volunteer and paid work, burnout of core members, not knowing how to develop healthy and effective leadership, feeling stuck around money and how to talk about it openly.
This course will help you take your network to the next level, by creating a space for you, with a cohort of peers, to safely explore these uncomfortable topics and equip you to navigate these challenges.
Get an overview of the course content and a taste of it here.
8 Weeks
Up to 30
2 hours per week
4-6 hours per week (incl. live sessions)
Contribution within capacity
You are starting or part of a nascent network that is facing questions of value and money flow for the first time.
You are a network leader or highly active member of a mature network and want to take it to the next level.
You are a curious explorer who wants to learn about this topic in a concrete, applied way.
You are starting or part of a nascent network that is facing questions of value and money flow for the first time.
You are a network leader or highly active member of a mature network and want to take it to the next level.
You are starting or part of a nascent network that is facing questions of value and money flow for the first time.
Alícia is a designer and facilitator of distributed leadership, community building and decentralised governance. In addition to practicing these in her own communities, she is currently studying a Phd on self-organising and affect. Her work is focused on how self-organised communities can be places for personal transformation / awakening through the interaction with others. She has been a catalyst within Ouishare and several other social networks.
Lena is a facilitator, community builder, artist and bodyworker. She is dedicated to creating a future worth living for through enabling meaningful collaboration, supporting the shift towards participatory and self-managed work places and fostering embodiment. She holds transformational spaces in a multiplicity of contexts and co-founded community-centred events and experiences. The sacredness of bodies and nature and the unique essence of each human being sit at the core of her work.
Each week we dive into a different topic starting from the hosts lived experience in networks. You will apply what you are learning in your own network projects. To learn more about the context and why of this course, check out this article.
A great curation of resources on networks, communities and collectives on the topics of value, money and leadership. This is a course about the intersection of systems and personal development. In our experience with networks and collectives, relationships are at the center. We will engage in experiences that will lead you to personal reflection and, if done in a group, these experiences will help you deepen your relationships. We think this is key to sustaining thriving networks.
Networks are complex systems. Please do not expect a linear roadmap or a magic formula. Instead, this will be like a writing course. There are many different approaches to writing. We will share tools, our experiences and reflections. But you have to get to practice and write, write, write. You don’t get better at writing by theorizing about it (end of analogy 🙂). If you want to make the most out of this course it’s necessary for you to experiment with your networks by trying the practices we introduce.
This course is for what we call "Purpose Networks" and "Impact Communities". This ranges from professional to livelihood-focused networks, online to locally rooted communities, communities of practice or interest, to DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), "neo-guilds" and movements. What they all share is that they have a larger purpose and intention to catalyze action, beyond connecting people and organizations.
We use the terms network and community interchangeably, since the difference between them is often blurry.
Zebras Unite is a founder-led, cooperatively owned global movement creating the culture, capital & community for the next economy.
ConsciousU: creating conscious tribes. ConsciousU delivers scalable personal development programmes that facilitate collective transformation in organisations.
Open Collective is a legal and financial toolbox for grassroots groups. It’s a fundraising + legal status + money management platform for your community. What do you want to do?
The course contains 8 x 2 hour participatory live sessions, featuring a combination of content, reflection and practice.
Week 1 |What is a thriving network? Introductory session to connect with your cohort and dive into what it means for a network to be thriving.
Week 2 | Crafting Roles & Contribution Pathways
Creating a system where network membership, different levels of engagement and types of contributions are in balance.
The Money Game
An experience to deepen your reflections and learning about your personal relationship to money. Learn more about the Money Game.
Week 3 | Reclaiming Money
Surface and explore your personal stories and myths about money.
Week 4 | Collective Money Practices
Discover how to work with personal money patterns in the collective context. Learn about innovative models for accounting value.
Week 5 | Making Decisions Around Money
Explore the challenges of collective budgeting and financial decision-making, as well tools and practices to address them.
Week 6 | Unlocking your network challenges
Reflect, digest and apply what you have learned so far to your network
Week 7 | Redefining Leadership and recognizing 'Source'
Discover Peter Koenig's Money and Source work, and how to apply it in networks to unlock collective leadership capacity.
Week 8 | Integration & Closing
Walk away with tangible insights, practices and experiments to try in your network
We have two cohorts on the horizon for the upcoming months:
1. A European + Americas cohort that starts October 11th 2023 and will run for 8 weeks till November 29th, Wednesdays 5-7 PM Paris │ 11am-1pm AM NY │ 8-10am Los Angeles │ 12-2pm Buenos Aires. Attention with time changes, the Paris time will remain as anchor time, so the course will always take place at 5pm CET.
2. A European + APAC cohort starting February 7th till March 27th, Wednesdays from 10am-12pm Paris │ 4-6pm Mumbai │ 8-10pm Melbourne
Can't make this time? Learn about asynchronous learning options.
Contribution within capacity model
For this course we are taking a needs based approach* that aims at creating both increased accessibility for participants and sustainability for us as facilitators.
This means that we offer some guidance below for people to choose how much to contribute, but it is not a request. As Miki Kashtan says “we ask that you give the most that you can do without overstretching or resentment”.
It's great to take this course with fellow network members! If you're participating with one or more members of your network, you can reflect this is the pricing of the ticket by subtracting 20/25% of the sustainability option or reflect together what contribution would feel right.
This needs based approach registration model is based on Miki Kashtan (& NGL) and her course Responding to the Call of our Times.
A deeply empowering and transformative experience—a true treasure box for every network nerd. I'm still impressed by the co-creative and safe space created by the hosts.
Thanks to this course, I now have the foundation to help take my networks to the next phase and am excited to start working with the tools this course provided!
Highly recommend for anyone starting and scaling a network that wants to clarify how to collaborate, exchange value and honour the principles of cooperation. A practical space to learn with peers, access real case studies, and put the learnings into action during the course timeline.
A brilliant way to meet other people, share experiences with organisational structure and decision making models, and think through collective solutions to common problems
I've been in leadership in many different kinds of organizational structures for over 4 decades. I have a master's degree in organizational leadership. I've been involved in the field of networks and 'self-organizing systems' for well over a decade, and all my clients for the past decade have been struggling with leadership in flatter systems.
And yet I found much to value in this training.
The trainers are well-grounded in long experience with networks and the content addresses real and serious challenges networks face. There's a lot of hype and fluff about networks out there, but real insight based in lived experience is still relatively rare. This course fits that description and is well worth taking.
Christine Capra - Greater than the sum
The Thriving Networks Course skilfully locates the balance between personal exploration and practical application. The course is beautifully held, with excellent facilitation, clear structure, and collaborative tools that are accessible and intuitive. In just 8 weeks our group of disparate and diverse participants formed deep collaborative bonds and have cultivated a rich collective sense of support and learning. I would sincerely recommend this course to others, regardless of the scale or scope of their network(s).
Our courses are practice-based, intimate and participatory. It's your entry point into the emergent knowledge and practices that Greaterthan has developed and tested over the past decade.
Our courses are practice-based, intimate and participatory. It's your entry point into the emergent knowledge and practices that Greaterthan has developed and tested over the past decade.
Communities we are embedded in
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