Collaborative Solutions
By working together we can create collaborative solutions that begin to transform our toughest challenges.
Consulting Services
Equila integrates transdisciplinary expertise, proven transformative practices, and diverse cultural perspectives. Our methodology is earthed in evidence-based principles that apply current research and proven techniques to navigate the complexities of each project. By monitoring key metrics and refining approaches based on data-driven findings ensures transformative and sustainable systemic change for both businesses and communities.
Circle Leadership
Open dialogue is vital for business and community flourishing. Circle practices cultivate capacities for deep listening, authentic sharing, and trust building. Circle Leadership nurtures inclusive spaces that honour diverse perspectives, enhancing capacities for innovation and driving organizational growth.
Circle Leadership
Value
Developing capacities for Circle Leadership is vital for disolving invisible barriers, building trust, and supercharging collaborative innovation. Circle Leadership is about more than just teamwork; it’s about navigating individual and team anxieties, bringing unspoken shadows to light, holding a diversity of perspectives, and skillfully leveraging tension as a catalyst for new possibilities.
Harnessing the Power of Circle
At Equila, our prime tool for this is the Circle Council. We strip away the fancy jargon and complex theories, focusing on fostering simple, authentic, and respectful conversations. Circle practices don’t stop at formal sessions, though; they can be seamlessly woven into everyday meetings for impactful check-ins, ensuring everyone gets their chance to shine.
Think of Circle Council as your team’s roundtable, a dedicated space where everyone has the opportunity to share and listen. In this setting, your team members can enhance their capacity to express themselves honestly and to tune into what others are saying. This open dialogue isn’t just chatter—it’s a powerful tool that cements trust and unity in your team, setting the stage for innovative ideas to flourish.
SnapChat: A Case in Point
Don’t just take our word for it—SnapChat is a prime example of Circle Leadership in action. They’ve embraced Circle Councils from their early days, building strong relational capacities across the organization. In the face of 2020’s global pandemic and racial tensions, they held over 3,000 Councils for their 5,000+ employees. This proactive approach to open discussions around fears and challenges fortified team bonds and boosted resilience. Thanks to the Circle Leadership capacities they had cultivated, SnapChat successfully navigated these turbulent times with a surge in unity and creativity.
Self-Governance
Self-governance is a cornerstone of strong, purpose-driven organizations. It utilizes robust and proven practices to clearly distribute authority and domains of work, enabling individuals and teams to dynamically change the organizational structure for optimal performance and increased innovation.
Self-Governance
Value
Self-governance, a transformative model of management, reimagines how organizations operate. Below, we outline five critical areas where self-governance brings immense value, addressing prevalent challenges and catalyzing impactful changes.
1. Employee Engagement
- Challenge: Traditional hierarchies can often lead to a disengaged workforce as employees may feel they have limited influence or decision-making power.
- Cost: Disengagement can lead to decreased job satisfaction = productivity, lower quality of work, and higher employee turnover, which negatively impact the company’s bottom line.
- Value of Self-Governance: Self-governance empowers team members with decision-making authority specific to their roles, fostering a heightened sense of ownership and commitment to the company’s mission.
2. Effectiveness of Decision-Making
- Challenge: Top-down approaches often places the weight of all key decisions on the business owner, potentially slowing down processes and creating operational bottlenecks.
- Cost: This can delay the delivery of products or services, leading to customer dissatisfaction and potential loss of business.
- Value of Self-Governance: Self-governance distributes decision-making power across the team according to roles, which speeds up processes, eliminates bottlenecks, and harnesses the collective intelligence of the team; This fosters an environment where innovation can flourish, potentially leading to solutions that boost efficiency, improve service, and position the business for long-term success.
3. Scalability
- Challenge: Traditional management structures can become strained as a business grows, leading to the business owner being overwhelmed with micromanaging tasks.
- Cost: Difficulty in scaling operations can stunt business growth and limit the potential for expansion.
- Value of Self-Governance: Self-governance allows for seamless scalability. As the business grows, roles and responsibilities can be clearly adjusted, providing adaptability and ensuring no one individual is overwhelmed.
4. Communication
- Challenge: Communication in traditional hierarchies often follows a one-way downward flow, which may limit transparency and the open exchange of ideas.
- Cost: Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, and missed opportunities for innovation.
- Value of Self-Governance: Self-governance promotes open, transparent communication. Its structured meeting process ensures all voices are heard, enhancing the exchange of ideas and fostering a more inclusive work culture.
5. Peace of Mind
- Challenge: The burden of carrying the entire organization can lead to increased stress and risk of burnout for small business owners.
- Cost: Increased stress can affect the owner’s decision-making, personal life, and overall health, potentially impacting business performance.
- Value of Self-Governance: With decision-making and authority distributed, the business owner can shift focus towards team growth and larger vision. This reduces the risk of leadership stress and supports work-life wellbeing.
Design Labs
Collaborative creativity is essential to realizing innovative solutions. Equila’s Design Labs guide participants to a shared understanding of system foundations. From here we explore innovative possibilities and collaboratively design actionable solutions that unleash the greater potential of the group.
Design Labs
Unleashing Creativity with Design Labs
With Design Labs, Equila offers an effective path to harness collective creativity and wisdom. Guided by the principles of Circle Leadership, participants are led through a process of collaboration that strengthens relationships, sparks innovation, and paves the way for a shared vision.
Design Labs typically unfold as follows:
- Scoping Design: Each Design Lab is tailored to the client’s needs and involves an initial phase of foundational scoping, research, and design.
- Round Table Series 1: Here, we assemble diverse experts and stakeholders into 2-3 circles to share visions, explore systems foundations, and co-creating preliminary designs.
- Design Refinement: This phase is committed to further refining the design. It encompasses elements like technical specifics, financial modeling, partner involvement, and organizational details.
- Round Table Series 2: Stakeholders reconvene for 2-3 additional circles to validate and refine the current design, while also identifying community resources.
- Community Presentation: The refined design is shared with the broader community, inviting collective intelligence to provide further input, validation, and wisdom gathering.
- Co-created Plan: The final phase involves the creation of a plan to realize the potential of collective design.
What makes Equila’s Design Labs valuable?
It’s simple:
- Tending the Shadow: We dig deep to uncover hidden challenges or ‘shadows’, clearing the way for transparent dialogue and problem-solving.
- Shared Understanding: We help everyone see the bigger picture, creating a shared understanding of how things work and what’s truly important.
- Getting to the Roots: By focusing on first principles, we don’t just address the symptoms – we aim to transform root causes of the challenge.
Foundations
Understanding and solidifying an organization’s foundation is vital for its flourishing. Equila uses a multifaceted approach—incorporating systems mapping, relational assessments, R&D, as well as financial and data modeling—to ensure a resilient foundation for successful collaboration.
Facilitation
Effective facilitation is a catalyst for transformation. By guiding group dynamics, nurturing active participation, and focusing discussions, Equila crafts an environment where collective insight blooms. Our distinct approach to facilitation supports shared learning and transformative, lasting change.
Agile Mindsets
Agile mindsets foster adaptability and innovation in organizations. By promoting iterative planning and collaborative teamwork, businesses can effectively navigate change, capture opportunities, and maintain steady growth. Circle Leadership and Self-governance embody Agile mindsets to fuel creativity.
Tailored Approach
1. Define & Design
A guided session to assess your organization, identify challenges and goals, and co-create a tailored transformation blueprint.
2. Iterate
We begin by experimenting and refining the approach in iterative cycles based on new insights and changing needs.
3. Collaborative Solutions
Together we implement transformative practices that foster collaborative solutions to address complex challenges aligned with long-term success.
Integrated Worldview
Equila was formed from a Community Eco-Psychology worldview, a field of study that looks at the interconnected weave between individuals, communities, and the environment around them. Picture it like a healthy ecosystem: every creature and plant, from the smallest insect to the tallest tree, has a role to play. They’re all connected, and each one contributes to the overall health of the system. This is the same in our communities and businesses – we all have unique roles and together, we can create a thriving system.
At Equila, we embrace ‘soul-centric’ approaches that acknowledge a creative life force within each of us. By recognizing and liberating this inner fire through Circle Leadership and Self-Governing organizational systems, we foster thriving individuals, businesses, and communities. Together, we stoke a collective fire that burns brightly, sparking regenerative and transformative changes across all sectors of society.
