This handbook is a guide to how Greaterthan operates as an organization. It explains how our structure is setup, how we make decisions and work together, key projects we work on, and more. It is a living repository, which is updated as our practices and team agreements evolve.

License

Our purpose

Greaterthan’s purpose is to develop and grow the impact of new ways of organizing, and to be in service of the individuals and organizations who are driving this work forward. We are a hub for aligned practitioners to experiment, support others on their transformation journeys and develop products that make these practices accessible to wider audiences.

We want to help usher in a new era, where our organizing structures and cultures contribute to a more healthy system for all.

Our vision

We envision a world where the system(s) we do our work in...

…enable everyone to be involved in decisions that relate to their lives and futures in the workplace.

…recognize and distribute value of different kinds in a healthy, regenerative way.

...foster conditions for people to express their creativity and be entrepreneurial.

...support caring relationships and human development.

...enable everyone to step into their power and lead.

Greaterthan Collective is a remote-first organisation, with members scattered across the globe. Therefore we have always aimed to find flexible structures that can meet the needs of people in many locations, while also creating regional entities when deemed necessary.

Greaterthan currently operates through the following legal entities:

When, why and how do we create additional Greaterthan entities?

For us, legal structures are a means to an end and should not be drivers of how to organize and govern our collective. Therefore we apply the principle of only creating new legal entities when there is a clear and strong need for them (rather than anticipating the need or having the wish for a certain governance). Some of the reasons for creating a country specific entity may be having a critical mass of active members or clients in one location, running a large amount of in-person activities (events, retreats) in one place that require VAT registration, or gaining access to grant and funding opportunities.

Stewardship-ownership

For Greaterthan, success as a business means a better livelihood through meaningful work for more people, more positive impact on the world and contributing to a thriving ecosystem.

Our company is not built to be exited, but to be a source of continuous value creation for all its stakeholders.

• Entrepreneurship = Ownership: Steward-ownership ensures that the control of the company is not a commodity anymore. The steering wheel – the majority of the voting rights – of self-determined companies lies in hands of people who are connected to the mission of the company.

• Profits are a means to an end: With steward-ownership profits are a means to an end, not an end in itself. Instead profits directly serve the purpose of the company. They are used to pay back investors, re-invested in the company, or donated to charity.​

Governance

To read more about how our governance works, check out our agreements:

Constitution

After one month of working together, Greaterthan was born as an umbrella project to drive forward the work on practices and tools for collaborative budgeting. Greaterthan was then given stewardship of the Cobudget software by Enspiral. From that starting point, a team of practitioners and developers, including Kate Beecroft, joined the project, spanning the globe from New Zealand to Europe.

In Summer 2018, the team was joined by two new founding partners, Susan Basterfield and Anthony Cabraal, to take Greaterthan into its next stage of evolution as a cooperative company. Since then, it has and continues to evolve and change, becoming the global collective it is today.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of those members that moved on to other projects early on in our journey, Jessy-Kate Schlinger, Juliana Lopker and Michael Arnoldus.

Context & Intention of this Agreement

The intention of our People Agreement is to make explicit the differing levels of involvement, commitment and power that people can have with respect to Greaterthan (GT) and articulate how people can move between those levels. Since it’s first version, this agreement has gone through various significant iterations, which will likely continue as the organization and its members develop.

This agreement has been designed to recognize and accommodate for different types and levels of involvement, contribution and commitment. It aims to enable people to scale their involvement and commitment up and down in a dynamic, organic way, to adapt to different professional priorities and life phases. The intention behind this is for GT to be an organisation that people align themselves with for the long term - evolving their relationship with it over time as both they and GT change.

Levels of involvement

There are three explicit levels of involvement in GT: “Partners”, “Associates” and “Explorers”. An explicit commitment to Greaterthan as a whole (outside individual projects) takes place when stepping across the threshold from Explorer into “Membership”. Greaterthan Members, constituted of Associates and Partners, are collectively responsible for stewarding and developing Greaterthan. The Partners additionally hold the accountabilities of keeping our strategic focus and ensuring coherence between our activities and long-term vision.

To understand these levels better, let’s look at how each relates to Greaterthan:

Partners: ‘Greaterthan is my professional home, or, if this is not the case yet, I am actively working towards it.’ The majority of their work is in and through GT. Equal shareholders in GTs UK "mother" company, Greaterthan Collective Ltd (1 share per person).

Associates: ‘Greaterthan is one of the places for my professional activity, or, if this is not the case yet, this is something I am actively working towards.’

Explorers: ‘Greaterthan is a professional network I am part of and want to explore getting more involved in’. In many cases, GT members are already doing a project with potential explorers, or are interested in doing work together in the future.

None of these levels have a nominal limit to how many people can be in them -- but to ensure our system is healthy, it’s important that they maintain a certain proportionality. We must also note that there is a very broad range of ways in which someone can be an associate. We have decided to embrace this ambiguity and therefore focus our energy on regularly making associates and partners specific commitments explicit, rather than creating very rigid expectations (see below).

Rights & Responsibilities

The functions of GT Members (as a whole): The Greaterthan Members are collectively responsible for stewarding and developing the Greaterthan commons so that we can work towards our collective purpose. This involves three key aspects:

• Ensuring that GT has thriving business activity (a healthy pipeline of projects, healthy money flow, proactive business development)

• Ensuring that GT’s financial commons are managed wisely and together.

• Ensuring that GT as an organisation evolves and is cared for in line with the needs of our purpose and people in GT (including that people are cared for and supported).

The ways in which these are addressed are determined by the members and are likely to change over time.

The Partners additionally hold the accountabilities of keeping our strategic focus and ensuring coherence between our activities and long-term vision.

The specific rights and responsibilities that come with each role are as follows:

Commitment Statement | Details

Here are examples of what types of contributions the commitment statement can refer to, which are important for developing and maintaining GT as a thriving business:

• Bringing in projects (leads, sales)

• Developing new GT products and services

• Working on the organization, for example participation in heart beat teams, care work

• Building thought leadership and recognition of GT

Accountability Process

Current experiment is of Accountability "Bubbles"

• Groups of at least 3

• Meet at least every 6 weeks (can be more if desired)

• Reflect, review and update accountability statements

• Optional, but encouraged: can also be used as a peer support or personal/professional development triad, to help check in on how everyone is doing and make sure key needs are not falling through the cracks.

Joining & Leaving Greaterthan

Minimum Viable Board

Compliance and legal responsibility is held by a “Minimum Viable Board”, composed of two partners and (optionally) one external person or associate.

The MVB will:

• ensure that Greaterthan Collective Ltd is fully compliant with United Kingdom laws and regulations, and its company constitution

• maintain an overview of current finances, long term financial view, and adequate reserves

Any associate or partner can initiate a conversation at any time to discuss directorship with the members, and may nominate a director (including themselves). The final decision about directorship is made by partners.

The current MVB has 4 members:

• Francesca Pick (partner)

• Susan Basterfield (partner)

• J.D. Nasaw (associate)

• Patrick Andrews (external)

Full GT Member meetings | Quarterly

Purpose

• Keeping coherence as the members group: building relationships, seeing what is happening in the system, discussing things we need to draw our attention to

• Sharing a financial update: discussing patterns in money flows & strategy and making decisions around money

• Participation: all members are expected to attend

To see when these calls are scheduled, please check the GT Members calendar, which you were given access to when onboarded.

In-Person & Distributed Gatherings

A set of days where we focus intensely on working together, either on a specific project (Academy), or on evolving Greaterthan as an organization. In the past this has often looked like 3-5 days of living & working together with the whole team in rotating (rural) locations, every 3-6 months.

Annual Opt-in Ritual

An annual moment for reflection and acknowledgement of the changes taking place in the GT system, especially in relation to people moving in and out of their roles as partners and associates. This is our form of an annual "opt-in", as a collective acknowledgment moment of changes to people's involvement.

Etiquette for going offline & availabilities

• People who work together frequently tend to their share calendars with each other to make scheduling easier.

• In general, if you cannot join a meeting you have been invited to, decline the calendar invite.

• Here are some typical practices we use for when people go offline / on holiday:

  • Slack status: update your slack status to say you are not available, and indicate what date you will be back

  • Team Travel calendar: though used by fewer members, it can be practical to add future travel plans & holidays to our shared team travel calendar, which can be very practical for future planning, checking availabilities for clients projects, etc. When doing this, please make sure to include your name in the calendar event!

No longer or currently not active

• Partners Meeting | every 2 weeks

• ^{"Services" Exchange | every 2 weeks}

  This is THE place to go if you are a GT member working on current projects, or someone who would like to find pathways for getting involved in projects. The purpose of them is for us to cross-pollinate across projects, learn together, and manage projects as a team, rather than many isolated groups. Elements of this call:

  • High-level updates about ongoing projects

  • Sharing learnings & advice

  • Sharing needs: both for knowledge/resources & people on projects

  Important: Since this call is geography-based, it's important that key take-aways are always shared on slack afterwards, with the rest of the members. Participation: optional for members, but if you are working in projects regularly, it is important to attend as often as possible.

Greaterthan is committed to clear, transparent finances and continuous open dialogue about money and value distribution. We know that such conversations can feel uncomfortable, and do our best to create a safe and trusting environment to be able to address and practice how we talk about and spend our money.

1. Project Budgets

Project teams can choose to manage their own budget in whichever way they choose, as long as the budget is transparent to the whole organization and there is one person that is clearly identified who is accountable for managing it.

2. Greaterthan Commons Budget

Contributions to GT Commons

All contract work invoiced for through Greaterthan Collective Ltd contributes 15 % to the Greaterthan commons.

These 15 % include:

• Overhead costs of operating the entity (approx. 10%), such as operational support, accounting and bookkeeping, legal costs, fix costs for software

• Recurring donations to communities in our ecosystem

• Collective "investments" in existing and new projects, and internal initiatives.

For certain types of contracts that non-partners are working on, the % to the commons may be lower, subject to negotiation (based on factors such as the size and complexity of the contract.).

The 15 % rule is open to be revisited at any time, if it makes sense with how the business evolves. It is up to the discretion of any partner (for individual work) or project teams to increase the percentage their projects contribute to the GT commons, if they like.

Reserves

3. Decisions about Commons Budget & Surplus

4. Funding the ecosystem

Greaterthan is committed to contributing part of its commons budget to funding communities in its ecosystem, for example historically, Enspiral and Ouishare, in the long term. The amount of the financial contributions is reassessed as Greaterthan’s revenue evolves. The contributions are however not only of financial nature, but include other types of partnerships, as well as Greaterthan partners and associates contributing their time to these communities.

Practices

Here you can find principles and guiding questions that help us with our communications practices in Greaterthan, specifically mediated communication (typed, audio, video; not live conversations).

[no longer up to date - will be reviewed Sept 2023]

Tools

Here is an overview of the communications tools our team currently uses. To avoid tool overload, we usually onboard people to them on a needs basis, depending on the projects they are working on!

Who can be added to these tools and how?

To get access to any of these tools, please ask any of the partners to be added.

The majority of our tools are available for anyone working on our projects on a needs basis. There are certain tools reserved to associates and partners only, such as Loomio, for formal decision-making.

Communications & Decision-Making

Of Greaterthan Collective Ltd (UK)

BACKGROUND

1. The Company exists to promote a world where workplaces are communities that provide agency, personal growth and meaning.

2. The Company was founded on principles of shared purpose, values and commitment, as well as co-ownership, steward-ownership, non-domination, subsidiarity and open communication.

3. The Company has been structured in a way that is consistent with the above. It has an embedded purpose beyond profit, and an ownership structure that distributes control amongst the active participants.

PURPOSE OF COMPANY

1. Purposes

   1. The purposes of the Company are to promote the success of the Company for the benefit of its members and, through its business and operations, to have a material positive impact on society and the environment, taken as a whole. In particular, the Company shall run a business that aims to create a world where workplaces are communities that provide agency, personal growth and meaning.

   2. A director shall have regard (amongst other matters) to:

2. 1. 1. the likely consequences of any decision in the long term,

      2. the interests of the Company's employees and contractors,

      3. the need to foster the Company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others,

      4. the impact of the Company's operations on the communities and ecosystems it is part of, and the environment,

      5. the desirability of the Company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and

      6. the need to act fairly as between members of the Company,

(together, the matters referred to above shall be defined for the 
purposes of this Article as the "Stakeholder Interests").

1. 1. For the purposes of a director’s duty to act in the way he or she considers, in good faith, most likely to promote the success of the Company, a director shall not be required to regard the benefit of any particular Stakeholder Interest or group of Stakeholder Interests as more important than any other.

   2. Nothing in this Article express or implied, is intended to or shall create or grant any right or any cause of action to, by or for any person (other than the Company).

2. Principles

   1. Shared commitments over individuality: The Company emphasises maximum freedom (for individuals) and maximum cohesion (for the business as a whole). Co-owners are not held together not by employment contracts but by a shared purpose, shared values and a shared commitment.

   2. Non-domination: No participant, or group of participants should be able to dominate discussions or control decisions. For this reason, we avoid voting in making decisions. This doesn’t mean that all decisions need to be made by consensus or that everyone will be happy with the decisions that are made, but the process should be fair and unbiased.

   3. Co-ownership and steward-ownership: The Company should be ultimately owned and led by those actively and regularly engaged in it, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of those most involved in or affected by the activities of the business (customers, associates and the wider community). Entrepreneurship equals decision-making power. The earning of profits is a means to the achievement of the purpose of the company and not an end in itself. Profits of the company will be either reinvested into the company, invested in projects which serve the Purpose or donated to charity.

   4. Subsidiarity: The ethos of our decision making is to delegate all responsibility for operational decision making to the body with the closest direct connection to the decision within our structure.

   5. Open Communication: Participants practise open, honest communication with each other to create a transparent and trusting work environment.

INTERPRETATION

1. Interpretation

   1. The interpretation of these Articles is governed by the provisions set out in Appendix 1 to these Articles.

   2. The Model Articles shall apply to the Company, except in so far as they are modified or excluded by these Articles. In case of a conflict, these Articles shall prevail.

   3. Articles 13, 14 and 24 of the Model Articles shall not apply to the Company.

SHARES

1. Rights attaching to shares

   1. The share capital of the Company shall comprise Ordinary Shares and one Guardian share. Subject to any other provisions in these Articles concerning voting rights, shares in the Company shall carry votes as set out below.

   2. Ordinary Shares

      1. The Ordinary Shares shall confer on each holder of Ordinary Shares the right to receive notice of and to attend, speak and vote at all general meetings of the Company.

      2. Each Ordinary Share shall carry one vote per share.

      3. The Ordinary Shares shall be held exclusively by Co-owners who shall be individuals who take an active role in steering and leading the Company and are either in full-time employment or in a full-time service relationship with the company.

   3. Guardian Share

      1. Subject and without prejudice to articles 4.3.3, 17 and 23, the Guardian Share shall not confer on the Guardian Shareholder any right to vote.

      2. No more than one Guardian Share may be in issue at any time.

      3. The directors must procure that decisions concerning the liquidation, Exit or the sale of all or a material part of the assets of the company are taken with the prior written consent of the Guardian Shareholder.

2. Issue of shares

   1. No more than one Guardian Share may be in issue at any time.

   2. Ordinary Shares may be issued only by special resolution of the Ordinary Shareholders and may not be issued to anyone who already holds an Ordinary Share.

3. No pre-emption rights on issue

   1. Sections 561 and 562 of the Companies Act shall not apply to any allotment of equity securities by the Company.

4. Share transfers – general

   1. The Directors shall refuse to register any transfer of Shares made in contravention of the provisions of the Articles but shall not otherwise be entitled to refuse to register any transfer of Shares. The Directors may request the transferor, or the person named as transferee in any transfer lodged for registration, to furnish the company with such information and evidence as the Directors may reasonably think necessary or relevant. Failing such information or evidence being furnished to the satisfaction of the Directors within a period of 20 business days after such request the Directors shall be entitled to refuse to register the transfer in question.

5. Transfers - Ordinary shares

   1. Ordinary Shares may not be transferred except with the consent of the Co-owners or, with the consent of the Directors and to the extent permitted by the Act, to the Company, in each case at the price that is equal to the aggregate nominal amount of the Ordinary Shares.

   2. An Ordinary Share may not be transferred to someone who already holds an Ordinary share, except in the case set out in 8.3 below.

   3. The intention is that Ordinary Shares are held by Co-owners. The responsibilities involved in being a Co-owner shall be set out in writing from time to time by the Board of Directors and made available to all Shareholders. If the Co-owners decide, in their absolute discretion, that an Ordinary Shareholder no longer complies with the responsibilities of a Co-owner, the Co-owners may by special resolution require the Board to require the Ordinary Shareholder within 10 business days to transfer all of the Ordinary Shares held by him to the Company (or to such other Ordinary Shareholder as the Board shall notify him in writing), and the price shall be equal to the aggregate nominal amount of those Shares (unless otherwise approved by the Guardian Shareholder).

   4. This Article 8 applies also to the pledge, encumber, assignment, transfer or disposal, whether inter vivos or causa mortis, of any Ordinary share having the effect of granting, entirely or in part, the underlying voting rights to a third party or subject the exercise of the voting rights to a third party consent.

6. Transfers - Guardian Share

   1. Other than in accordance with this article 9, the holder of the Guardian Share shall not be permitted to transfer such share.

   2. In the event that:


(a) the Guardian Shareholder informs the Board that it wishes to transfer the Guardian Share;

(b) any person becomes entitled to shares in consequence of the administration, receivership or liquidation of the Guardian Shareholder; or

(c) the Guardian Shareholder ceases to be an asset-locked organisation,

then the Guardian Shareholder or the person so entitled to the Guardian Share (as the case may be) shall be bound to transfer the Guardian Share to such person as the Directors shall direct.

1. 1. Any transfer directed pursuant to article 9.2 shall be to an asset-locked organisation and such transferee shall have a purpose which, in the reasonable opinion of the Directors, shall be aligned with the Purpose and the Principles. On the sale or transfer of the Guardian Share the price for the Guardian Share shall be £1.

2. Dividends and Other Distributions

   1. Shareholders shall not be entitled to dividends or other distributions, and any profit of the Company shall be reinvested into the company, invested into projects serving the Purpose or donated to charity. By exception to the foregoing, the shareholders may decide by simple majority to implement a Co-owner and Associate profit-related remuneration scheme, which may be paid out in the form of a dividend. In any one year profit related remuneration to a co-owner shall not exceed:

      1. 5x the co-owner’s remuneration in the preceding year if that was below 30,000 EUROS; or

      2. 50% of their normal remuneration if the co-owner’s remuneration in the preceding year was above 30, 000 EUROS.

3. Purchase of Own Shares

   1. Subject to the Companies Act but without prejudice to any other provision of these Articles, save for as per Article 12.2 below, the Company may purchase its own Shares (other than the Guardian Share) with cash up to any amount in a financial year not exceeding the lower of:

      1. £15,000; and

      2. the value of 5% of the Company's share capital.

4. Variation of share capital

   1. Whenever the capital of the Company is divided into different classes of Shares, the special rights attached to each class may be modified or abrogated, either with the consent in writing of three quarters of the issued shares of the class, or with the sanction of a special resolution passed at a meeting of the shareholders, and in either case with the prior consent of the Guardian Shareholder.

   2. Subject as otherwise provided by these articles, and without prejudice to the rights attaching to any class of shares from time to time issued, any share in the Company may be issued with any special rights or restrictions as the Company may from time to time by ordinary resolution determine. Provided that, without the prior written consent of the Guardian Shareholder, no relevant securities shall be issued unless the voting rights are identical to those attached to the Ordinary Shares.

DIRECTORS

1. Quorum for Directors’ meetings

   1. The quorum for the transaction of business at a meeting of Directors is any two eligible Directors.

   2. If the total number of Directors in office for the time being is less than the quorum required, the Directors must not take any decision other than a decision:

(a) to appoint further Directors; or

(b) to call a general meeting so as to enable the shareholders to appoint further Directors.

1. Directors' conflicts of interest

   1. If a proposed decision of the Directors is concerned with an actual or proposed transaction or arrangement with the Company in which a Director is interested, that Director shall be counted as participating in the decision-making process for quorum or voting purposes, provided that he has declared the nature and extent of such interest as required by the Companies Act.

2. Directors’ duties

   1. In making any decisions the Directors shall, without prejudice to their duties under Section 172 of the Companies Act (‘Duty to promote the success of the company’) and other duties of directors set out in the Companies Acts, place the pursuit of the Purposes above the interests of any one Shareholder or group of Shareholders.

   2. Nothing in this Article is intended to or shall create any right or cause of action to, by or for any person (other than the Company).

   3. The Board shall for each financial year explain in the form of a strategic report accompanying the annual accounts of the Company how the Directors have sought to promote the success of the Company in accordance with this Article.

3. Number of Directors

The Board will consist of a minimum of two Directors.

1. Observer

17.1 To ensure compliance with the steward ownership principles, the Guardian Shareholder shall have the right, by written notice to the Company, to appoint an observer who shall have the right to receive notice of and to attend all board meetings.

17.2 For the avoidance of doubt the Guardian Shareholder does not have the task of financial supervision, including review of asset and earning position of the company or consent to certain legal transaction of measures of particular financial significance, unless otherwise provided for in these Articles. It receives no remuneration for its work, but may request reimbursement of its out of pocket expenses to the extent these are appropriate according to the circumstances.

SHAREHOLDERS DECISION-MAKING

1. Entrenchment

Articles 1, 2, , 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15.1, 17, 18, 19.1, 20, 21, 22 and 24 shall not be amended or removed unless otherwise agreed in writing by the Guardian Shareholder:

1. Attendance and speaking by non-shareholders

   1. The Guardian Shareholder shall be entitled:

      1. to receive notice of any General Meeting of the Company, including any separate meeting of any holders of any class of Share.

      2. to attend any such General Meeting; and

      3. to speak at any such General Meeting.

   2. The Chair may permit other persons who are not:

      1. 1. Shareholders; or

         2. otherwise entitled to exercise the rights of shareholders in relation to general meetings,

to attend and speak at a general meeting.

1. Liquidation Preference

   1. On a return of assets on liquidation, capital reduction or otherwise (other than a conversion or purchase of Shares), the assets of the company remaining after the payment of its liabilities shall be invested in projects related to the Purpose or donated to charity.

2. Exit

The shareholders and the Directors must procure that no Exit occurs without, or otherwise than in accordance with, the prior written consent of the Guardian Shareholder. The Guardian Shareholder may set any conditions it sees fit on the giving of its consent to any Exit, provided such conditions can be reasonably justified based on advancing the Company’s Purposes.

1. The Guardian Share

   1. On any poll on any resolution of the company in general meeting, being a poll the passing of which would be, or would be deemed to be, a variation of the rights attaching to the Guardian Share, the Guardian Shareholder, if it opposes such resolution, shall have the right to cast such number of votes as shall be necessary to defeat the resolution. The following shall be deemed to be a variation of the rights attached to the Guardian Share:

      1. Any resolution to wind up the company voluntarily;

      2. Any resolution for reconstruction of the company;

      3. Any resolution for the disposal of a material part of the business or assets of the company.

2. Electronic Communication


Without prejudice to Article 48 of the Model Articles, notices and any other communications sent or supplied, by or to Shareholders or Directors under these Articles may be sent or supplied by electronic means as defined in section 1168 of the Companies Act (including via a website, chatroom, extranet, intranet, blog, online social network or forum or other similar mechanism duly notified to such Shareholder or Director or by electronic mail to any email address supplied to the Company, its officers or agents in writing by such Shareholders or Directors).

24. Remuneration restrictionsCo-owners, employees and associates of the company receive an appropriate remuneration, which is decided by the Co-owners unanimously. “Appropriate remuneration” means (a) comparable with remuneration paid by other companies of comparable size, type and industry for a comparable position and (b) in line with the principles set out in article 2. Any shareholder who feels that remuneration is not appropriate may raise an objection, and if their objection is not successfully resolved by internal conflict-resolution processes, the shareholder may appeal to Joshua Vial (or, if he is unable or unwilling to act, an individual nominated by the Enspiral Foundation), whose decision on what constitutes appropriate remuneration shall be final.

What is the Business Development (Biz Dev) Bucket?

A pot of funds set aside from Greaterthan’s Commons Budget to financially support people in Greaterthan to pursue leads and other business development activities for potential Greaterthan projects.The funds in this bucket are generated directly from our long term client projects, which contribute an extra 5 % to the GT commons for this purpose. Hence there is a correlation between the availability of these funds and the number of long term (retainer) projects we have at a given time, and it is replenished on a monthly basis through this mechanism.

The scope of this bucket is primarily to have an easy process for members to be compensated for their time invested in business development efforts; and secondarily to be able to offer additional rewards for biz dev efforts that lead to a sale, which are not sufficiently compensated within project budgets.

Who can make use of the funds in the bucket?

The funds can go to partners, associates and explorers engaged in biz dev activities. In the case of explorers, it is important that an associate or partner is actively supporting that person in the sales process, to ensure coherence with Greaterthan’s approach, skills and capacity.

What can be paid for?

Please note that these are common examples for what it may cover, but this is a non exhaustive list.

• Time: time spent pursuing a biz dev opportunity: sales calls, responding to RFPs, writing proposals, grant applications etc.

• Biz dev expenses: following a lead or pursuing biz dev opportunities may incur expenses, such as traveling to meet someone in person or participation in an event. Depending on the opportunity, 50-100% of these expenses may be covered out of the biz dev bucket.

• Building collective collateral useful for sales conversations

• Contributions to internal capacity / capability building that is directly related to us being able to have client conversations and write proposals and close deals

• Surfacing/configuring/re-configuring resources internally

• Building partnerships with compatible entities, that would increase our chances at winning work

BDB does not include: Blog writing, website copy, event organizing or events, communications

Important: if the lead converts to a project, the expectation is that the project covers the compensation for the biz dev and sales work. If the sale is not successful, then your time and costs can be compensated from this bucket.

How to claim funds from the bucket

Step 2: Get in touch with the biz dev bucket stewards (see below) via Slack on the #bizdevbucket channel, and discuss the opportunity you would like to pursue or have started pursuing. Assess together whether this lead seems worth pursuing, based on factors such as work required, likelihood of success and how strategic the opportunity is for GT. At this stage, you might gather advice from other GT members to make the decision.

Step 3: Decide together by consent with the biz dev bucket stewards whether you will pursue the lead with financial support from the biz dev bucket or not. If the answer is yes, at this point, have a first conversation about what compensation would make you feel energized and supported to follow this lead. This number will be revisited at the end, as described in the process below. Ensure the decision is transparently documented in a decision log. The funds agreed on will be earmarked for 4 months, at which point, your request will "expire" unless negotiated otherwise ahead of time with the stewards.

Step 4: Closing

Once the sales process is complete, circle back to the bucket stewards.

• If the project sale was successful, your biz dev efforts will be compensated through the budget of that project. The biz dev bucket funds that were on “hold” will be made available again.

• If the project sale is not successful, then you and the bucket stewards will check in on whether the original compensation amount agreed feels ‘happy’, or whether any adjustments are necessary.

Practicalities of money flow

Once the decision has been made and you know whether the sale came through or was lost, the money flow can happen.

• For expenses, we recommend paying directly with a Greaterthan credit card. To do so, get in touch with any partner, who will be able to give you the payment information. Once the payment has been completed, send an email with the receipt to accounts@greaterthan.works, and put the Bucket steward in copy.

• Once it’s clear whether the project was won or lost, the bucket steward will ensure that the cost is correctly attributed to either the GT Core BU, or the internal project budget.

Alternatively, you pay upfront and then be reimbursed by adding it to your invoice to Greaterthan.

Bucket Stewards

The biz dev bucket must always have at least one, ideally 2 stewards (for resilience purposes), whose role it is to:

• Keep an overview of the financial state of the bucket

• Hold the below described process for drawing funds from it

• Communicate to members if there are any issues, or a need to evolve its purpose or functioning Work with people who do biz dev to ensure coherence with overall GT activities

Current Stewards: 
Susan Basterfield
Tomomi Sasaki

Who can be a steward and how to become one?

Biz Dev Steward is a persistent paid role, held by associates and partners. One of the two should be a partner. Stewards rotate on an annual basis (ideally with one steward staying while a new one joins).

Since the workload of the steward role may fluctuate heavily and is hard to predict at this stage, for now there is a quarterly happy money story among the stewards on how much to pay themselves from the biz dev bucket fund for their work. This approach may change as we learn more about this work in practice.

What is the Spirit Bucket?

A pot of funds set aside from Greaterthan Collective’s Commons Budget to provide money flow towards more ad-hoc activities that directly contribute to supporting GT as a human system; our relational fabric, our historical memory, our deepening of how we are together.

The funds in this bucket are “topped up” every 6 months alongside the Hike budgeting process.

Who can make use of the funds in the bucket?

Greaterthan Collective Partners and Associates can request funds from the bucket (although this may include requesting funds also for people beyond the member circle).

What can be paid for?

Please note that these are common examples for what it may cover, but this is a non exhaustive list.

• Hosting important internal processes relating to how we are together, our culture and our organisational fabric (rather than our external offerings): this could be conflict resolution, reflective or sense-making meetings, guiding us on growth edges, responding to emergent needs outside of hikes in ways that contribute to a healthy human organisation.

• On-boarding / Off-boarding & Care work: supporting humans as they move across the GT (eco)system and checking-in on wellbeing + needs.

Important: we do not necessarily want all spirit care work to become paid work, as there is also a lot of value in all of us members actively dedicating time and energy to stewarding our commons (incl. our relational commons). However, we want to have easy mechanisms in place for significant work to be acknowledged also through money flow.

How to claim funds from the bucket

Step 2: Get in touch with the Spirit Bucket Stewards (see below) via Slack and discuss the work you would like to energise or have already started supporting. Assess together whether this work seems significant enough (in terms of time, importance and financial need) to access funds from the Spirit Bucket. At this stage, you might gather advice from other GT members to support your decision.

As our work is very emergent, funds may also be claimed retrospectively; however, as this cannot be guaranteed, if you know you will need some money flow to feel happy to engage in the work, then make sure to have this conversation before you get started!

Step 3: Decide together by consent with the Spirit Bucket Stewards whether you will pursue this work with financial support from the Spirit Bucket or not. If the answer is yes, at this point, have a first conversation about what compensation would make you feel energized and supported to energise this work. This number will be revisited at the end, as described in the process below. Ensure the decision is transparently documented in a decision log.

Bucket Stewards

The Spirit Bucket must always have at least one, ideally two stewards (for resilience purposes), whose role it is to:

• Keep an overview of the financial state of the bucket

• Hold the above described process for drawing funds from it

• Communicate to members if there are any issues, or a need to evolve its purpose or functioning

Current Stewards: 
Alícia Trepat Pont
Nenad Maljković 

Who can be a steward and how to become one?

Spirit Bucket Steward is a persistent role (without fixed compensation), held by Associates and Partners. One of the two should be a partner. Stewards rotate on an annual basis (ideally with one steward staying while a new one joins).

Since the workload of the steward role is likely to be very light touch, there will be a quarterly happy money “check-in” between the stewards to determine if any compensation is needed from the Spirit Bucket to support their work. This approach may change as we learn more about this work in practice.

Last updated: October 2024

Partners

Associates

Previous Members

• Jessy-Kate Schlinger, February 2017 - September 2017

• Kate Beecroft, April 2017 - November 2023 (Partner until September 2021)

• Michael Arnoldus, April 2017 - February 2018

• Juliana Lopker, May 2017 - July 2018

• Anthony Cabraal, July 2018 - September 2021 (Partner until September 2020)

• Patrick Andrews, July 2018 - September 2021

• Lisa Gill, May 2019 - September 2021

• Tom Nixon, December 2019 - September 2023

• Joriam Felipe, September 2020 - September 2022

• Sarah Durlacher, September 2020 - September 2021

• Ana Manzanedo, October 2020 - September 2022

• J.D. Nasaw, March 2021 - October 2024

• Lena Bumke, April 2023 - October 2024

• Sally McCutchion, September 2023 - October 2023

Our Roots

We are embedded in and active drivers of a rich ecosystem of purpose-driven communities, who have been exploring the edges of more meaningful work for almost a decade.

A lot of our knowledge and practice has grown from and continues to be nourished by these communities. We are in continuous relationship with them, both as individuals and as an organization, and share the core values of these communities such as: Collaboration, Permanent Beta, Do-ocracy, Openness & Care.

Principles that guide us

Greater than the sum of our parts.

There is always a trade-off between working alone and as a coordinated team. Though individual autonomy is an important value for us, the reason we are here is because we believe we can be more ambitious as a group. We embrace our interdependence and invest in creating alignment between us—to grow our impact, make bigger bets, create sustainable livelihood, enable unexpected potential to unfold, and have fun along the way. This also means taking on the perspective of and caring for the health and success of the whole, not just the parts.

Ground ourselves in practice.

Our society puts a high value on theoretical concepts and models, but their potential can only unfold when we apply and evolve them based on lived experience. The world is also changing so rapidly that theory cannot keep up. Coming from our origins in practice-based communities, learning through practice and continuous experimentation are at the heart of our work. We only offer what we have experienced ourselves and are always learning, through our work and by nourishing relationships with leading thinkers and practitioners.

Work with power.

Power dynamics are important, whether we acknowledge them or not. Power does not only accrue through status and seniority, but through intangible elements such as skills, age, gender and communication style. We are committed to consciously working with and sharing power, by making these dynamics visible and not shying away from (uncomfortable) conversations about power as a group. This will enable us to step into our individual and collective leadership.#

Stay perpetually curious.

We don’t believe there is one ‘right’ approach or a universal framework to solve anything. We make sure to understand the context and look at different perspectives and levels before jumping to conclusions or into action. Working in complexity also means fostering our curiosity and openness about different ways of seeing things, and be able to sit with contradictions and dissent. And the answer to whether, in the end, it all comes down to personal change or system change first, is that one is not more important than the other, we need both.

Lead with (com)passion & authenticity.

Great leadership starts with taking responsibility for ourselves and our own experience. This self-awareness and empathy towards ourselves is what helps us care for each other and be great stewards of the whole system. When we create a caring environment, we can grow personally and as a group, by being able to safely explore our edges and have courageous and compassionate conversations with each other.

Guides in this section:

Principles for Decision-making

Non-domination: No participant, or group of participants should be able to dominate discussions or control decisions. That is why we avoid voting in making decisions. This doesn’t mean that all decisions need to be made by consensus or that everyone will be happy with the decisions that are made, but the process should be fair and unbiased.

Entrepreneurship equals decision-making power: Decisions should ultimately be made and led by those actively and regularly engaged in the work itself.

Subsidiarity: The ethos of our decision making is to delegate all responsibility for operational decision making to the body with the closest direct connection to the decision within our structure. This means that individual projects have a high level of autonomy over how they make decisions.

Open Communication: Participants practice open, honest communication with each other to create a transparent and trusting work environment. This allows us to make space for disagreement and not dilute more radical or strong propositions.

How we make decisions: decision protocols

Everyone is encouraged to move topics forward they think are important and urgent. When deciding whether or to what extent to involve others in a decision, we consider reversibility (how easily can a decision be easily reversed) and consequence (how large are the consequences of the decision).

⚠️ The greater the impact of a decision, the more people we involve. ⚠️

Individual Decisions

Autocractic: Reversible and low consequence day-to-day decisions that a person makes on their own. We practice “asking for forgiveness, instead of permission” to allow things to move ahead swiftly and with momentum.

Advice Process

In this case, one person is still the sole decision-maker, but gathers advice from others before doing so. We expect decision-makers to consult those who will be meaningfully affected, and those with expertise and experience in the matter. It is key to be as transparent as possible throughout the process and communicate openly.

Advice received must be taken into consideration. But advice is simply advice. It’s not permission seeking. Ownership of the issue stays clearly with one person: the decision-maker. Decision-makers need to be willing to question their initial assumptions and ideas for a solution and zoom back out to the problem space. If you ARE the decision maker: understand who is affected and who has expertise; don’t ask everyone.

There is no need to make watered down decisions to please everyone. It is about accessing collective wisdom in pursuit of a sound decision. With all the advice and perspectives the decision maker has received, they choose what they believe to be the best course of action. People respect decisions if they feel they were heard and understood. If we disagree with a decision, we practice forgiveness and bring it up with the decision-maker.

Group Decisions

Certain decisions of that are not reversible and have higher consequences are made as group decisions. This can take place either in specific project or domains teams (following the subsidiarity principle) or with the whole membership.

Consent: Our default group decision-making type is consent, a methodology with a specific meaning and practice. This does not mean everyone has to agree to a proposal, but that a decision moves forward if there are no blocks, which means that it is safe enough to try.

Timelines & Engagement

Projects and Initiatives

Following the subsidiarity principle, projects that members work on (such as Cobudget, client projects) have high decision-making autonomy.

They have full independence in their day-to-day decision-making and a high independence on strategic decisions. Project teams and leaders use the advice process for deciding when to consult with other Greaterthan partners not involved in the project (when there would be an impact on the rest of GT). They are expected to share updates about their work regularly with the rest of the organization.

Decisions about Money

1. Announce you are starting an Advice Process in the slack channel #moneydecisions

3. Share outcome in the slack channel as well as the decisions tracker

We use Cobudget for collaborative funding, for example for the detailed allocation of our surplus to strategic initiatives (this happens 1-2 per year).

Water domain involvement: Irrespective of small or large budgets, the water domain must always be consulted in financial decisions. For an Advice Process, you must get advice from at least one water domain member. For a consent decision, it is highly recommended to get input from the water domain before making a proposal.

Intentions & aims of this process

• The academy should be the #1 place that GT members bring their courses (rather than running them separately)

• The process for doing so should be kept light and autonomous

• For now, we want to avoid needing a dedicated curation team

Requirements for running a course

• Only associates and partners can propose courses

• The course must be aligned with GT’s purpose and our north star

• The proposer must have participated in at least one multi-week course of ours, to get an understanding of our approach

• Courses are expected to follow the pricing guidelines provided (to be created) to ensure that our prices are coherent

• After running the course, you are expected to share with the group feedback about how it went

What should the proposal include?

Use this template to fill out when making a proposal that includes:

• Course title + description

• Length + format

• Target audience of the course

• Pricing

• How you see this course being aligned with GT’s purpose

Recommendations for proposers

• Don’t host alone

• Get advice from GT members who have run multiple courses, especially about sales expectations

• Wait to set a date until you have some indication of the level of interest for your course, and ideally ‘warmed up’ a few people that are ready to buy. The idea behind this is to avoid launching a course, having a few signups but not enough to run it, and then having to cancel on those who registered. This is a bad user experience for participants, and not fun for the hosts either.

Relationship between GT and your course

• 15 % of all course revenue goes to the GT commons budget

• You are expected to ensure promotion and sales of your course. We currently don’t offer dedicated marketing support. What you can expect though is:

  • The course will be announced in our weekly newsletter, the Weekender

  • You will have access to our email marketing tool Active Campaign to be able to build a segment and send targeted emails

  • You will have access to our social media platforms, if you wish to use them for communicating

  • We will share basic resources for course marketing you can reuse and build on

Open books, Invoicing & more

The most important links you need to navigate our finances are:

Business Units

From a financial perspective, Greaterthan is structured into business units, which are managed as independent entities inside the organization.

Types of business units

There are several types of BUs:

• Personal BUs for people working through the business

• Services BUs, which are for large consulting projects

• Project BUs, which are projects that Greaterthan is investing in and/or operates separate from the core (e.g. Cobudget, Academy)

• GT Core BU, which holds all contributions to the commons and through which operating costs are paid.

Who can have a personal business unit

Personal business units are for partners only, and for associates on a case by case basis.

Starting a new Business Unit

Personal business units can be created if the BU owner agrees to the following conditions (BU agreement):

#1 All work invoiced contributes 15 % to GT core, to go towards admin overhead and the GT common pot for investing in new projects, as laid out in our financial agreement.

#2 The BU is managed responsibly:

• the BU owner ensures they always have sufficient funds to cover incoming costs

• the amount in the BU shall never be negative

• If funds remain in the BU after the year-end, the 19% UK company tax will automatically be deducted.

Communications & Getting Admin help

Key Rhythms & Deadlines

• When are payments made?

• Submitting expenses & reviewing transactions

Important guidelines for...

• Getting paid by GT

• Submitting receipts

• Invoicing clients through GT : Basics, Tracking Codes, Templates & Invoicing in different currencies

• All about Taxes

Financial Reporting

Onboarding...

Explorers

Paths to explorer onboarding

Step 2: Below is a checklist of what needs to happen for an explorer to be fully onboarded into Greaterthan. Completing these is the accountability of the person who invited them.

• 2. the open GT events calendar. Add them to the calendar with their email, with the rights to "make changes to events".
• Let everyone know they have joined! Welcome them on the #everyone channel of the GT slack and ask them to introduce themselves.

Associates

The GT member who invited in and put up the decision to bring in a new associate is accountable for setting in motion their onboarding. The onboarding itself is now done by our persistent role, the "Movement Guide" (currently held by Francesca). All you need to do is follow these 2 steps:

1. Inform movement guide that the person is ready to be onboarded. They will ensure the person is added to our tools, the website, recurring meetings and more.

About Greaterthan email addresses

There are two options for how associates may have a Greaterthan email address:

1. A full Google Apps Email account: regular email account, which incurs a monthly fee to GT core. All associates may have such a GT email address, but we ask you to only choose this option if you will really use it (since we are aware that many Associates already have several work emails they use).

2. An alias (done through a google group), that enables you to receive emails to yourname@greaterthan.works, but does not let you send. This is the default option if you do not choose option 1).

When new members receive the onboarding form, they will be able to choose which email option they prefer.

Offboarding

Why use a CRM?

The reason we are using a CRM in the Greaterthan team is for all of us to:

• get an overview of who is/ was talking to which customer or partner and have all their information in one place

• track follow ups and other actions related to customers and partner organizations

• see in one glance the status of our deals pipeline

Getting started

• To join, ask Francesca to send you an invite.

• If you want, downlad the Airtable app to easily manage everything from your phone

• Add & update your contacts, orgs and deals from various channels

CRM Structure

2. Accounts: the organizations we work with, including customers, affiliates and partners.

3. Contacts: the people we work with inside those organizations (listed in accounts)

4. Interactions: where we track our interactions with contacts, such as calls, meetings and emails.

How to make the most of our CRM

The most important about a CRM is that it is up to date :). Therefore let's try to use it as a tool for our reminders and personal tracking of where we are at with our deals and contracts, because then it will automatically be up to date.

Usage Principles

• The more information the better: Fill out all the fields you have answers to when adding new fields

• Tagging & comments: Please add any relevant tags to organizations and contacts that will help us find them later. You can add as many as you like, and it makes sense to include comments about things such as: event where you met them, topic they are focused on (i.e. blockchain), more details on the org type (i.e. coworking space)

• Please make sure to always attribute an opportunity to a contact and /or an organization.

• Before you reach out to an organization in the future, search the CRM before to check whether we are already in touch with them!

Process Guidelines

When you schedule / do a call / meeting with a customer or partner...

...add a line in the "Interactions" tab, including the name of the contact, and will out the fields as you see fit. This way others will be able to look up easily what was the last interaction with that contact.

After your call/ meeting

• add your meeting notes to the interaction in the "notes" field, either directly or as a link to a document.

• create a deal in the pipeline tab, if there is one.

When you create a deal...

...associate it to one or all related contacts & the organization

What is the Development Bucket?

A pot of funds set aside from Greaterthan’s Commons Budget to financially support partners and associates with their professional and personal development. This pot is a fixed annual budget (currently 2000 €) that GT members can draw from at any time during the year. The size of the budget may be changed by members' proposals on Loomio.

Scope of this bucket Learning & development opportunities that contribute to your work in Greaterthan, e.g. courses, events, coaching, experiences. It is at the discretion of each of us to determine whether they feel this is the case or not.

Who can get how much support from this bucket?

Partners: 50 % match funding Associates: 25% match funding

How does it work? These match funds can be claimed for anything that fits inside the outlined scope by getting advice from one or two other GT members, e.g. your AccountaBubble. The purpose of this is to have light-touch accountability partners on our learning journeys.

The funds can be claimed at any point throughout the year, as long as there are funds in the bucket. Unless GT members decide otherwise, the bucket will be refilled once a year. All members can see at any time how much is in the bucket and who has used the funds so far through our Open Books.

If a member would like to draw more than the above defined financial contribution, then they need to run a more extensive advice process, which must include a member of the finance team (for overview of the financials) and the GT partners.

How to use it in practice

• Get advice from one (or two) other Greaterthan members to help you decide if this is something that fits within scope of the development bucket.

• Invoice Greaterthan for the amount, stating clearly that it is from the Development Fund and what it is for in the invoice line.

In the majority of cases, the development bucket operates via a refund system, so you pay upfront and then invoice Greaterthan for the portion that is match-funded by the development bucket.

If you are a Partner and have and use a Business Unit, you can pay directly using the Greaterthan card. In this case, the first three steps remain the same, but instead of invoicing, please follow these instructions:

• When sending the receipt info to accounts@greaterthan.works, clearly specify that 50% will be covered by the Development Bucket (GT Core).

Cobudget is a practice and software tool for collaborative funding.

As an open source project, we are very open to working with developers interested in evolving or building on top of Cobudget, to the this concept to the next stage on the technical level.

Key Resources & Links

Software Development

The following pages explain how the Cobudget software team has been organized:

What projects are we currently working on?

As a Greaterthan member, you can see the overview of our ongoing projects as well as our full archive in our Open Books Interface, which you should have received access to when you were onboarded. (if you don't have access yet, ask in #admin-support).

Larger internal projects explained in this handbook

Comms

• We use Slack for day to day comms

• We have 2x weekly standups and bi-weekly sprint planning.

Tickets

• We are learning the right scoping process for our tickets. As a start, please include who, what and why in tickets and issues, and as possible focus on user stories so that tickets include some user-facing result.

Branch structure, naming and other norms

• When a project has a api repo and a corresponding ui repo, if you are making changes in both, sync names between them.

• We use master as the main trunk from which branches should be made and pull requests submitted to.

• Use feature/feature-name and bug/issue naming for branches

• Feel free to submit WIP (work-in-progress) branches as pull requests if you desire feedback. Naming them with WIP will indicate they are not to be merged.

Code review

• For each ticket, use a pull request when it's ready to have someone else look at the code.

• This ensures we have two sets of eyes on each contribution so that multiple people are familiar with new code being added.

• As appropriate ask someone who didn't write the code to do a UI/useabilty review

Tests

• Ideally a different person than the primary writer of a feature should write the corresponding test

We are often invited to events to speak and need to decide whether to attend. Here are a few evaluation criteria to help decide whether to say yes or noto an opportunity.

General principle: Less is more! Fewer high quality events, with high quality contributions from our side is better.

Stack

• ActiveJob requires you to specify a backend. there are a few built in by default. We use one of them, called "delayed job"

• in cobudget-api/config/application.rb: config.active_job.queue_adapter = :delayed_job

• delayed_job is an external Gem, listed as a dependency in the Gemfile.

Development

When developing with emails locally, make sure mailcatcher is running. assuming mailcatcher is installed (gem install mailcatcher), in a terminal window just run mailcatcher, then visit http://localhost:1080/ to see your mails coming through.

this is working for deliver_now emails. i am still not sure how deliver_later is working, or whether it's working. i don't see them coming through mailcatcher, and am not sure if it's because the delayed_job queue is not running or something else.

run bundle exec rake jobs:work to start a background process for delayed jobs.

Production

Sending

Production mails are being sent through sendgrid. we do not have a login for the existing account yet.

Log reporting emails

What do we mean by project? A project is anything being worked on under the Greaterthan banner, such as consulting, training, coaching, product sales with external clients, as well as internal GT initiatives, such as our academy, org development and more.

What projects are we working on right now?

As a member, you can see the overview of our ongoing projects in our Open Books Interface. (if you don't have access yet, ask in #admin channel):

Setting up a new project in the GT system

We have a simple process for setting up a new external project, that can be carried out by any GT member. While it's great if all our external projects --both paid and pro bono-- can be setup with this process, the following steps are mandatory for paid projects using the GT legal vehicle. This is a prerequisite to be able to invoice a client through GT!

Useful documents for doing client paperwork

Frontend Deployment Pipeline

• note: i'm not totally clear how npm run deploy-push knows to only push the contents of the build directory, since it appears to be running at the primary repo level.

• There is a > 2 year old travis instance for the cobudget-ui repo, so I guess this has not been getting used.

Deploy Process

1. submit a pull request to master

2. have someone else merge it and delete the branch

3. pull down master locally: git pull origin master

4. make sure remotes are set: npm run set-remote-stage or npm run set-remote as appropriate

7. reset $NODE_ENV=development after deploy so that the repo looks for the right backend URL (localhost).

Rollbacks

2. fix the bug locally

3. Push the fixes

4. run npm run deploy again, which will push the new changes and update HEAD past the broken commit to the new one.

Backend Deployment Pipeline

• Heroku config...

• There is currently no staging server for the api.

• There is an active travis instance for the cobudget-api repo.

Database and backups

• Database is Postgres

• Database is scheduled to be backed up daily. You can check backup schedules with heroku pg:backups:schedules.

• View the latest backups by following the link to the database from the heroku dashboard, or using the CLI.

Deploy Process

1. make sure tests pass locally: run rspec

2. submit a pull request to master

3. ensure travis tests have passed

4. have someone else merge it and delete the branch

5. pull down master locally: git pull origin master

6. git push heroku master

7. heroku run rake db:migrate if necessary.

Rollbacks

• roll back to the previous commit: heroku rollback

• roll back to the previous DB version if necessary: heroku run rake db:rollback STEP=1 (or however many steps are appropriate).

Timing: backend and frontend

• Use an appropriate ordering between frontend and backend when deploying changes to both repos. Usually, deploy backend first.

Pages we don't use anymore but might want content from to reuse.

Below are a set of principles we use in managing sales processes, decision-making on saying yes to projects and forming a delivery team. The emphasis is on them being principles that you interpret in the given context of a situation, rather than rules that are applied 1-1. They aim to help us make decisions around how to approach leads and team formation in a way that aligns with our overarching principles and values.

These principles can evolve and will be added to over time, since for now only some areas of sales & project setup process are covered here.

Guiding principles around sales & team formation

For how to manage the sales process

Small proposal teams and no more than 2 people to interface with the client

Since more often than not, sales processes do not convert to a project, and making proposals can require lots of time and energy getting deep into the client's context and information, we try not to involve too many people in the proposal making process (rule of thumb: 2 people). Of course, especially for more complex projects, you may decide to pull in more people to contribute to different elements, give feedback, etc. To not overwhelm the client and ensure we’re communicating a coherent message, they should however not meet more than two people from GT at this stage.

One member of the proposal team needs to be a partner or associate

An opportunity may be brought in and led by anyone in GT, but there should always be a partner or associate integrated into the sales process as a link and “sensor”. This is important so that they can bring in historical context, experience from other projects, an understanding of our approach to services, and who else from GT to pull in for input or advice.

Deciding which projects to say yes or no to

If the proposal is submitted and won, and the work is deemed to be aligned with our mission, the final decision on whether to go ahead with the project is an informal process. As long as the criteria in the following section for forming a team are fulfilled, the decision on whether to say yes is decided by consent by those making the sale and the delivery team. If there is nobody or not enough people in GT willing to work on a certain project, then it doesn’t happen.

However, for larger, long term projects that require a significant amount of multiple members' time (approx + 4 people working part time), at least 2 partners need to be included in the decision making process.

Once you have won a project and are ready to form a team

Projects are generally led by partners or associates

To ensure that our projects have a minimum level of coherence with other GT services and alignment with GT’s approach to work, projects are led by partners or associates. This serves as a type of ‘quality assurance’. If an explorer is leading a project, then there must be a partner or associate very actively supporting them.

Our understanding of the clients needs must be clearly articulated

The person who is leading the sales process is expected to clearly articulate their understanding of the client’s need, as well as make explicit their sense of what kind of profile (including skills, experience, seniority, and geography) is needed. This will allow others to determine whether they might be a good fit.

Key criteria for picking the team

1. Geography, skills, availability as key criteria

   As a rule of thumb, three good criteria can be taken into account when evaluating whether someone is a fit for a project: geography, skills and availability. Location depends on where the client and the people leading the proposal are based so that work and scheduling can be as smooth as possible. People interested in a project are expected to be clear about their own availability and working hours (for instance by keeping their profile in the people dashboard updated) without overcommitting.

2. Take into account how work is currently distributed in GT One of the factors to take into account when building a project team, is who is in need of work/income currently.

3. Priority to GT partners and associates In the case that multiple people’s skills, location and availability are a fit, the level of commitment to GT provides the order of priority in which work opportunities are offered: partners, then associates, then explorers. If an external person who is not even an explorer is chosen, it is made explicit and communicated openly why this was done in this case.

4. Different projects enable different risks Certain projects have very high stakes, while others leave space for higher risks, such as bringing in someone who we don’t have any first hand experience working with yet, who are not an expert yet on a topic but in a growth edge, or simply looking for an opportunity for certain people to grow their working relationship. When possible, we default to making good use of this “wiggle room” for risk taking and exploration in projects that allow it.

The final decision sits with the project lead

The person who is the project lead has the final say over who joins the project, if they are taking into account the above principles. If someone was not chosen or anyone feels discomfort around the decision, we invite each other to take time for an open conversation about this, to share feedback about why someone may not be a good fit.

Open communication about the process

At the latest, once a new project team has been formed, it is expected that it be communicated publicly to others in GT, to be aware of it happening, in the #pipeline-and-new-projects channel. It is encouraged for there to be open communication earlier in the project forming process, but it’s understandable that this is not always possible. When sharing at the kickoff of a new project, it is also encouraged to openly share any reflections, decisions or challenges that came up in the process of building the team, to help us learn and continuously improve in this area.

Organizational tools

External Communication Tools

which we have Greaterthan accounts for:

• Newsletters: Active Campaign

• Digital Whiteboarding: Mural

• Surveys: Typeform

• Managing Helpscout

• Website: Webflow

• Password mgt: Lastpass

To automatically see which websites and tools we have accounts for, you must be added to our Lastpass account.

A community-led professional learning and development platform where you can learn the skills and practices we need to create a more human future of work.

Guiding Principles for our work

These principles help guide our decision making and direction on the way we do business and create offerings.

Aim for profitable core over an exit Work to make lean core with each course, each business unit profitable and running off cashflow rather than an investment heavy, financial exit approach. Offer revenue share, not equity for exit.

Practice, led by practitioners Content is focused towards practice, and led by expert practitioners who do the work out in the world, not academics.

Prioritize Capacity Building Focus on building the capacity in others to build capacity in others.

Build towards openness with clear invitations Focus on making clear invitations for everyone involved in the project, financially and non-financially.

Participation over talking heads in all the courses we offer.

Transparent finances Be transparent about finances, leads, revenue flows with all course owners, investors and team.

Complementarity Since this project is mainly bootstrapped for now, we see achieving complementary as critical to our resilience as a team. That means we aim to find the maximum amount of synergies between Academy work and work we are already doing, to create reinforcing positive feedback loops (to "kill to birds with one stone").

The "team" and how it is organized

What we consider "the team" of this cross-community project are the people stewarding and strategically guiding this project over the long term. The work is currently organized into "Hikes", which are 4 month phases of working together on certain objectives. The team is evolving on a "per hike" basis, meaning that team members commit to one hike, and then when it is over we reassess who will be involved and how for the next phase.

Within these Hikes, we work with a bi-weekly sprint rhythm.

Key organizing resources:

• Slack channel: #academy-general

Levels of involvement

The Academy has a team, as well as add hoc and more long term contributors. There are currently 3 levels of involvement in what we consider "the Academy Team".

1. "The Hikers" = members of the team that is committed to a full hike and join the bi-weekly sprint rhythm. There is a dedicated channel for this team to communicate.

2. Team members that do not join the bi-weekly sprints, but hold specific roles, contribute to various actions and follow the project on an intermittent basis.

3. Contributors: individuals who contribute in spurts to the project in a variety of ways. If a contributor is active consistently for a long time, they may want to step into the team.

Transitioning between team roles: At the end of each Hike, we make sure to hold a retrospective and "closing" session for the hike, to properly transition roles, clarify any open questions, and, importantly (!), show gratitude for the work together and everyone's contribution.

Decision Making

This means that there is an emphasis on autonomy for the team actively working on the project.