Openleadership

Mozilla is currently working on an open leadership workshop series as part of its broader leadership network initiative.

As a starting point, Mitchell Baker and Joi Ito hosted an open leadership camp at the MIT Media Lab for leaders on non-profit and public sector organizations. The Mozilla Foundation team has also run a a number of 'working open' workshops for grassroots leaders within its networks.

We will flesh out these initial efforts into a fuller open leadership training offering over the course of 2017/18.

Framing - A Letter From Mitchell and Joi

The following email from Mitchell and Joi went out to participants at the MIT camp. It offers an initial framing around open leadership and why it matters right now.

Building Open Leadership Together

Mitchell Baker and Joi Ito

We live in interesting times. Many of the values upon which we have built the digital society -- globalism, multiculturalism, community, diversity, tolerance -- feel like they are being questioned right now. And, in some corners, institutions like government, media and civic organizations that we rely on to sustain a healthy society are losing trust and credibility. Turning these trends around is a complex challenge -- and an urgent one.

The importance of this challenge is exactly why MIT Media Lab and Mozilla are running the Open Leadership Camp next week in Cambridge -- and why we have invited you as our collaborators and co-learners.

Our theory is this: the logic behind open source software and the internet offers us tools to more successfully tackle complex social challenges. In particular, working openly and transparently ‘like a good open source software project’ can rebuild trust by letting more people see what is happening, and giving them new ways to get involved. Open collaboration has the potential to bring more voices and ideas to the table, which in turn builds bridges and increases the likelihood of novel solutions. Practices like these are core to what we call ‘open leadership’.

We believe this approach has particular value -- and importance -- for people like all of us, who are leading public interest organizations. Why? In part because we are already engaged in addressing these complex challenges within our organizations. But also, because it offers a way to bring public interest organizations into a shape and rhythm that are well suited to collaboration and public participation. We all need better tools in these times. We also need each other if we want to learn how to use these tools quickly and wield them well.

It is worth lingering on this point: the MIT Media Lab and Mozilla are public interest organizations just like yours. As leaders, we have each had success working in the open. We have also struggled and failed at times. This is part of our motivation for running this Open Leadership Camp -- and to committing more broadly to investing in open leadership. We know that working open is not always easy. But we have seen it produce results.

Communities like Mozilla and Wikipedia are two high profile examples of where we’ve seen open work out well. There are many other projects and organizations. The successful patterns and practices that these examples share, include:

• Intended to be understood: In software this starts with publishing your code publicly -- but it goes much further. It also includes letting people see how your organization sets goals, makes decisions and gets work done. Pragmatically, this involves having a strong narrative of purpose, a clear system of values, and good documentation. Working with an intent to be understood means being authentic and putting in the effort to communicate well. Almost all of this can be applied beyond the realm of software.

• Designed to be extended: The idea behind the open source and free software movement of the 1990s was ‘put your work out there in a way that others can add to and build upon freely’. With software, this involved granting rights that legally allowed people to use, modify, and distribute what you made. Similar kinds of licensing have since been used for content like text books and archives of news footage. As with publishing code, open licensing is just a start. The real value gets unlocked when you engage people and support them in their efforts to build on what you started.

• Organized around participation: One of the biggest benefits of working open can be getting more people actively involved in your work. With Mozilla this came in the form of volunteer coders. With Wikipedia is was volunteer editors. This kind of participation requires that you understand your organization as a community that people can easily join. It also requires a clearly defined set of systems for organizing work and making decisions within that community. As Yochai Benkler argued in his paper Coases’s Penguin (2002), this approach can help transcend some of the limitations of a traditional firm or organization.

We have noticed a powerful social phenomenon in many projects that are built on these principles: well-intentioned people can collaborate across broader sets of diversity than you might expect. For example, the Mozilla community includes people with a huge diversity of political, cultural and religious backgrounds. It’s rare to see this. However, it seems like the combination of working open and towards an inspiring common goal makes it work. This kind of collaboration among diverse constituents may be exactly the thing we need more of in these times of polarizing political discourse.

Our hope is that the Open Leadership Camp will help you tap into open leadership to better tackle the challenges that you and your organization are trying to solve. With this in mind, next week will include an equal mix of a) learning from successes that we’ve seen in the past, b) developing personal and organizational skills to work openly, and c) developing a specific project that you can implement with your own organization. We’ve also set things up so that you and your team will have continued support from the Media Lab and Mozilla over the coming months as you integrate what we’ve learned together at the camp into your work.

Of course, the learning -- the solving of complex challenges, and the collaborating across boundaries -- is something that we all need to do together. We will be there next week just as much to learn as to teach. That’s part of the excitement of what is ahead. We’re looking forward to meeting and working with you.

See you next week --

Mitchell + Joi

Open Leadership Camp - MIT, March 2017

The first Open Leadership Camp was held at the MIT Media Lab in March 2017. The camp was hosted by Mitchell Baker and Joi Ito and was facilitated by Mark Surman and Philipp Schmidt. Here is a bit more about the camp.

Curriculum

The curriculum is organized in three strands: Cases, Skills, and Project Design.

Cases -- The cases highlight specific implementations of open projects and serve as inspiration, cover common challenges and explore how they have been addressed. This includes crowdsourcing new ideas from users and customers, creating environments in which innovative technology teams can thrive, cover the practices of participatory policy-making. It also included a conversation with Mitchell and Joi about their “journeys through open”.

Skills -- In the skills strand worked on connecting personal values with organizational purpose through open strategies, facilitated by at team from the Dalai Lama Center at MIT. We also explored some of the particular skills that are helpful for open leaders in a session on facilitative leadership that was run by David Eaves from the Kennedy School at Harvard.

Project Design -- These modules provided a structure for participants to develop open projects together. Together the group explored the values and principles behind open; and the tactics and strategies of applying open. Each project team created an “open canvas”, developed a project pitch, and planned the next steps towards implementation. There is also an online course that we will use to support participants during project implementation.

Exploring the Media Lab

In addition to the three curriculum strands, we organized a few opportunities for participants to interact with the Media Lab researcher community. We hosted lunch conversations on the ethics of AI, Blockchain technology, and a tour of research demos with different groups.

Participants

Participants in the open leadership camp are people who are leading significant non-profit or public sector organizations.

• Breakthrough New York, Rhea Wong, CEO
• Chicago Public Library, Brian Bannon, Commissioner
• Chicago Public Library, Jeremy Dunn, Director Teen Services
• City of Detroit, Beth Niblock, CIO
• Consumer Reports, Marta Tellado, CEO
• Consumer Reports, Liam McCormack, Vice President, Research, Testing & Insights
• CSNYC, Michael Preston, CEO
• CSNYC, Mary Ellen Sullivan, Director of Industry Partnerships
• Fondacion Bofill, Ismael Palacin, CEO
• Fondacion Bofill, Mònica Nadal, Director of Research
• IMLS, Maura Marx, Dept Director
• IMLS, Benjamin Sweezy , Deputy Director, Office of Digital Information Strategy
• Mass IT, Holly St Clair, CIO
• Mass IT, Jes Constantine , Developer
• New School, Maya Wiley, SVP for Social Justice
• NY Hall of Science, Margaret Honey, President
• NY Hall of Science, Andrés Henríquez, VP of STEM Learning in Communities
• Playworks, Jill Vialet, CEO/Founder
• Playworks New England, Jon Gay, CEO New England
• Pride Foundation, Kris Hermanns, CEO
• Sweet Briars College, Meredith Woo, President
• WGBH, Bob Kempf, VP Digital Services
• WGBH, Jon Abbott, President/CEO

Initial inspiration and funding for this initiative came from NetGain, a partnership between Ford, Knight, Open Society, MacArthur and Mozilla to promote the internet as a force for the common good. You can read more about NetGain here: https://netgainpartnership.org/

Working Open Workshop

As a part of our leadership network initiative, Mozilla has also been creating a working open curriculum. This is targeted at project leaders, initial as a part of open science work within the network. This curriculum is now being developed into an online course for use more broadly in the network.