Organization Unbound | Changing the way we change the world

Archived with love
October 10th, 2023 | Expressive Change | Organization Unbound | No Comments
This website is a static archive of Organization Unbound (2010-2020), a decade-long global inquiry into the relationship between the inner life of social purpose organizations and their outer work in the world. We hope you are enlivened by the writings, videos, and self-guided workshops it contains. Although Organization Unbound is no longer an active community of practice, the learning continues to evolve in exciting new forms.
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Special podcast appearance: Making Positive Psychology Work
May 6th, 2020 | Expressive Change | Organization Unbound | No Comments
In this episode of the popular ‘Making Positive Psychology Work’ podcast, best-selling author Michelle McQuaid interviews Organization Unbound co-founder Warren Nilsson about what workplaces of all types can learn from social purpose organizations about how to create societal change from within.
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Seeding Expressive Change across Canada
October 14th, 2019 | Expressive Change | Organization Unbound | No Comments
A few months ago, we convened a 3-day gathering, in partnership with The McConnell Foundation, to explore how to spread the practice of Expressive Change across Canada. It was both an affirming and challenging experience, one that we’re still feeling the ripples from. The intention to spark a community of practice in Canada has been […]
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In memory of Alessandra
April 30th, 2019 | Expressive Change | Organization Unbound | No Comments
It is with a heavy heart that we share that mindfulness-in-action pioneer Alessandra Pigni passed away from cancer at the end of last year. In her memory, we are re-publishing our 2017 interview with her about her book The Idealist’s Survival Kit, which explores what is causing the high rate of burnout in the field of humanitarian work. We’ve also included an unpublished segment, with her family’s permission, in which she shares how being a cancer patient influenced how she wrote her book.
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A bundle of book joy is on its way!
April 16th, 2019 | Expressive Change | Organization Unbound | No Comments
In 2018 we began writing a book, bringing together the threads of insight gleaned over the past 15 years. We are still deep in the writing process, so while we appear to be in hibernation, please know that we are far from asleep, just active in a less visible way. We are excited to share the 3-page Introduction with you.
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Liberating Structures
November 27th, 2018 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson | No Comments
Earlier this year we were contacted by Keith McCandless, co-developer of Liberating Structures. He was interested in exploring the synergies between Liberating Structures and the work of Organization Unbound. After some initial conversations, I became intrigued and am excited to share the start of our inquiry here.
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Accompanied Learning
October 1st, 2018 | Expressive Change | Organization Unbound | 2 Comments
When we started Organization Unbound, people often mistook us for a consulting firm, an understandable assumption given how common it is for organizations to rely on consultants to lead processes of internal change. However, we felt strongly (and still do) that the traditional consultancy model would be a barrier to cultivating a rich and expansive field of learning around expressive change. We wanted to learn with organizations, not just provide support to them.
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Burnout & organizational mindfulness
October 3rd, 2017 | Expressive Change | Alessandra Pigni | No Comments
We hope you enjoy this conversation with Alessandra Pigni, author of “The Idealist’s Survival Kit. 75 Simple Ways to Avoid Burnout”, a light and inviting exposé on what is causing the high rate of burnout in the field of humanitarian aid and activism and ways of addressing it: “I no longer believe that meditation and self-care are enough. It can certainly be a starting point. It was for me. But we can’t stop there.”
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A personal journey to a new way of working
September 21st, 2017 | Expressive Change | Peter Brownell | No Comments
Over the course of a year I had been trying to find ways to encourage my team to self-organise. We created roles, adopted structured meeting formats, had many discussions. We made progress, but nothing significant changed. Over the course of this work I found that the problem was not them… it was me.
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Listening to the head, heart & feet
July 25th, 2017 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson | 1 Comment
For inscaping to be a robust organizational practice, we need to refine our listening skills so that we learn to listen at an experiential level. Listening with the ‘head, heart and feet as described by the Barefoot Guide Connection is a very helpful tool to practice this. It helps us to listen ‘between the lines’ and ‘beneath the main text’, to hear not just what people are saying, but what they are trying to say or […].
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