❓Why you should work in the open

A quick run-down of why working in the open is a good idea – for everyone.

💡Summary:

Reasons to work in the open:

• Build trust

• Save time

• Get buy in

Watch Chris Thorpe's talk on open working in the charity sector:

Great things can happen when something is made open... more people can reuse it, often cheaply. People can learn from it, even if they don’t use it. And there are almost always wonderful unintended consequences.

​➡️ Building trust by sharing

Share your work both inside and outside your organisation to help people understand what you’re doing, how and why. When you are open you create the conditions for trust: in you, your project and your organisation.

➡️ Save time

Don’t waste time and money making the same mistakes other people have - use their work, their ideas and their learnings to catapult your project forward. The sector owes its progress to people sharing and reusing work: they shared because they care.

➡️ Get buy-in

Working in the open has a lot of benefits - and that’s as well as making you feel good. By learning how to communicate what you’re doing and learning, you'll be able to do things like get buy-in from stakeholders internally, put together stronger funding bids or get input from your peers in the community.Image shows a person skateboarding with a jetpack on their back with the words: 'small changes can make a big difference'.

"My hypothesis — in fact the metaphorical hill I’m going to die on — is that working in the open is the (not so) secret sauce that makes this ‘transformation’ even possible. That it is the foundation all these other great ways of working are built upon."Matt Jukes - Working Open Works​