Auraflow Forum in 2008

I've been busy experiencing new things, but now I feel it's time to continue the story of forums. So far we have covered the first No Agenda Clubs, Business-ICT-People forum, and HR-forum.

These forums were heterogenous - members came from different organizations. The idea was to drop off your work role for a moment, and explore how it feels to face others without shelter provided by roles or formal authority.

Since this seemed to work well and be both fun and useful for participants, we started to ask ourselves: How would this work inside an organization? How do you step out of your role while you're among your colleagues? Is it possible to have an open no-agenda dialogue with your boss?

We looked at the closest organization at hand, Fujitsu Services in Turku. There were about 150 employees in that geographical area, and we asked ourselves: who are the people, or roles, whose collaboration matters the most? We saw three key roles: sales, project managers, and service managers. They all got a lot of training, but it was separate - there was no training to enhance their awareness of each other.

So we invited these people into a forum - named Auraflow (river called Aura flows through the city of Turku; picture YLE / Jouni Koutonen). We noticed there was a clear need to open dialogue across role boundaries. We also noticed it was difficult to leave the roles and acute work situations behind. The roles and their pressures came in between the people, and made relations and interaction distorted.

However, it seemed worthwhile and we made slow progress. The forum still continues which means progress is still being made. I'm not involved in running it anymore, so I just share the beginning story with you.

This was my first in-house forum. Nowadays I'm involved in many similar cases, there seems to be a need for making space and time for people to meet, with no explicit goal or agenda. In this space energy, joy, wellness, and creativity are cherished.