By Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree and originally published on corporate-rebels.com
Last month we wrote a post on how we hit our identity crisis. If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to start there. The main message: we get most inspiration from the ‘doers’ on our Bucket List, and less from the writers and speakers. But, soon enough we realized that we ourselves were only writing and speaking. To cut a long story short: we wanted change. During our “soul searching” period we started to look for ways to move Corporate Rebels into a next phase. In this blog post, we’ll share with you the outcomes. From the first changes we made already, to the future plans that lie ahead.
Quote from our “Identity Crisis post”
“After digging deeper into that feeling for a while, we figured out two important things. 1) Impact is important to us. What we mean is that as Corporate Rebels it is important for us to actually make a significant change in the way people work. 2) We love doing talks and workshops and we believe it is highly valuable to inspire change. But to create better workplaces, the inspiration should be followed up with tangible actions.”
1. A new website
Our website so far has helped us tremendously. The website perfectly communicated our story and helped us to spread the word on Corporate Rebels, and the amazing stories of the places we visit. Over time our reach grew and every month more visitors start to read and share the stories of beautiful workplaces from around the world. The blog itself however was somehow hidden and we decided that it deserves a more prominent spot.
For this reason, we have been working on a new website over the last few weeks. A website with a stronger focus on our blog, and still featuring the most important aspects of our current website. Here’s a quick overview of what remained and what changed.
What stayed the same?
- Of course the Bucket List is still there. The renowned list of our heroes is the eye-catcher and talking point of Corporate Rebels. The list of our main sources of inspiration deserves a prominent spot on our website. We upgraded the list slightly. Besides the visual upgrade, you can now click on the picture of the heroes we visited and written about to find out what we learned from our visit.
- The Media page survived as well. On this page you can still find all Corporate Rebels’ media appearances. We listed our appearances in three different categories: Print Interviews, Print Articles and Radio Interviews.
- On the About page you can still read our story, meet our team and find ways to contact us.
What’s new?
- We added a new part called Archives where you can find a convenient overview of all the blog posts featured on our website. Additionally, we listed our 20 most popular blog posts so far. Check out the top 20 here.
- A list of the books, talks and communities we draw most inspiration from are listed on our Resources page.
- As we’ll discuss in the next point, we’re further expanding our services. Check out the Services page for an idea of the things we’re doing to create more inspiring workplaces. Or read on; in the next point we’ll clarify the why, how, and what.
2. Putting our knowledge to the test
Around the world we are witnessing that radically different ideas, tools, best practices, and ways of working can make a huge difference in employee engagement. From the beginning of our project we been approached by organizations to help them create more engaging workplaces. For a long time we kept the offers off as we first wanted to focus on building up more knowledge and on checking off our Bucket List.
But as you probably know by now, we have a strong desire to start putting our knowledge and experiences to the test. We don’t just want to share the inspiration through blogs, talks and workshops; we actually want to make a practical change in the way work is organized.
This is why, for some time now, we started working with organizations to support them in creating more inspiring workplaces. We help them to implement all sorts of “new ways of working”. Over the next few months, we’ll be further expanding those activities. From setting up Rebel Networks within (large) organizations to advising start-ups and scale-ups, to implementing new working practices through experiential Boot Camps.
A new Rebel in town
As of March a new Rebel will be joining the team on a full-time basis. Freek-Jan Ronner has been supporting us for a while already, but is now taking the leap towards full-time rebelliousness. We are honored to welcome him to the team. Freek will use his drive and expertise to create better workplaces. Previously, Freek successfully set up agile scrum practices in his role as Scrum Master at ASML, the world’s largest supplier of high tech lythography machines.
An overview of what we’re currently doing is described in more detail in our new Services page.
3. Expanding the community
Over the last year, we’ve met lots of like-minded individuals; both online and offline. We love to connect with them and connect them with each other. Therefore, we have set up a “Corporate Rebels Slack Community”. Not familiar with Slack? In short: it’s a cloud-based team collaboration tool through which you can easily connect, chat, and share documents.
We built the Slack community with two goals in mind: Inspire & Act. We want the community to be a place where fellow Rebels share inspirational stuff, such as books, articles, websites, and more. At the same time, we want it to be a place with a strong focus on actively making a change. Through case studies, tips, best practices, and knowledge sharing, people can start creating better workplaces themselves.
To join the community, take the following steps:
- Subscribe to the Corporate Rebels Community here
- Introduce yourself and connect with fellow Rebels
Another way we’ll be expanding the community is through events. Our first self-organized event will be held in March or April. It is meant to connect Rebels, share the lessons we learned so far, build the community, and start creating a viral effect for more rebelliousness. We’ll update you soon on the details of our first Rebel Event.
And… Action!
That’s it for now. Enough stuff to be working on over the next few months. If you see any way you can contribute to our mission and the points above, don’t hesitate to contact us. Use our brand new Contact page to get in touch ;).
Reprinted by permission of the authors.
Featured Image/graphic link added by Enlivening Edge Magazine.
