How we work together 🤍

The ChangemakerXchange Team Manifesto is our roadmap to create an organisation we truly love to work for. An organisation that helps us thrive and enables us to fulfill our purpose of serving changemakers around the world. The Manifesto strives to acknowledge and integrate all our different values and principles to cultivate a workplace that is inclusive, agile, empowering, and impactful.

We commit to follow it and to adapt it and evolve it over time.

Our Guiding Star ⭐️

Our purpose guides everything we do. We do not invest resources, energy and time into things which do not clearly contribute to advancing it.

 

Why we exist

We see incredible changemakers every day, everywhere. We also see a lack of support communities, of resources, self-care and of co-creation though. We believe this leads to a significant unfulfilled impact potential in the social impact sphere and in society as a whole. We want to contribute to changing that.

 

Our Mission

ChangemakerXchange is a global community providing safe, supportive, fun, and empowering spaces for changemakers. We foster profound and lasting connections, nurture wellbeing, and enable peer-learning and meaningful collaborations so that changemakers may create, sustain and scale positive change.

 

Our Vision

We envision a world where everyone is part of inclusive communities in which people connect deeply and co-create positive action to serve the wellbeing of people and planet.

Our principles 🎯

We are also guided by a set of principles that inform the way we work together with each other, with our community, and with other organisations. These principles are directly linked to (and some derived from) the ChangemakerXchange Community Values which act as a compass and guide for all community members.

We prioritise wellbeing: One cannot do well if one isn’t well.

We aim for beauty, simplicity, and excellence: Small details and personal touches make the difference.

We are transparent and accountable: Free flow of information is a pre-requisite for positive change.

We are community-led: We serve the ChangemakerXchange community and we take decisions with, not for the community.

We are in permanent beta-mode: Life is in a state of perpetual flux.

We are generous: Mistakes and failures are opportunities to learn and grow.

We care for our planet: Earth needs stewards, not masters.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously: Life is a miracle. Our work is important and urgent, but we also make sure to include play and fun at the right time.

Key features of the Organisation 🎛

Our Manifesto looks at everything, from performance cycles to strategy. Below are three features, which are most important to us.

 

Leadership & Team Size

No one person or group of people is the single leader in the organisation. We distribute classic leadership roles and responsibilities among team members based on competency, meaning there is constant fluidity and adaptation. Specific team members are nominated in “Keeper” roles to express all key leadership responsibilities and values, to facilitate the implementation of the respective projects, activities, and tasks, and to ensure they contribute to the fulfilment of the ChangemakerXchange purpose.
For more on how we think of job titles, the size of the team, community representation, diversity and many more please see the full version of our Manifesto.

 

Decision Making

We aim for decentralised and agile decision making to avoid bottlenecks. Except for a few cases, any team member can make any decision. The person leading an issue or who feels the sense of urgency owns the decision-making process and does not need to ask for permissions from others. We have a culture of ‘asking for forgiveness rather than permission’, but consultation is needed with team members who are significantly affected by the decision.

For more info about our "Consensus Spectrum", four eye principles and deadlocks please see our Team Manifesto.

 

Transparency

We strive to cultivate a trust-based environment where everybody is heard and listened to and where delicate topics, ‘elephants in the room’, and tensions can be addressed openly. All team members have access to all the organisation’s information, except for HR data that are confidential by law. All salaries are transparent and shared with all team members. We create spaces that invite frequent, timely, genuine, and constructive feedback. All our internal meetings are 'facilitated, with the intention of taking in different perspectives (e.g. mental-cognitive, emotional–relational, physical–practical, and spiritual–meta-reflective).

Thank you for your interest 🙏🏼

Ultimately, we believe organisations should be built in ways that serve the wellbeing of people and planet.
Too often though they do the exact opposite, and cause pain & frustration. We hope you get a chance to be part of (or build) healthy and thriving organisations. And we wish you the strength and courage to speak up about toxic work environments, whenever needed.

Together we can change the "way we work".
All the best.

Yours, the ChangemakerXchange Team