Falay Transition Design: One year on
At the beginning of January 2023, Falay Transition Design came together for the first time - masterminded by our founder Zeynep, but collectively inspired to create new ways of working towards regenerative futures. In these twelve months we have grown from an initial team of five into ten, and alongside our valued advisors and collaborators have formed many different constellations in how we work, collaborate and support each other.
Our efforts across the year have been split between developing our approach, nurturing and building client relationships, delivering projects and actively imagining the work we want to see in the world. Underlining all of this has been an iterative and experimental process looking inwards, to discover how we can challenge the business-as-usual paradigm within our very own business model and practice.
So on our first birthday, we’re reflecting on what we have created and explored so far, and the crucial learnings we have made along the way.
Embracing ambiguity
We’ve faced a lot of uncertainty this year, whether it be in sending applications off into to ether, or throwing out the instruction manual to co-create our shared working practice. At times it has felt like a rush to have everything worked out, but we have started to embrace this ambiguity and lean into more emergent processes, shape-shifting as our collective evolves.
“Unlearning goes hand-in-hand with reimagining, and we have been reimagining everything. It definitely has its challenges, but this way of working has really nurtured our critical thinking, which is a crucial element to the work we do more broadly”
“I am still learning to find my place in the collective as we explore how to make this approach work. I find it challenging as it is not obvious, but this challenge offers so much opportunity for possibilities and learning in the process.”
“Value-driven change things take time but it’s worth the journey. We don’t have to know everything to go after our vision, we work in collaboration and we support each other with the variety of skills present in the collective and outside. ”
“What makes me smile is coming together in a shared space that welcomes vunerability and uncertainty.”
Nurturing hope
If you work with wicked problems and tackling sustainability issues, you’ll know how difficult it can be to avoid the fatalistic spiral sometimes. As individual entrepreneurs, many of us have found this shared collaborative space to be a source of hope and motivation, working together towards a more hopeful, regenerative future together.
“To find a group of people with whom I share a vision of creating the world we want to see by ‘staying with the trouble’ and experimenting with bringing this vision forward. I am so inspired and motivated by the community we are creating.”
“I appreciate the collective’s vision, the people and their trajectories, I am so inspired by each one’s knowledge, disposition towards life and reflections. I feel so grateful to be around them. ”
“Connecting to other people inside the collective and in our networks of multiple disciplines that are passionate about sustainability, and seeing all of these connect further through different projects gives me hope. It makes me feel like I’m watching the change itself organising in front of me.”
Finding togetherness with individuality
Beyond that sense of hopefulness, we have also found a lot of other value in forming a new way of collaborating together whilst retaining our individual interests, skills and motivations.
“Having colleagues to work with, collaborate with and be supported by, whilst still keeping my individuality as an independent entrepreneur has been great. I’ve been able to bring up new interests and ideas freely, and find other collective members to bring them to life and explore them together.”
“I was very inspired and the idea of creating this in collective made me feel less alone after two years of working on my own. ”
“I appreciate the flexibility we have in the collective in terms of commitment, that it is ok to step back for a while and then step back in – appreciating the different cycles we all have ”
“With our projects we’re seeing how we can be a great collaboration partner even if we are a collective of entrepreneurs with our unique skills and capabilities but also our unique working situations and availabilities ”
Reimagining professionalism
Reflecting on all the ideas that have stuck, and those that haven’t, we’ve recognised a need to challenge our very imagination of professionalism, in order to shift our working practices towards more regenerative and authentic approaches.
“The act of forgiving oneself for committing a mistake and saying this to one-self was very impactful for me growing up in a society where perfectionism is rewarded and mistakes are punished, I had a peak into a new way of being, a new behaviour that I had been wanting to practise with myself –one of compassion, but didn’t know how to do it.”
“It makes me smile to hear how we struggle with similar silly insecurities that we often in the working environment try to hide, but in the collective aim to share more openly. They seem less serious when you hear someone else saying out loud the same things you have been worrying about in your head.”
“It is always a good idea to start a meeting with a heart-to-heart check-in. Sharing our vulnerabilities and whatever we are going through in life actually brings us closer together - and we’re starting to see how this way of organising ourselves actually works with new projects coming in!”
We’re looking forward to see what the second year of Falay Transition Design brings - keep up to date with our projects, collaborations and news by signing up to our newsletter here.
