The barefoot guide to working with organisations and social change

This is a practical do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations function and to develop in more healthy, human and effective ways. The guide, with its supporting website, includes tried and tested concepts, approaches, stories and activities and was developed by a global team of collaborating practitioners and activists. It aims to stimulate and enrich the practice of anyone supporting organisations and social movements in their challenges of working, learning, growing and changing to meet a changing and complex world.

The guide offers a perspective on: 

• Why organisations exist and the real role they play
  
• The importance of supporting local sovereignty of local organisations and social movements for meaningful social change

The guide provides a range of approaches to self-understanding as well as understanding the role of leaders and facilitators aiming to facilitate change in organisations. It looks at the significance of relationships and power dynamics in organisations while organisational change processes are explored. It includes tools for reading organisations, including how organisations tend to move through various phases of development, how change can be facilitated and the challenges faced in implementing or sustaining change. Finally, the guide gives support to processes of building learning organisations and continuous learning through experiences. [adapted from the authors]

A summary of the key areas covered by this guide is summarised below: 

• Towards understanding ourselves, other people and how we change 
  
• Creating and working with relationships in organisations 
  
• Observing and understanding organisations
  
• Facilitating change in organisations 
  
• Supporting, grounding and sustaining change 
  
• Learning and innovating in organisations

The website also contains a growing library of additional downloadable exercises, readings, case studies, and diagrams to accompany the Barefoot Guide. The authors are actively seeking comments and feedback on how the guide can be improved – click on the link under further information to do this.