Just landed in Scarborough. Blackpool I knew nobody. This time there is a personal connection, Nicola, through a trusted friend, Linda. Perhaps the next city, we may get an invite? Quality of invitation determines quality of engagement. Depth of relational engagement derives social outcomes, the energy comes from our differences. Like ‘potential difference’ in a battery can power a motor or a lightbulb in a circuit; so ‘potential difference’ between us in any meeting can power a social happening. This is open business. It’s not about collaborating between organisations, but collaborating between individuals who have access to their relative organisational resources.
Turning up out of the blue is a challenge for any overlapping collection of communities: what can a new person do in a month compared to what they have tried over months or years? That’s precisely the question we aim to answer. There is vast untapped potential in every city. The trick is how can it be enabled, energised, enacted in a way which is scalable? That does not collapse under the weight of organisational overheads or the tyranny of a head-strong leaders?
That’s a hard nut to crack, or given the organisational maze everyone is working in hardened by economic warfare, a seed to find its root and first leaf. The answer we aim to manifest is: how can we create a scalable fellowship? Open Business Practices may enable such a venture. It is the people who manifest it within their current social conditions — it is their insight, intention, and skills which determine our social outcomes.
A Property Pearl?
Having experienced the gritty problems of finding co-living space in the UK, a meeting for property developers on the 25th January may be the beginning of a social pearl. How so…?
What if everyone in Scarborough realised they were working together to improve the experience that visitors to Scarborough had? What if we all acted this way? Attracting groups, networks, communities, families, companies to visit or live here…?
Let’s take things further… let’s dream a little…
What about co-living hub inviting Digital Nomads all year round? Not ‘in’ or ‘out’ of season, but steady all year round. They need their own space and a place to work, and a ready-made community. Some are working on a budget, others are making a good living (£40k+) while visiting different places in the world. Why not one here in Scarborough?
Or what about a Happening Hotel? Where social innovation regenerates all sectors of Scarborough life? A mishmash of council, change-agents, environmentalists, educationalists, community minded folk — and there are so many of us — who have a base from which services are provided for any and all walks of life in the area. A hub of regeneration running Open Business Practices? Not a company or an organisation, but a network financed through Sqale. As an educationalist, I’d offer my services in local school to encourage self-discipline and social-responsibility.
Or elders funding intentional communities? Instead of their ISAs and other investments, how about collectively invest in local property and inviting families to live together? Where elders can take active part in community integration, and when the time comes benefit from assisted living? Like a self-organised, pre-financed care home, more organically created?
So many things become possible once people engage in high trust relations. A cohesive collaborative network grounded in Scarborough would improve the lives of all inhabitants and visitors, and would put Scarborough on the national and global map of destinations.
The future is social. And we need it before the first big AI wave hits us this year.
Local Ecosystem
Why do people visit Scarborough? It’s beautiful. The town perched on the edge of a cliff. It’s not the cheap arcade at the waterfront, a belated watered-down version of Blackpool. It’s the Victorian heritage, the iron-work bridges, the magnificent hotel.
The first thing to realise is that the reason why resort-towns work is because visitors bring in cash to the area. Although the major outlay is accommodation, money is spent in restaurants and shops. Most money circulating in towns is local businesses making money from inhabitants, and inflow from national governmental funding. Visitors literally bring an influx of money with them.
To think about it as tourism is missing the point: it is new cash for the whole area.
And to make best use of this cash, it should be spent circulating within the local community. Not redirected out to franchises, national chains or non-local owners. The more the cash goes to locals, the more it circulates, the more useful the money becomes.
So, a collective of local business owners who collaborate to create cohesive, comprehensive, complete experiences for visitors, bring in cash to Scarborough to circulate through the ecosystem.
Practical Steps
Action Cycles are the primary mechanism to enable cross-organisational collaboration. It is results driven. Participants learn they can work together to achieve objectives with resources normally beyond their reach, that is learn how to achieve ‘beyond-realistic objectives’ together. The Sqale app simply tracks people’s contributions and sets up potential bonus and revenue flows. All based on results first. Money funds the next experience. There is no negative.
This is how high-trust behaviour grows. Through achieving results together in an hour’s meeting and a week’s activity.
Once members of local council, local business owners, property developers, community organisers, educationalists, investors, digital nomads, learn they can get results within a week, then greater mutual objectives open up taking months or years. Opportunities like a Happening Hotel appear on the horizon, become doable by a bunch of committed local people who have earned the trust they have in one another, and the finance which supports them.
Open Business Practices. Get in touch. Let’s make it happen. If not Scarborough, where…? You decide.
Brace Yourself!
And how about this for an experiential challenge: what if everyone serious about working together took a dip in the sea together? Regularly?
I gave up swimming in the sea at Jersey mid-November. Head was like ice. I bought a neoprene cap, but by the time it was delivered I had decided it was too cold. I decided to risk it here in Scarborough. It’s an incredible wake-up call, existentially vitalising. The group who I joined are all vibrant. There is a real sense of togetherness, forged in the ice-cold water through firey mind-over-matter courage! That’s what’s needed folks, for serious systemic change.
The neoprene cap worked wonders, but hands and feet felt like paddles, what having flippers must feel like to seals. Without using the tools at my disposal, I would never have learned — we can do anything we put our minds to!
