It began as a quiet idea. A team member asked if they could rotate who opens their weekly meeting.
Such a simple idea. No initiative. No policy. Just curiosity.
They wanted to see how a small change might shift who feels heard first. The first time, it felt awkward. The second time, lighter. By the third, new voices began to shape the room. it helped having a single place to join the dots in the same way as their boss and their own team might.
What started as a micro-change became a pattern of shared ownership. The group began experimenting with other rituals — who closes, who captures learnings, who checks in. No one called it inclusion work. But everyone noticed how the air changed when listening became practice, not performance. New ideas popped up that were new to the group, as the language was different. Like a log jam had been broken through.
Three months in, the team didn’t talk about culture change anymore, as they were living it in the room, with a BIG PICTURE Board they tidied from to time. The experiment had become a rhythm: so try, reflect, repeat. And in that rhythm, capability stopped being a programme to deliver, and started being something worth sustaining.
“What’s one everyday experiment your team could start this week — a small act that turns intent into practice?”
