We have been reflecting on our last year (and more) and looking forward to this year and our future, and it got me thinking about change. We (people not just Iriss) talk a lot about how we need change, how to create the conditions for change, how change is the only certain thing.
In 2023 Iriss decided to be bold, we decided to try a new way of working and we learned a lot. We learned about how to help our partners be ready for change, the conditions that foster innovation and we learned a lot about how we work ourselves.
This year has been a year for admin and organisation, as boring as that sounds. An advantage of Iriss’ setup is that we have a wide range of expertise, but this is also a slight disadvantage in a small organisation as it means that the institutionalised learning and expertise is missing when someone is absent. We have worked hard to develop organisational sustainability through dull but important manuals.
Through this time, Iriss’ staff have shown adaptability and flexibility in our project practices, but we didn’t expect to have to show this in our working structure too. Like many charities, we had a funding cut which we had to undertake a restructure to survive. These internal changes tested our professional resilience and changed how we were able to deliver projects. Although there were hard decisions to make, they reinforced our more streamlined approach and allowed us to focus more on innovation.
So what's next? 2024 is the year we issue a new strategy and we can all see changes in the wider political landscape on the horizon. We have completed a second call for partners and secured a variety of excellent partner organisations ready to make a difference in their areas. We will be taking all the excellent learning from 2023-2024 forward with us.
What we often don’t say is how change can be hard. It’s scary - trying something new, taking a risk and not knowing if it will pay off, or even having change thrust upon you but we remain hopeful - there can be no change or innovation without hope and ambition.
