Adjusting to disruption
It will come as no surprise to our friends and supporters that L3 absorbed quite a bit of change in March. With the arrival of COVID-19 in Canada, not only has L3 changed its upcoming workshop planned to be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia to an online format, but it has begun expanding its entire impact strategy.
By our estimation in 2018, roughly 700,000 small businesses with employees were at risk of closure over the next ten years. Now, in the spring of 2020, every single one of Canada’s 1.3 million small businesses are dealing with the uncertainty and disruption of COVID-19.
Many of these small businesses are embedded in communities across the country. Their owners and their families draw income from them. Their employees and suppliers depend on their operations for wages and revenue. Their clients and customers rely on their goods and services, which may offer additional cultural or social value. Their municipalities draw revenue from its tax payments. In short, the roots of Canada’s small businesses are grow far and deep, and could be facing the most significant economic drought they’ve ever encountered. They deserve our support.
Implications for the team and the work
Luckily for L3, our team was already working remotely and saw no immediate challenges. We were able to quickly re-deploy our invitations to our upcoming in-person workshops (Waterloo Region and Halifax) to be delivered online. Waterloo Region was hosted over two three-hour sessions on April 1 and 2, while the upcoming ‘Atlantic Online’ workshop replaces Halifax, to be held over three days on April 21, 22, and 23. Registration has opened and invitations are out. Contact Meg Ronson if you’d like to know more about participating.
As for our next workshops (originally planned as two-day in person events held every three months between June 2020 and January 2021 in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Montreal), we are currently rethinking whether the five-workshop series format makes sense.
Ultimately, the goal remains the same: support the emergence of a system in Canada that allows small businesses to transition into co-operatives, social enterprises, and social purpose organizations. How we achieve that, given the disruption that has hit these systems, is now being re-examined. “We are working in a nonlinear system that is going through a dramatic shift,” Sean Geobey explained during a virtual staff call last week. “We had a great plan for the world as it was, but if we want to succeed in the world as it is now, that plan has to change.”
Research Team
Aleksandra Szaflarska and Sean Campbell continued their research work over March, refining the system map and collaborating with researchers on the case study template. They also attended the Local Food and Farm Co-op Assembly in Huntsville, ON and presented the L3 opportunity to attendees, encouraging them to think of businesses in their communities that may be facing succession and could be open to conversion. Food, agriculture, and co-op representatives from all over Ontario attended, from Toronto to Matheson, ON.
Happy Birthday Alex!
Alex celebrated her birthday on March 24th! The team could only send her virtual cake, but it’s the thought that counts.
Workshop design
Tara Campbell and Sean Geobey dove into designing our second Waterloo Region Workshop, scheduled for the beginning of April. They planned to test out the Three Horizons framework in April, a design tactic that asks stakeholders to consider a system from several different perspectives in order to identify ways to intervene in and change the current system.
Friday Huddles
In an effort to dynamically draw from the experiences and struggles of the professional network L3 has been building since August, Meg Ronson began to run a weekly online “Huddle” every Friday at 1pm EDT so that people could share their thoughts and ideas about recuperating local businesses through social conversions and acquisitions. This coming Huddle will be on Thursday, since Friday the 10th is a national holiday. Join the event on Zoom at this link at 1pm Eastern Daylight Time: https://zoom.us/j/230593272.
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About Legacy Leadership Lab (L3)
L3 is an 18-month initiative by the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, funded by the Government of Canada’s Investment Readiness program. We are leading five Workshops from coast to coast to help build expert-driven solutions for Canada’s transitioning small business community. During these Workshops, the we will develop market interventions and prototypes that allow conventional and social finance players, business service providers, and community leaders to facilitate social purpose conversions of existing businesses in their own towns.
About Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR)
WISIR is a research institute at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development committed to generating trans- and inter-disciplinary knowledge about social innovations and the social innovation process (the dynamics of learning, adaptation and resilience). Our approach is to pursue collaborative research and projects that bridge University of Waterloo departments, involve researchers from around the world, and engage those beyond academia. We seek to mobilize this knowledge through a range of new curriculum offerings and training opportunities - both within and outside of a university setting.