Open Way Learning Introduction

Owner: Director of Finance & Operations (DFO) – with input from all Directors Audience: All OWL staff, partners, and stakeholders

Welcome to OWL's GitBook: Our Document Control System

The GitBook platform is a public resource that outlines how we work, why we work the way we do, and the values that guide every action—both internally and externally with our partners and clients. Like all organizations, we're subject to relevant laws and policies, but as an open organization grounded in collective leadership and the principles of radical collaboration and transparency, this platform also serves as the "source code" for our organizational culture.

"To scale deep, not just wide, requires being intentional about culture. We see culture not as the soft stuff, but as the operating system that enables everything else." — Jal Mehta, Harvard Graduate School of Education

What You'll Find Here

The GitBook platform provides OWL's team and stakeholders clear guidance on:

• Our mission, vision, and values

• Key roles and responsibilities (directors, board members, employees, contractors, partners, etc.)

• How we learn, grow, and improve using design thinking and improvement science

• How we do the work we do for and with others (project management, service quality standards, etc.)

• Policies, procedures and tools for things like benefits, compensation, travel, vacation, etc.

• The process anyone can use to contribute updates to our documents

A Living Set of Core Documents

To that last point above, this set of top level documents are not dusty PDFs developed just to check a regulatory box. They constitute a living set of documents that define our organization's ethos and approach for the mission-driven work we do in the education space. As such, this system is built for iteration and continuous improvement—i.e., an evolving reflection of who we are as an agile, learning organization. This means that we update these documents early and often, based on team input, feedback from partners and clients in the field, and changing needs in the education space. If you have an idea for improving any aspect of this collection of documents, you are welcome to propose a change or share your thoughts via OWL’s Document Control Policy (found in the Strategy & Innovation section).

Use & Remix (License)

Unless otherwise noted, all content OWL produces (including what's in these documents) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). That means you're free to use, remix, and share this content non-commercially. All we ask is that you give us proper credit.

Looking for Something?

To make navigation easier, this GitBook platform is organized into the following sections (more details found in the Document Control Policy):

• Governance/: Board policies, organizational bylaws, code of ethics, legal matters, and governing documents.

• Finance-Operations/: How we manage funding & budgets, as well as back-end operating systems that enable us to efficiently and effectively manage the work we do.

• Administration-HR/: Personnel matters such as compensation, benefits, vacation, and other Human Resource policies.

• Outreach-Programming/: How we manage our programs and service delivery, client engagement, and outreach efforts.

• Development-Partners/: How we manage grants, fundraising, and strategic partnerships, as well as work with contract partners (the OWL Fellowship)

• Strategy-Innovation/: How we model continuous improvement, collective leadership, and design-based innovation, as well as how we codify that learning in our documented policies and procedures.

• Templates-Resources/: Open source tools, protocols, etc. that help us and our partners drive learner-centered innovation.

Questions?

Reach out to any OWLer or email [e-mail] if you have questions, suggestions, or ideas. Thank you for helping bring positive disruption to the status quo in education!