Strategy-Innovation

Owner: Director of Orgazational Strategy & Learning (DOSL) – with input from all Directors Audience: All OWL staff, partners, and stakeholders

Purpose

This section gathers the core procedures and position statements that define how OWL operates as a learning organization. It focuses on how we use Design Thinking and Improvement Science to guide strategy, make decisions, run experiments, and codify what we’re learning into clear, lightweight systems.

The D-OSL is responsible for maintaining these documents, with changes coordinated through OWL’s collective leadership and decision-making processes. As new frameworks, playbooks, or position statements are adopted, they will be added here.

What you'll find in this section

Collective Leadership & Decision Making Our bedrock procedure for distributed leadership, including the Decision Ladder, RACI-S, decision log expectations, operating discipline, and performance backstop. It explains how anyone at OWL can confidently lead a decision while staying aligned to shared guardrails.

Document Control Policy The guide to OWL’s dual-platform documentation system (GitHub/GitBook + Google Drive). It names what belongs where, how new “official” documents are proposed and published, and how we keep our knowledge architecture clean through naming conventions and quarterly cleanup rhythms.

Position Statements (Experiential Learning, CBE, Open Design/Open Source, Education Policy) Short, practice-grounded statements that clarify what OWL believes about key levers for learner-centered change—and what that actually looks like in classrooms, schools, and systems. These sit alongside related playbooks and tools as the shared language we use in proposals, PD design, and policy conversations.

How to use this section

• When you are designing or revising an SOP, playbook, or framework, start with the Collective Leadership and Document Control procedures to align decision rights, guardrails, and where the final artifact should live.

• When framing new initiatives, grants, or partner work, pull language and design cues from the Position Statements so our strategy, delivery, and storytelling stay consistent.

• When in doubt about who owns a call, how to log it, or how to publish a "finished" document, this folder is your first stop before reaching out to the D-OSL or other Directors.

As OWL's strategy and learning practices evolve, this folder remains the home for the concise, canonical references that keep our improvement work coherent over time.