Work With Source: Realise big ideas, organise for emergency and work artfully with money by Tom Nixon
Who should read this book?
This book is for individuals (‘Sources’) who take the lead in building purpose-driven initiatives. Whether you’re starting a business, driving social change, or leading a community project, this book offers valuable insights into managing the dynamics of such ventures.
It’s particularly relevant for:
- Entrepreneurs
- Activists
- Community Organisers
- Artists
Nixon provides practical perspectives on the unique role of founders, helping them clarify their responsibilities and navigate collaboration challenges effectively.
Why You Should Read This Book
If you’re involved in starting or running a purpose-driven initiative, this book will likely resonate with you. Even if you’re not the source yourself but are part of an initiative facing tensions or ambiguities, it can offer valuable insights into the root causes of these challenges.
The book builds on foundational concepts from Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, Sociocracy, Holacracy, and Theory U. It also incorporates principles of the agile mindset, making it particularly relevant for those who value adaptability and iterative progress.
Written in a positive and non-judgemental tone, the book is approachable. However, some sections feel overly abstract, and the final chapters, focused on self-awareness and personal development, were not to my taste. They leaned more towards philosophy than offering practical, actionable insights.
As a starting point, you might watch Tom Nixon explain the concept of ‘Work with Source’ on YouTube:
Interesting extracts
“Sources imagine the future and make it real. Every day they ask: what’s the next step? What can I do, right now, to inch closer? And they know there’s always a next step, no matter what.”
“The ideas we bring to life through our initiatives have no clear beginning. They have tentacles reaching back through time and are shaped by many inspirations and influences that came before them. Yet, once in a while, somebody takes a first step to invest herself in the realisation of an idea. It’s an act that carries vulnerability with it, what social science researcher and author Brené Brown describes as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure”. It’s the feeling we get when there’s a risk of failure, shame, loss, disappointment, or rejection. (…) It’s useful to see that, unlike ideas, initiatives do have beginnings. There’s a point in time when the idea exists only in the realm of possibility and a time, an instant later, when we have begun – when, in other words, the initiative has been taken. If we pay attention to these moments when they happen, we often feel what I can only describe as an energetic shift within ourselves. There’s very little risk in making a sandwich, yet as we begin the process of realising an idea that is deeply meaningful and important to us, the sense of vulnerability involved in taking the initiative becomes palpable. When we look at our initiatives in this way, we see that the individual who takes such a risk has an intimate connection to the endeavour. This gives rise to her naturally occupying the role of source of the initiative.”
“A source can share the authorship of the vision and get out of the way as others become specific sources for parts of the whole, taking on the exact same role of source within that specific domain. Far from being subservient to the source, specific sources are also living their own personal calling in life; they merely choose to express this calling within someone else’s broader initiative. This helps us move on from the traditional struggle between central and decentralised control to a more energised and practical way of organising that embraces centralisation and decentralisation at once.”
“Many advocates of participatory endeavours are reacting against the traditional top-down model and fail to embrace its positive attributes. For example, I’ve witnessed people in such endeavours rail against the concept of leadership altogether because of the bad experiences they have had with toxic leaders. Yet it’s often obvious that there are many wonderful leaders in these initiatives who are holding back for fear of being seen as anything other than completely equal to everyone else, thereby stifling their creativity.
It’s possible to integrate and include the best elements of top-down creative leadership while also embracing radically participatory ways of collaborating. Not an awkward compromise between the two but a way of working that builds on both models and helps us to:
- realise a vision with the creative potency of famous, iconic founders, but without the tyranny
- create resilience in complexity without drowning in ambiguity
- ensure the whole makes sense while fostering individual creativity from all participants
- allow a healthy, creative culture to emerge in an initiative
- embrace and integrate both the feminine and masculine nature of humans
- enable founders to move on when they’re done, allowing initiatives to be passed down many generations.”
“Sources must learn to dance between doubt and clarity. A source spends a lot of her time simply not knowing where her initiative is going. At the same time, she must accept that ultimately only she can truly get things clear. She has a creative authority with respect to the creative field, to which she is at- tuned like nobody else.”
“A source must guard the edge of her initiative vigilantly to protect its integrity while at the same time letting go, allowing others to take full responsibility for parts of her vision and allowing the vision to evolve and emerge in unpredictable ways. This is a tension between working top down and bottom up.”
“Culture is both a dynamic phenomenon that surrounds us at all times, being constantly enacted and created by our interactions with others and shaped by leadership behavior, and a set of structures, routines, rules, and norms that guide and constrain behavior. When one brings culture to the level of the organization and even down to groups within the organization, one can see clearly how culture is created, embedded, evolved, and ultimately manipulated, and, at the same time, how culture constrains, stabilizes, and provides structure and meaning to the group members.”
“The word vision has become a cliché, one of a confusing array of terms like purpose, mission, Big Hairy Audacious Goal, intent, ambition, aims, North Star, and so on. Simon Sinek’s ever-popular TEDx talk encourages us to start with why and then figure out the bow and the what. If you struggle to remember which way round the how and what go, or the difference between a purpose and a North Star, then join the club, because the truth is that nobody really agrees on what all of these terms mean. Charles Davies invested a considerable amount of time in figuring out how to cut through all of this jargon, and landed on a beautifully simple insight: they are basically the same thing they are just descriptions of what you’re doing on different timescales. I tend to use the word vision, and you can choose whatever term suits you. But to actually come up with the specifics, all you need are different answers to the question “What are you doing?“
Here’s an example for a company I founded called Maptio. You’ll see it’s just a stack of whats in order from long term to short term:
- contributing to the path towards a sustainable existence for life on Earth
- by tackling the largest systemic issues, from climate change to poverty and the global financial system
- by giving 100,000 purposeful initiatives a better chance of success
- by making it easier to organise and grow without bureaucracy
- by developing a software tool to map a dynamic organisation structure
- by testing a minimal product with real customers and acting on their feedback.
(…) You can begin at any timescale of what wherever you feel like you have a strong connection to something you feel called to do. It might be a lofty, long-term answer, or something very short term that you sense is connected to something bigger. (…) Why and how are helpful words when you use them as questions. Charles Davies explains: “why and how move you between different levels of what they represent the option of moving between different timescales.” (…) So, from your starting point, ask yourself why you’re doing that thing and you’ll get to a higher-level answer. And how will get you closer to the ground. (…) A specific element of a vision has the feel of a shared missive to it. (Whoops! More jargon.) The specificity can be useful when we need to organise a large group of people to help realise the vision. If there’s something specific to work towards, it can be easier to keep everyone aligned with the goal and to track progress, while at the same time getting out of everyone’s way so they can find ways to contribute without micromanagement. The more specific a part of the vision is, the easier it is to see it as shared, since we can be much more confident that everyone really agrees on what they’re working towards. We can each decide if we feel called to support it, and we can all be clear about when we are done.”
“Nothing starts with money. A source with energy to pursue a vision is all that’s needed to start an initiative. As strange as it sounds, no initiative has ever been started with money; taking the initiative always comes first. This act can become a powerful at- tractor for the other resources that will be required as the initiative unfolds, including money. Yet money always enters the picture later. (…) Money is also not essential for an initiative to continue. For any creative endeavour, there is always a next step towards the realisation of the vision, with or without money (or indeed any other particular resource). It’s an illusion to believe the next step is only possible with money – a mistake that leads many founders to fall into paralysis. Of course, whether money is avail able will change what the next step might be, yet to believe there is no nest step without money is to sacrifice an innate, human creative power to the mythology of money. It’s akin to succumbing to superstition. The legal entity of a company can go bankrupt, yet while there’s a source with a vision and energy, the creative endeavour can always continue in some form.”