Insights About Process
The folks in Bloomington, the next scheduled Startup Weekend event, are watching us closely, and for good reason. There is a lot to understand and learn from seeing what other cities are going through.
Pointing to the candor shared by Elizabeth, one blogger there appropriately notes:
First, scuffles, huffs and hurt feelings are likely in any scenario where you put several dozen strangers in a room with a task and a deadline. Some weekends have fared better than others, but the universal generality at work is that Friday night is the mostly likely point during the 54-hour marathon for angst.
My personal assessment is that while this kind of thrashing is not a necessity, it is normal and not necessarily a bad thing. And if it’s expected, it means there doesn’t have to be a lot of angst over the messiness of the process. From my comment to that post:
Anyone familiar with managing change knows there is a messy period and the best thing is to convey that this is normal and transient in nature. Things get better.
People who left here Friday night or early Saturday might have done so without realizing that their personal experience during that fraction of the weekend was not the overall experience that the rest of us have had.
In other words, Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing still fits.