This is a summary of how we’d like to build and run Diagonal. It’s intended to inform thinking and decisions, rather than be the concise narrative needed for a presentation. We've made this copy of our charter public, to allow people that are really interested in this kind of thing to get a better understanding of how with think about the business and technology. It will evolve over time.
This document roughly follows this organisational charter template by NOBL, and we're grateful for organisational design resources they share.
Environment
The conditions around us
- People across the world increasingly live in cities, each with a unique urban form that significantly influences their quality of life.
- These cities are evolving to improve both quality of life and equity, while dealing with a future of growth, public health challenges, decarbonisation and climate adaptation.
- Simultaneously these cities are responding to economic and racial injustice, and car centric lifestyles, woven over history into their built environments.
- Each of these efforts, at every scale, involves changing a complex system.
- We believe software tools can help organisations understand these systems.
Purpose
The reason we choose to work together
- To improve the quality of life of those living in cities.
- To repay the inspiration and opportunity that cities have brought us.
- To use our skills as the builders of technology products for social good, while recognising that technology is a small part of improvements to urban systems.
- To practically advance the field of responsible technology development
- To build an organisational structure that guarantees long term alignment to this charter, puts control in the hands of those forming the organisation, and is sustainable over the long timescales inherent in changes to urban form.
- To recognise that small, diverse, teams of people working together with a high degree of psychological safety are the best tool we have to address system problems.
- To help cities across the world become inspiring examples to others, and to provide us a legitimate business reason to visit and spend time in them, feeding our inspiration.
Strategies
The bets we’re currently making to fulfil our Purpose