I hope you’re doing well. I wanted to share something important with you about a new training that many people have been asking us to develop for years, and that we finally feel ready to offer.

 

It’s called the Organizational & Project Design Lab.

 

In simple terms, this training is about how organizations build, incubate, and scale their work. Over the past 10–15 years, we’ve seen many groups struggle with a core tension. On one hand, organizations need to scale what is already working, making strong programs more efficient, durable, and widely accessible. On the other hand, organizations also need to invent what does not yet exist: new campaigns, strategies, models, and forms of power building that must be treated as experiments.

 

Both of these processes are essential, but they require different mindsets, skills, and structures. Too often, groups either chase every new idea and abandon what already works, or they perfect the same thing for years while the world around them changes. This course is designed to help leaders navigate that balance.

 

You can think of this Lab as both:
• A theory of incubation, or how to create new things
• A theory of scaling, or how to grow what works, woven together into one coherent approach to organizational development

 

This training will be led using lessons drawn from work with organizations across community organizing, movement building, and institutional leadership. It will be offered online, meet about once per week, and begin on March 7. Full details, dates, and the application are available here.

 

This invitation is shared because our paths have crossed in different ways through trainings, collaborations, conversations, or shared work, and because you may be navigating questions that many organizational leaders are facing right now:

• How do we build something truly new?

• How do we scale what is already powerful?

• And how do we do both at the same time?

If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to consider joining us. And if you have questions, feel free to reply and send an email to [email protected], we're happy to talk more about whether this is a good fit for you or your organization. I truly believe this is one of Ayni Institute’s most important offerings on organizational development and incubation.

 

In solidarity,

Carlos

During this training, you’ll take on a personal design project within your own organization or initiative. You’ll identify one area of your work that’s ready to grow and strengthen, and another that needs fresh thinking or a new approach.

 

Throughout the course, you’ll learn practical tools to refine what already works, design systems to scale it, and explore how to create what’s still missing. By the end you’ll leave with two living projects: one ready to scale, and one ready to seed, along with a visual heat map that shows where different parts of your organization sit along the funnel of scaling and innovation.