Cohort Structures

You have joined a cohort. Now what?

We believe the cohorts, together with this platform, are the foundation of scale within this ecosystem of learning, building and sharing.

Note: Read /Lab Goals: Community, Library, Platform to learn about the intent of this lab.

Cohorts:

Advisors: The Founding Cohort
I, Pete, formed the first cohort with people I felt could help me/us on this journey. We started in January 2024 and are helping to form this overall journey. We are also piloting what it means to be on a cohort on this journey. We’re here with you.

We call these the advisors, because they are helping me shape this world. You can read about them here.

Explorers: The First Follower Cohorts
Starting in April 2024 we are forming our first cohorts. These are early adopters showing interest in the journey with a willingness to not only explore the space, but also help us figure out how best to build, focus, and facilitate cohorts.

We hope these first cohorts can help us define more about how to foster effective cohort learning and sharing and help us shape this world for the rest.

Adventurers: The Building Cohorts
In the near future, once we feel that we have established some norms and refined our cohort facilitation, guidance and platform, we hope to expand our cohorts to scale.

Cohort Logistics and Facilitation:

Agile Leadership Journey has leveraged cohorts for almost a decade on our learning journeys. In most cases, like for our Applied Agility in Leadership Program, these cohorts are not only professionally facilitated, they are guided along a well-travelled path.

Our AI Leadership Cohorts, on the other hand, are planning to travel in regions we haven’t explored and there are no well-travelled paths to follow. Thus, we are NOT providing a trail map (because we don’t have one!). This is a bit tricky for cohort facilitation.

Our initial cohorts are going to rely on our trusted ALJ Guides to help provide this facilitation - navigating an uncharted landscape and seeking to align to this community program.

We do have a few common traits we have come to trust we feel all cohorts should include:

1. Intimate - Cohorts should be small, but not too small. 3-5 is a great number for intimacy and diversity.

2. Rhythm - Cohorts should leverage a regular cadence of connection. We recommend weekly as this landscape is changing very quickly and it increases the feedback & learning cycle.

3. Facilitated - Loosely coupled peer cohorts often lose momentum and focus. We recommend having a guide to assist the journey. Our Guides are NOT AI experts, however, they have proven to be effective facilitators.

4. Platform - A cohort without a shared space to collaborate means we lose the learning. We are offering this space as your key aligning, focusing, and sharing space. And we recognize you may value other collaborative spaces as well like Miro, Mural, etc.