Pets and CATs of Flagrant

Community Action Teams (CATs)

At a small consultancy, sometimes it’s challenging to prioritize internal tasks amid the daily hum of activity for our clients’ projects. We’ve written in the past about experiments, and we also have internal projects, but we realized neither of those are a great fit/format for ongoing work and important tasks critical to the health of our small team.

Enter: Community Action Teams (CATs)! In October of 2022, we defined a CAT as a…

limited term project, like an experiment, but it’s got a strong mandate to make something happen for the company as a whole—like a company culture handbook, clarifying our hiring process, identifying design methods, etc.

Someone would lead, and a few others would help, meeting weekly and taking the time necessary to get whatever it is done. To be clear: joining a community of action is voluntary and compensated (in the sense that you aren’t expected to bill for the time you’re spending working on the business of the group). You can help with one working group at a time. Every working group has a leader who’s expected to call the meetings and drive the work.

We’ve formed several CATs at Flagrant since then: 

• Hiring CAT - Our most recently formed CAT. This CAT has been working to document our current hiring process and assess where we’d like to improve it. With this CAT’s support, we’ve adopted some new tools and practices for two roles we opened recently.
• Board CAT - This CAT has been defining a vision for forming a board at Flagrant, investigating how a board does and does not relate to potentially pursuing becoming a co-op, and documenting what we imagine the steps of forming a board to look like at a high level. It’s also been working to set expectations around how Flagrant can make agreements and policies as a company moving forward, using consensus-based decision-making as well as a new tool to support the process, Loom.io. 
• Outreach CAT - This CAT created a process for speaking publicly about things Flagrant is participating in or cares about in a way that aligns with our brand positioning. They’ve helped us be better able to communicate who we are, what we do, and why we do it.
• Design Methods CAT - This CAT defined and documented some of the design methods we use at Flagrant. Designers discussed and shared resources around some of the primary ways we work with clients.

Pets roster

Let’s face it—pets are the real stars of remote “offices” at distributed companies. At Flagrant, we have a #fur-friends Slack channel where we can share the latest and greatest snaps of all our fluffy (and non-fluffy!) animal companions.

Pinkie and Burger (Glynnis) 📷

Finn and Cato (Amanda) 📷

Moo (Cody) 📷

Nietzsche, Island/Sunscreen/The White One, Fearless, Xena, Lady Montgomery (Jack) 📷

Gizmo, Glitche, and Chewie (JB) 📷

Indy and Sookie/Cat (Kelly) 📷

Timmy, Pai, Daphne, and Tesla (Yossef) 📷

Mocha and Ralphie (Chris) 📷

Oliver (Joyce) 📷

Rue & Raring (doggos), Mittens (cat), 4 bunnies and 6 chickens (Val) 📷

“I just couldn’t think of all their names haha. Bunnies: Carrots (full name Carrotcakes), Pumpkin, Tub-o, and Snickers! Chickens: Floppsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, Lavender, Yoshi and Boo. All the fish (the little ones) are just ‘fish’, my sisters big Goldfish is named Timothy (used to live with a snail named Shelamet, (get it haha))” - Val

Korgeigh (Andrew) 📷

Riesling (Jim & Jen) 📷

Billi (Maya) 📷

Not Lena’s pets, but pets Lena has subjected to hats (Lena) 📷

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.