Mozilla is building out a portfolio of mission-driven non-profits and companies to prove it is possible to build and use technology (such as AI) in ways that advance the values in the Mozilla Manifesto. The Mozilla portfolio is owned and managed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. It has two distinct functions and teams: the Mozilla.org team which drives the overall Mozilla portfolio strategy, and the core Mozilla Foundation team driving its philanthropic programs and advocacy work.

Individual companies and funds in the core portfolio include: Mozilla Corporation, MZLA, Mozilla.ai, Mozilla Data Collective, and Mozilla Ventures.

The Foundation is building a better technology future — powered by people, open by design, fueled by imagination. It builds side by side with developers, innovators and advocates, united in the belief that a better technology future is not only possible — it’s ours to create.

This mission has been at the core of Mozilla since their guiding Manifesto was written in 2007. In the meantime, the global tech landscape – particular recent advancements in AI – has held its eye-watering pace of change. In this context, the imperative for Mozilla was not just to keep up, but to lead as a relevant and impactful player. When we started working with the Foundation’s leadership team, the organisation was on a strategic change trajectory to set themselves up for the next 25 years. Mozilla President Mark Surman (then also holding the role of Executive Director for the Foundation), brought us onboard as their leadership development partner to facilitate a 12-month process aimed at clarity, alignment and cohesion. For the strategy, change and transformation geeks reading, you can hear him talk about the journey the organisation is on, here on the Change Signal podcast.

The Challenge

As Mozilla Foundation continued to tackle the multifaceted and complex challenges at the intersection of tech and society, it became clear that new ways of working were required to drive their work forward. There was a need for more interoperability and coordination across the “many islands” that each Director was responsible for, and underpinning that, more trust and alignment at the Director-level. The leadership team in place was made up of strong individual leaders, but little investment had been made in building cohesion across the organisation. Lastly, the decision had been made to recruit a new Executive Director (ED) for the Foundation, allowing the current ED to transition fully into the role of President, overseeing the four Mozilla entities that make up the “Mozilla project”. What was needed was a strong and steady leadership team to steward the organisation through the transition, while keeping the values of Mozilla at the forefront.

As a fully remote, globally-distributed team, leading complex work across the world, a focus area for the process was bringing a sharper sense of role clarity (for leaders, and through leadership into their individual teams), balanced with flexibility and autonomy in ways of working. They also had limited shared practices around planning, joint decision-making or working across functions. InkDot was invited to provide organisation and leadership development support for the transition.

The InkDot Approach

Our approach to the partnership was both strategic and highly relational, grounded in the principles of process consulting – a collaborative and non-prescriptive approach where the expert consultant guides the organisation in responding to their challenges, rather than providing ready-made solutions. We designed and facilitated a 12-month process – punctuated with a series of 4 in-person leadership retreats – to support the leadership team in its evolution from a group of strong individual leaders to a cohesive and connected leadership team. Unlike traditional consulting, process consulting does not provide ready-made solutions up front, but rather advances the growth and learning of the organisation or team through an iterative process. This allows for more ownership within the organisation, and the implementation of changes that are embedded in real work, and responsive to context and the most pressing needs of the client, as they emerge. Our Innovative Culture work is anchored in process consulting because it provides rhythm and direction to our work and interventions, whilst maintaining the flexibility and responsiveness needed to engage in the complexity of human systems. In the ecology of organisational life and leadership, static projects just don’t work.

For the Mozilla Foundation Leadership Team this meant a journey of “growing together”. Through genuine side-by-side attention to new ways of approaching their existing work, we cultivated trust and co-create shared practices, building the collective capacity needed to navigate both internal organizational changes and external shifting realities.

After the first four months of working alongside the team we developed a Discovery Map, providing an in-depth snapshot of the team and organisational dynamics. This tool gave the leadership team a mirror into their current reality, narratives and underlying themes, and untapped potential. Together, we then decided to focus our efforts around four core priorities that we believed would have most generative impact on their effectiveness:

• Improving alignment among the leadership team
• Supporting effective, integrated work planning
• Strengthening ownership and role clarity
  Providing guidance through the leadership transition

Drawing from methodological approaches and theories grounded in human systems dynamics, organisational development and organisational justice, we led a series of interlinked projects designed to address these areas. We designed and facilitated four immersive in-person leadership retreats in Barcelona, Toronto, New York and London, as well as the Mozilla Foundation organisation-wide gathering three years in a row. These moments were the foundation for our work together, providing rare opportunities to bring together a dispersed team, and also for continuous exploration and response to the evolving challenges and the goals of the organisation.

The result

Beyond the shifts in ways of connecting, working and interacting at the leadership team level, our partnership culminated in a series of tangible organisational artefacts.

We developed a tailored skills repertoire, a physical guide book of capabilities essential for leadership at Mozilla Foundation. It focussed on skills connected to things like role clarity and navigating complex change. Rather than a prescriptive framework, the repertoire was designed to be ‘modular’, allowing leaders to identify and strengthen the specific skills most relevant to their own priorities and growth edges.

We also helped the team articulate their shared purpose, mandate and values, co-creating a Leadership Team Charter. This charter defines what leadership at Mozilla Foundation means in practice: the roles, responsibilities and principles of a Mozilla Foundation leader. This process and document became the cornerstone for clarifying ownership and accountability across the team.

In support of the Executive Director transition, we established a group of change champions from across the organisation to act as ‘critical friends’ in the design and roll out of the change communications process. In this process, we also worked as a trusted advisor and thinking partner to the Chief Operating Officer, and the working group leading the recruitment, communication and planning the onboarding for the new ED. 

Beyond our direct work with the leadership team, we also worked organisation-wide designing and facilitating the Foundation’s annual “MozWeek” gatherings three years in a row (in Honolulu, Montreal and Dublin). MozWeek brought together all Foundation staff in a key moment in the organisational calendar, and was another opportunity for the leadership team to come together centering connection and cohesion within and across their teams. In 2024, it was the first in-person gathering after the appointment of the new Executive Director, who we worked with to engage staff in a moment of long-term visioning and world building.

The impact

“During the consultancy, InkDot demonstrated their expertise in tailoring specific, innovative and transformative approaches to our unique needs as a global organization. They were adept at assessing the root cause of organizational challenges, through deep listening, individual and team engagement. They supported us through a critical period of change, proposing bespoke interventions that were human-centered and rooted in best practice.

Through thoughtful partnership and engaging program design, they built trust with leadership and staff, and have been essential in helping our team evolve and grow.”

– Angela Plohman, Chief Operating Officer

“InkDot set us up well for a significant period of change, and had an incredibly positive impact. The process helped us gain clarity and discernment, and in particular was a leveling up in both mindsets and sense of connection at the Director level. InkDot brought calm and trust, and created a space for the leadership team that was stewarding the organisational transition.”

– Mark Surman, President