Making Decisions in Community

Although I helped create the decision making process used in the Rainforest Lab, I often felt alienated and uninspired in that task.  Since we’ve been utilizing the system for about 8 months now, and in the wake of the elections, I feel a pull to describe the system we designed. I now appreciate the impact an effective decision making process has had on our community, and hope to inspire the co- creation of new systems that can impact more and more people.

                I believe the binary thinking that’s part of my conditioning stifled my capacity to collaborate on creating a new way of making decisions. I’m turned off by domination hierarchies, because I’m into shared power, and I’m not so into consensus because I value efficiency. I know that there’s the possibility for consensus to be efficient and I know that it’s possible to share power even when systems are designed to separate and control. But what would it look like to design a system for both? We are certainly still playing with the design, but I think we are on to something with the system we have created. This system is inspired by Holacracy and the work of Frederic Laloux.

                A principle that seems essential to me for the system to work for us is responsibility to the Whole. In her recent blog entry, A Nation Divided with Liberty and Justice for Few, Miki Kashtan says this: We are expected to vote from a place of being passive spectators, without full engagement, certainly without getting to the needs we have and being able to make choice from them, and without connecting with others to forge collaborative and creative paths. This, and the idea of checks and balances, are both foundational elements of liberal democracies. They presume the very notion of human beings that is at the root of capitalism and classical economics: a self-interested, rational person, who could not possibly be thinking about the whole, only about their own interest. When all are doing that, with little mutual-influence or coordination, the result is supposed to yield wisdom, both economically and politically. It doesn’t.

                How are we systemically empowered by our decision making process to take responsibility for the whole in our community?

We frame our community as the Super Circle within which are sub- circles that are created as needed. They are, according to our constitution, “Microcosms of community engagement and collaboration.” A principle at play within these subcircles is dynamic steering. Our constitution says this about dynamic steering: Circles evolve dynamically as needed. Any circle can be created or dissolved at any time, or members can join or leave circles as new information arises. Present needs or tensions are what matter.

                Reading this principle I notice some amazement at how simple and effective this principle is at allowing us to meet each other in the present. This seems so different to me from experiences I’ve had with consensus and domination hierarchies. The difference is that the structure is designed for aliveness and responsiveness.

 I use our decision making process to tap into our collective wisdom for decisions in a multitude of areas. Should we switch the goats over to eating comfrey while we milk them, instead of alfalfa? How many volunteers are we available to host this month? At one level, the decisions are made through an advisement process, which means ultimately I do with the advice what I want. I decide to ask for advice, or move from another level of our decision making system based on the answers to these three questions: How is this choice connected to my personal and our collective purposes? Who or what might be impacted by my decision? What level of impact might this decision have?

 

 

If I find that the decision might have a medium or high impact on the community, I might utilize one of the other decision making processes we have created. If you are interested in learning more about these processes, please reach out!

                Ultimately, I’m happy to invite you to live the three questions I shared. I define leadership as caring for the Whole. I hope these questions support you in making decisions embodying this type of leadership.