Thank you for sharing these reflections - it’s so helpful to see that others have experienced and also thought about that messy middle. It can feel like a juggling act to balance between bringing the direction needed for momentum, and stifling energy by pulling too far into my own preferences as a leader. I think it’s very true that people do have varied needs and expectations when it comes to co-designing in communities - and not everyone does want to be as involved in a community as you would wish. I will be thinking about this one for a while.
Brilliant honest assessment of the challenges. In my view of the process, a critical aspect is the guidance and assistance of ever-widening 'Councils of Elders', who form a supportive system of advisors. Also, I would highly recommend ProSocial World's 8 Core Design Principles (E.Ostrum and David Sloan Wilson) and the ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) matrix as tools to help resolve and re-center the Circle. The Elders have historically been the advisors, the keepers of Shared Wisdom. Imagine your Circle is part of birthing an ever-widening hive of Elder Circles (neighborhood, village, city, bio-region, continent, world). The entire hive is supported by the Elders. This sets up to use Natural design structures, in particular subsidiarity (vesting power at the lowest level). Shifting to a truly multi-cellular super-organism, is no simple feat and will take experimentation, the magic occurs by investing in and vesting power in the shared wisdom of the Circle as supported, refined and agreed upon as a community. So, it is really important to hold a collective vision and purpose, which I suggest is "the good of all for our circle, our community and an entire hive". The real magic I am beginning to perceive is related to resilience and grows out of inviting and demonstrating how our own circle's actions co-create community when we actually engage. Our dance becomes an invitation to dance, not an invitation to fix something. There's way to much to fix and few are inspired. What if we actually participate as a Circle in becoming better stakeholders in communities of belonging? This is a very different vision, mission and purpose, and it will lead us on a very different path: inspiring co-creation of the community we want to be. I would also highly recommend ProSocial World's 8 Core Design Principles (E.Ostrum and David Sloan Wilson) and the ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) matrix as ever-present tools to help frame, resolve and re-center, our pursuit of shared wisdom for our Circle and our community.
First time commenter, long time fan. The dance is always a fun analogy. Forgive me for going perhaps too meta :) but is this dance formal with rules like tango, or unstructured and emergent like ecstatic? At WeavingLab.org, we designed situational decision-making guidelines that inform when we *might* use decentralised consensus models, and when more traditional executive / hierarchical / command style is suitable: "when procrastination or unclear lines of responsibility threaten a key outcome and will always include consultation with key stakeholders."
Looking forward to reading more in your upcoming posts & evolving this in conversation 🙏
Thanks so much for your kind note, Nick! This is definitely more of a freestyle dance. More jazz than Classical Western music. And I was inspired to read that you all have guidelines that give permission when centralized decision-making might be useful. Procrastination and unclear lines of responsibility are great examples. Thanks so much and I look forward to our paths crossing in person / in conversation!
Hi Fabian, your article has triggered me to think about community structure and leadership as concentric circles, or for a simpler analogy 'onion layers'. With every circle or layer having its own intentional purpose and scope, each being led and facilitated by different stewards, each with a different subset of members opting in, and each representing a layer of belonging or togetherness.
As such, I see decentralisation not just as a leadership trait, but something that underpins the community architecture end-to-end: from community purpose and mission, into subgroups with their specific scope, into subgroup projects and initiatives, each helping to progress the intended outcomes and overall community purpose. Each of these levels or layers representing an opportunity for members to step up in agency and leadership ...
You have a valuable contribution in this field, I think we should ask the UN to declare a day of neighborhood, community as medicine, within the framework of The United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing & Communities (2021–2030).
Thanks for sharing your reflections, Fabian. You've captured some of the tensions I've experienced in leading, transitioning, co-creating communities of practice - dancing between different roles navigating one's own awareness of power and agency with the need for just enough structure to get things done. 😊
you nailed the tension in this one and are articulating a core struggle i've long experienced.
since you mentioned the leader as "source", if you haven't already, check out the book "work with source". it offers a novel perspective on community leadership that i found refreshing.
i also wonder if communities aren't meant to have a fixed position on this spectrum but rather fluidity to shift up and down as needed. sort of like the "war time peace time" concept.
finally, i think clarity and autonomy are important.
clarity: is it clear who is responsible for making decisions and how they will be made?
autonomy: are members free to leave or opt out if they don't like decisions?
centralized leadership becomes oppressive if those two things aren't present. but if there's clarity and member autonomy, i don't see anything wrong with a leader saying "i'm going to make the decisions here". members don't have to like that approach. and they're free to leave.
this becomes much more complicated when it comes to governments where members can't just leave, at least not easily. in these cases, distributed power is critical.
for something like a membership community, members have much more autonomy, which makes centralization much less oppressive.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful reflections, David, so much of it deepens my understanding.
- I think you are spot-on: this shouldn't be a fixed position, but rather fluidly shift up and down as needed. I like the war time / peace time comparison, different times need different types of leadership.
- I also really relate with the notion of clarity and autonomy. César (whom I mention in the article) also spoke about mechanisms to make it safer for both leaders and communities to engage in centralized decision making: members can leave if they strongly disagree (but puts the onus on them), or they can try to vote out the leadership. One is to have these processes, second is to make sure culturally people are aware of it and feel it can be used if needed.
For me its helpful to think about leadership on different areas. For example in my community I see myself as the "owner" of the club, the space where people can gather. There I'm in charge to make sure that the space is the best it can be. Its about working on the "logistics" and "facilities". But when it comes to the "programming" of the club, who will perform on stage, the members of the community have much more prominent role. And there are probably many other nuances :)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful exploration of a crucial topic... how to engage in leadership in a way that is neither toxic, nor reactive-&-ultra-green-meme ineffective... some useful resources I've found in this regard are Jo Freeman, Starhawk, Kurt Lewin, and others... have written a bit about that here in "Beyond the Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beyond-tyranny-structurelessness-democratic-secure-rosa-98ejc/
One useful resource that is NOT in that article: there's a wonderful chapter in the Polarity Management book on the polarity between centralized decision-making, and everyone-involved-in-every-decision-making.... (that's not what they call the polarity, but you get the point...)
with regard to "leaders muting their own perspectives" -- i see that as a significant concern, AND, as a really good reason for leaders working with outside facilitators... this allows leaders to themselves participate fully in the process, and share their informed perspectives more fully without shutting others down. I personally favor the "this or something better" approach, where the leader or leaders are encouraged to share openly with the group, at the beginning of the shared process, what they will do as a fall-back, if there is no group consensus at the end on a better option ("group" which includes the leader as a full participant.)
And, "outside" faclitation need not be prohibitively expensive, especially is communities partner to exchange facilitation support with one another...
Anyway, lots more to explore here, I will be continuing to re-read your article, checking out your various links, and looking forward to future articles! all best wishes to you...
Interesting idea about communities partnering to exchange facilitation support with one another, Rosa! I'd be up for experimenting via the CoFundEco community, where I am in the Source role and have used all three of the middle- way approaches Fabian describes in this piece.
Thank you for sharing these reflections - it’s so helpful to see that others have experienced and also thought about that messy middle. It can feel like a juggling act to balance between bringing the direction needed for momentum, and stifling energy by pulling too far into my own preferences as a leader. I think it’s very true that people do have varied needs and expectations when it comes to co-designing in communities - and not everyone does want to be as involved in a community as you would wish. I will be thinking about this one for a while.
Brilliant honest assessment of the challenges. In my view of the process, a critical aspect is the guidance and assistance of ever-widening 'Councils of Elders', who form a supportive system of advisors. Also, I would highly recommend ProSocial World's 8 Core Design Principles (E.Ostrum and David Sloan Wilson) and the ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) matrix as tools to help resolve and re-center the Circle. The Elders have historically been the advisors, the keepers of Shared Wisdom. Imagine your Circle is part of birthing an ever-widening hive of Elder Circles (neighborhood, village, city, bio-region, continent, world). The entire hive is supported by the Elders. This sets up to use Natural design structures, in particular subsidiarity (vesting power at the lowest level). Shifting to a truly multi-cellular super-organism, is no simple feat and will take experimentation, the magic occurs by investing in and vesting power in the shared wisdom of the Circle as supported, refined and agreed upon as a community. So, it is really important to hold a collective vision and purpose, which I suggest is "the good of all for our circle, our community and an entire hive". The real magic I am beginning to perceive is related to resilience and grows out of inviting and demonstrating how our own circle's actions co-create community when we actually engage. Our dance becomes an invitation to dance, not an invitation to fix something. There's way to much to fix and few are inspired. What if we actually participate as a Circle in becoming better stakeholders in communities of belonging? This is a very different vision, mission and purpose, and it will lead us on a very different path: inspiring co-creation of the community we want to be. I would also highly recommend ProSocial World's 8 Core Design Principles (E.Ostrum and David Sloan Wilson) and the ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) matrix as ever-present tools to help frame, resolve and re-center, our pursuit of shared wisdom for our Circle and our community.
Really fab, Fab!
First time commenter, long time fan. The dance is always a fun analogy. Forgive me for going perhaps too meta :) but is this dance formal with rules like tango, or unstructured and emergent like ecstatic? At WeavingLab.org, we designed situational decision-making guidelines that inform when we *might* use decentralised consensus models, and when more traditional executive / hierarchical / command style is suitable: "when procrastination or unclear lines of responsibility threaten a key outcome and will always include consultation with key stakeholders."
Looking forward to reading more in your upcoming posts & evolving this in conversation 🙏
Thanks so much for your kind note, Nick! This is definitely more of a freestyle dance. More jazz than Classical Western music. And I was inspired to read that you all have guidelines that give permission when centralized decision-making might be useful. Procrastination and unclear lines of responsibility are great examples. Thanks so much and I look forward to our paths crossing in person / in conversation!
Hi Fabian, your article has triggered me to think about community structure and leadership as concentric circles, or for a simpler analogy 'onion layers'. With every circle or layer having its own intentional purpose and scope, each being led and facilitated by different stewards, each with a different subset of members opting in, and each representing a layer of belonging or togetherness.
As such, I see decentralisation not just as a leadership trait, but something that underpins the community architecture end-to-end: from community purpose and mission, into subgroups with their specific scope, into subgroup projects and initiatives, each helping to progress the intended outcomes and overall community purpose. Each of these levels or layers representing an opportunity for members to step up in agency and leadership ...
I have reflected on some of this here: https://medium.com/@tomvandendooren/why-communities-fail-when-everyone-belongs-equally-0bf499edce4d
You have a valuable contribution in this field, I think we should ask the UN to declare a day of neighborhood, community as medicine, within the framework of The United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing & Communities (2021–2030).
Thanks for sharing your reflections, Fabian. You've captured some of the tensions I've experienced in leading, transitioning, co-creating communities of practice - dancing between different roles navigating one's own awareness of power and agency with the need for just enough structure to get things done. 😊
you nailed the tension in this one and are articulating a core struggle i've long experienced.
since you mentioned the leader as "source", if you haven't already, check out the book "work with source". it offers a novel perspective on community leadership that i found refreshing.
i also wonder if communities aren't meant to have a fixed position on this spectrum but rather fluidity to shift up and down as needed. sort of like the "war time peace time" concept.
finally, i think clarity and autonomy are important.
clarity: is it clear who is responsible for making decisions and how they will be made?
autonomy: are members free to leave or opt out if they don't like decisions?
centralized leadership becomes oppressive if those two things aren't present. but if there's clarity and member autonomy, i don't see anything wrong with a leader saying "i'm going to make the decisions here". members don't have to like that approach. and they're free to leave.
this becomes much more complicated when it comes to governments where members can't just leave, at least not easily. in these cases, distributed power is critical.
for something like a membership community, members have much more autonomy, which makes centralization much less oppressive.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful reflections, David, so much of it deepens my understanding.
- I think you are spot-on: this shouldn't be a fixed position, but rather fluidly shift up and down as needed. I like the war time / peace time comparison, different times need different types of leadership.
- I also really relate with the notion of clarity and autonomy. César (whom I mention in the article) also spoke about mechanisms to make it safer for both leaders and communities to engage in centralized decision making: members can leave if they strongly disagree (but puts the onus on them), or they can try to vote out the leadership. One is to have these processes, second is to make sure culturally people are aware of it and feel it can be used if needed.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts David!
For me its helpful to think about leadership on different areas. For example in my community I see myself as the "owner" of the club, the space where people can gather. There I'm in charge to make sure that the space is the best it can be. Its about working on the "logistics" and "facilities". But when it comes to the "programming" of the club, who will perform on stage, the members of the community have much more prominent role. And there are probably many other nuances :)
That’s good nuance. I think for this post we were mostly talking about strategic decisions about what the group wants to / can be
Thanks so much for your thoughtful exploration of a crucial topic... how to engage in leadership in a way that is neither toxic, nor reactive-&-ultra-green-meme ineffective... some useful resources I've found in this regard are Jo Freeman, Starhawk, Kurt Lewin, and others... have written a bit about that here in "Beyond the Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beyond-tyranny-structurelessness-democratic-secure-rosa-98ejc/
One useful resource that is NOT in that article: there's a wonderful chapter in the Polarity Management book on the polarity between centralized decision-making, and everyone-involved-in-every-decision-making.... (that's not what they call the polarity, but you get the point...)
with regard to "leaders muting their own perspectives" -- i see that as a significant concern, AND, as a really good reason for leaders working with outside facilitators... this allows leaders to themselves participate fully in the process, and share their informed perspectives more fully without shutting others down. I personally favor the "this or something better" approach, where the leader or leaders are encouraged to share openly with the group, at the beginning of the shared process, what they will do as a fall-back, if there is no group consensus at the end on a better option ("group" which includes the leader as a full participant.)
And, "outside" faclitation need not be prohibitively expensive, especially is communities partner to exchange facilitation support with one another...
Anyway, lots more to explore here, I will be continuing to re-read your article, checking out your various links, and looking forward to future articles! all best wishes to you...
Interesting idea about communities partnering to exchange facilitation support with one another, Rosa! I'd be up for experimenting via the CoFundEco community, where I am in the Source role and have used all three of the middle- way approaches Fabian describes in this piece.