Resources for decentralised organising
a mega list of handbooks and toolkits
for groups working without top-down management
from social movements to workplaces
open source for anyone to read, update, share
Microsolidarity
In late 2018, Richard D. Bartlett published a proposal to start a «microsolidarity» community in Western Europe — a small group of people supporting each other to do more meaningful work.
Reader reactions prompted him to start this website, to collect resources for the co-development of multiple such communities.
Microsolidarity is a set of practices for mutual support between peers. These methods bring us out of individualism and into a more relational way of being.
Most of this support happens in a Crew: a small group up to about 8 people growing trust in each other through emotional & economic reciprocity. Crews are always designed for intimacy, and may also produce an output (e.g. a software product or an activist campaign).
The Congregation is a space for Crews to co-develop in the company of other Crews. Congregations have less than a few hundred people, so they can be primarily governed through trust and dialogue.
Many Congregations could form an Assembly.
Enspiral Handbook
The book is broken up into chapters and sub-chapters. The chapters are:
- Agreements are the official legislation that governs the Enspiral network. Changing these requires a formal process.
- Guides explain in practical terms how we do stuff, like what communications tools to use, or how to improve things at Enspiral. Any Enspiral Contributor can change these.
- Working Groups Working groups are where we do work on the network.
- Enspiral Foundation – the central node in the network. The Board, Ops Team, Comms person, and Ventures all have some formal arrangement with the Foundation, which is owned by all the Enspiral Members.
- Money – a lot of what makes Enspiral special is how we deal with money. Read more about those processes in this chapter.
- Ventures – the companies that make up the network.
Patterns for Decentralised Organising
This is a book about working in groups, based on 7 years experience in community projects and startups.
I’m not so interested in what you’re working on together, I’m just going to focus on how you do it. To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to build a better electric vehicle, or develop government policy, or blockade a pipeline; whenever you work with a group of people on a shared objective, there’s some stuff you’re going to deal with, some challenges. How do we decide what we’re working on? who does what? who can join our team? what are our expectations for each other? what happens when someone doesn’t fulfil those expectations? what do we do with disagreement? how do decisions get made?
I’m convinced there is not a “one size fits all” recipe, a management structure that you can take off the shelf and install in your collective or your company. But my hypothesis is that there are patterns: common design elements you can draw on as you construct a recipe that’s right for you. Each pattern in this book names a challenge that you are likely to face, and offers tools and techniques you can try in response to that challenge.
This is a book for community organisers, leaders, managers, consultants, coaches, facilitators, founders… if you work with groups of humans, these patterns apply to you.
Minimum Viable Structure: Organisational Scaffolding to Get Out of Emergency Mode
For activists, startups, and NGOs: 8 lightweight interventions to get a working team to shift from sprint to marathon.
Hierarchy Is Not the Problem… It’s the Power Dynamics
I believe that this fascination with “hierarchy” and “non-hierarchy” is a major problem. Focussing on “hierarchy” doesn’t just miss the point, it creates cover for extremely toxic behaviour.
I’m guilty of this myself: having declared ourselves to be a “non-hierarchical” organisation, I’m unable to clearly see the un-just, un-accountable, un-inclusive, un-transparent, un-healthy dynamics that inevitably emerge in any human group. Calling ourselves “non-hierarchical” is like a free pass that gets in the way of our self-awareness.
Jo Freeman named this beautifully in The Tyranny of Structurelessness, where she argues that the informal hierarchies of a “structureless” group will always be less accountable and fair than a more formal organisation.
Freeman uses the word “structureless”, which is specific to the context of her 1960’s feminism. Today, you could swap “structureless” for “non-hierarchical” and get a very accurate diagnosis of a sickness that afflicts nearly every group that rejects hierarchical structures.
We’re coming up to the 50th anniversary of this essay, and still it seems the majority of radical organisations have missed the point.
So I repeat: I don’t care about hierarchy. It’s just a shape. I care about power dynamics.
I think words like “non-hierarchical”, “self-managing” and “horizontal” are kind of vague codes, pointing to our intention to create healthy power relations. In the past, when I said “Enspiral is a non-hierarchical organisation”, what I really meant was “Enspiral is a non-coercive organisation”. That’s the important piece, we’re trying to work without coercion.
Booklet: Patterns for Decentralised Organising
Practical guidance for teams to thrive without a management hierarchy.
This PDF booklet is a condensed version of some of our Patterns*, naming the most common challenges faced by self-organising teams, and practical responses you can adapt to your local context and apply immediately.
Ep. 41 Richard D. Bartlett “There Is No Enemy Team”
Playing for Team Human today, master of human connection and consensus, Loomio co-founder Richard Bartlett. Bartett coming all the way from New Zealand, stopped by Douglas’s home studio while on a community organizing workshop tour of the US.
On today’s show, Bartlett and Rushkoff discuss the challenges of building consensus in an all too often top-down, winner-takes all society. Together we’ll learn how Loomio, inspired by the general assemblies of Occupy Wall Street, strives to amplify collaborative power and foster more participatory democratic practice. It’s a project that starts with small-scale, human-to-human connection and grows outward from there.