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Patterns for Decentralised Organising

As a cofounder and coordinator at Loomio and Enspiral, I worked with dozens of teams experimenting with decentralised organising. These folks are prototyping organisational structures for distributed leadership, high autonomy, and shared ownership. I noticed we all faced similar, painful challenges:

How can we be inclusive without spending all our time in meetings? How do we deal with power imbalances? How do we prioritise what to work on? How do we undo our programming and develop an open, collaborative culture? And where does accountability come from if there is no boss!?

I spent 2017 travelling the world with my partner, working with hundreds of groups to understand how to translate my experiences from Loomio and Enspiral into lessons that can help any team that wants to work with more collaboration and less hierarchy.

The result is these "patterns", naming the most common challenges of working without a management hierarchy, and practical responses you can adapt to your local context and apply immediately.