Hospitable Organisation
Context
We organise ourselves in order to cultivate response-ability and care. We think that distributed power and decision making can help us achieve these organisational goals. We do not think decentralisation is an end in itself. Our mission is not efficient production, it is to learn together. Please keep this in mind when considering if this pattern is applicable to you.
Kernel (opens in a new tab) hopes to be a hospitable organisation. The idea is based on years of work on Distributed Collaborative Organisations, beginning in 2014. It is inspired by insights from Networked Improvement Communities, Swarmwise, Holocracy, Sociocracy, Spiral Dynamics, and Integral Theory.
We are indebted to David Graeber and David Wengrow, from whom we draw specific anthropological insights about what the freedom to transform social relationships (opens in a new tab) has looked like, such that we can imagine together more liberating heterarchies. We premise everything we say in a relational understanding of reality (opens in a new tab).
While this pattern pays homage to a rich intellectual tradition, it privileges practice and simplicity over theory and "meta" (opens in a new tab). Research into the work and life of Alexander Bogdanov (opens in a new tab) may help discover even more practical applications of the relational thinking presented here.
Personally, I hope Kernel will always mean something more like a way than a place, a verb more than a noun, a process more than a product.
Leadership as Hospitality
Despite distributing power, leadership remains critical. Power becomes distributed not by denying the import of leaders, but by setting cultural precedents - mirrored by operational practices - which make it clear that leadership is role-based and changing; not given once by (divine) authority or temporal order and then never altered.
The idea that to lead is to serve, or that it is primarily janitorial (the Swarwise understanding), is an old and powerful one. It acts against the ego inflation that roles of power often cause. However, this can take the form of subtle displacement, rather than a genuine decrease in egotistic modes of relating and organising. This can manifest in interactions like, "Don't you know how much I've done/sacrificed for this?" or "No-one ever sees all that I do! I am never appreciated or recognised for how everything 'just works' around here."
We encourage a culture of leadership as hospitality for a number of reasons.
- The host is noticeable and acknowledged. However, a party where the host hogs all the attention is a very boring party.
- The host is responsible for the space: is the food nourishing, is there some water by the dance floor, is the music moving, is the punch well balanced, are people mixing with others they're likely to hit it off with, is the DJ well looked-after, is everyone reasonably secure?
- Good hosts are not neurotic. They enjoy the party as much as everyone else and they don't bother people by constantly hovering over them: it is the middle way between responsible care and trusting autonomy.
- It's worth repeating: a host is a response-able steward. As host, you are familiar with the space, often intimately so. That familiarity is what enables you to invite others in with meaning, purpose, and beauty.
- When leadership is hosting, the role can change far more fluidly and easily. Whoever hosts the space (be it irl or url) is the leader. It's that simple. Being the host means that you get to pick the theme and decoration for your own party, but you have to make sure - as far as is possible - that the others have fun too.
- Being a good host requires a deep attention to detail, and wide spread awareness, simultaneously. This is indistinguishable from what makes an extraordinary leader and it is a skill we can all practice by putting ourselves in positions of responsibility for others and the quality of the time they spend together.
Hospitable Organisation: A Method
The pattern is simple. How people enact it in context varies endlessly.
- Create invitations to functional spaces.
- "Functional spaces" enable any participant to leave lasting traces which allow for indirect coordination across times and roles (known formally as "stigmergy").
- As people spend more time in functional spaces leaving marks, they
Authored by Andy Tudhope (opens in a new tab)