Growing up in a 170-year-old self-governing community
Here is the long view on decentralised governance, and the lessons I’ve taken from growing up in it.
It isn’t obvious to look at a church setting as inspiration for progressive ways to deliver software products, or to innovate in volatile times. But here are the (work) lessons I learned from growing up in a close, self-governing community that is over 170 years old.
I grew up in the Christadelphian community which was established in 1848. The basic model is that each church (‘ecclesia’) is self-governing and doesn’t answer to a central committee or leader. A series of statements were agreed (“beliefs to be accepted” and “beliefs to be rejected”), and these statements (generally) form the basis of the community today. Other than that, each local church has autonomy over how it organises itself.
I left this community some time ago, so it may differ now, but the lessons for me personally still apply.
Decentralising doesn’t create chaos
My experience was one of consistency and predictability - I could travel across the globe and find many of the same practices, songs, and phrases wherever I went. Each local community was free to sing from any hymnbook, but only two were widely adopted. It’s interesting that given the choice, groups will adopt things they prefer, without being forced to centrally.
The more remarkable aspect of consistency was the format and schedule of the meetings. In the 1980s and 90s I was attending the same regular meetings that a teenager in the community would have done a century before. Given the freedom to change the format, weekly schedule, and even names of the meetings, you’d expect to find wildly different arrangements over time and by region. Yes, variations were there and more so in recent decades, but the patterns lasted a VERY long time given the lack of centralised power.
One lesson for me here is that people and culture may provide more consistency (for good and ill) than the system surrounding them.
Power and influence
I am naturally curious about how power plays out in relationships and communities. I’m naturally tuned into power dynamics and feel deeply frustrated when they are ignored. I’m particularly allergic to people saying “we don’t do power here” - what a powerful statement.
Power exists in any connection - you have given me the power to occupy your attention for a few moments to read this. Did you notice yourself doing that? Either way, thank you.
So the “idea” in the running of each local church was that we’d elect people into roles, who would then take on the servant-leadership of certain tasks. Most of the time this genuinely worked well - I learned a lot about humility in decision-making; about serving a community rather than “running it”; and how long-held experience in a role can benefit (and also limit) how things turn out.
The challenges I noticed were two-fold. Often, role-holders also held traditional manager roles in their everyday work, and this came through at times, even if unconsciously. But more impactful was the projection onto those in servant-leader positions. When a lot of tasks were centralised in a single role, members of the community would treat that person as a de facto head of the group. Whether it is our nature to have a top-dog, or learned through our wider culture, this pattern is in us, and comes out in moments of habit or high tension.
People wanting to influence the wider community (not just the local church) would start a magazine (I think they start a facebook group now). This follows the pattern of the hymn books - if people like it, they subscribe. There was a “main” magazine which held a lot of sway and influence in the community - because it was the most widely-read, it also acted as the battleground for ideas. This resulted in the suggestion that the publication itself was a centralised body that governed the community. Perhaps like social media influencers, they have an audience and suddenly they have authority in ways they never sought - or did they? I guess it depends on whether you agree with what they’re publishing or not.
Two of the lessons I learned here are - that power exists (and it is far better to acknowledge this than pretend it isn’t there); and that some people, ideas, writings, etc. gather power over time, even when the system is specifically designed to prevent it.
Design the system to change
As I mentioned at the start, the foundation of the community was a series of statements about what are (and are not) correct beliefs.
Over time, a number of people and local communities have drifted away from these beliefs, and this causes tensions between them. I puzzled over this for a long time - why would people associate themselves with a set of beliefs that they no longer agree with? Surely “you either fit in or fuck off”? They probably wouldn’t use those words.
I asked someone (seemingly on the fringes of the community) about why they stay associated with it. They said their views represent a significant minority and they remain because of them.
It was then that I realised what was going on - the foundation of the system was now set in stone. There was no process whereby the original agreement could evolve or change without fracturing the community. People with genuine care for the community would naturally hesitate to instigate a trauma like this.
Because people have drifted so far from the original agreements, the foundation holds little value in some eyes, while others hold onto it tightly. This feels like a messy underpinning to a community, and I honestly can’t see a graceful way to resolve it. The opportunities to avoid this were missed long ago in my opinion.
I’m not at all confident that I have singled out “the” answer to a situation like this. I get the sense that it’s natural for communities to grow and decline, split and reform in new ways, over time.
The insight I take away here is that any system/agreement/constitution should have a sub-system allowing it to evolve over time. And that sub-system is habitually activated at regular intervals, even if it appears that nothing will change. Even minor adjustments over time will allow for something to stay relevant for longer. This will avoid the need for radical overhauls, or for people simply ignoring an old artefact as irrelevant.
If the foundation of your community doesn’t have a way to alter itself, the organisation will struggle to evolve in a healthy way.
Fascinatingly, the founder of the Christadelphians was very progressive for his time. He engaged in debates, challenging many common ideas in Christianity at large, and was openly curious about ideas that (today) would probably challenge the community he founded. Today you can find a hardcore of people that don’t view the need to change or challenge what was agreed on back then. The rebels have conservative descendants.
Rituals and the body
In a visceral way, I learned that we can design space and rituals in a way that communicates a specific “tone”. Having people speaking from a raised platform, with some contributions from a plinth to the side. The audience sitting in rows lower down. Three levels of height adding increasing weight to the person speaking at the top. For me, the tone felt deeply serious. This format was reserved for the Sunday service.
Weekday meetings often involved everyone sitting around tables, evenly spread, encouraging discussion rather than the sober quietness on a Sunday.
From all of this, I learned about how to bring people together in a room for a specific effect. It’s probably why I enjoy Open Space Technology and other Liberating Structure formats today.
It really does matter where and how we place people in a room - we internalise seating arrangements, light, acoustics, platforms, and colours. And this “tells” us how we should be in that space. If you want to distribute power in a meeting, don’t have the highest paid person sitting at the end of a long table.
The other significant ritual in the community was baptism - total immersion of an adult in water. Even though I left the community many years ago, that baptism still feels significant to me, performing a specific ritual in front of so many people.
I am curious about this topic as it relates to workplaces. In agile we talk about rituals instead of meetings, and people verbally commit to taking on specific tasks. This does engender accountability in a way that is missing if we simply hand out tasks. But there is a real cringe factor to introducing rituals in workplaces - it feels culty and religious. I think the cringe feeling is also resistance to bringing the deeper parts of ourselves to work. I believe that we do better things when we are more whole at work, but I also sympathize with people who never “signed up” for this way of working.
When someone joins an organisation with a standard ‘psychological contract’ with their workplace, suddenly asking them to bring their vulnerability and deeper selves into work feels unfair.
So, ritual and embodied practices have a deep and meaningful power inherent to them. If you choose to use them in a work context, be aware of this - don’t use this lightly.
Culture can make us smaller
It was common to talk about ‘being different on a Sunday’. I would rock up to the meeting hall, and leave the unacceptable parts of myself at home. This capacity just emerged - it was never a conscious process. Over time it became more pronounced - as my ideas and morals moved away from the community’s, I was still able to turn up and fit in. Until I couldn’t.
If everyone in a group turns up in a ‘specific way’, then it becomes a performance. I’m left wondering if we would have grown more, and known each other better, if it had felt safer to bring the whole (messy & unacceptable) self to the community.
In a professional setting we seem to leave a lot at the door. This is why I’m ambivalent to the word “professional” as it gets used as a way to make us “less” somehow. At its best, being professional is about consideration for others by meeting deadlines, upholding commitments, and providing consistency. It also seems to include repressing our bodies, in sometimes strange ways. Try taking a deep breath or walking around the room during a meeting - it feels odd. We also need to appear focused, even if it means controlling our posture, face, and eyes to the point that we’re focusing solely on that.
Big emotions are also left at the door. When someone expresses their anger, fear, sadness or joy, it feels like they’re ‘out of control’. It’s shocking. This shock happens because it breaks the cultural norm. I believe it is possible to normalise expressing challenging feelings at work, it just takes a lot of self-work in the leaders and team members.
There is a popular idea of bringing your “whole self to work”. I like the principle here, as so much is lost when we bring just our partial, rational selves to a space. However, there is the skill of discernment. Do I express every part of myself, all of the time, and in every work interaction? No. It is important to value context and impact, and to take responsibility for our actions and words.
But being conscious of my full inner world is deeply helpful for myself and others around me.
It makes it easier for me to get needs met in-the-moment, seek clarification when I’m unsure, and then I’m left with less to catch up with internally when I leave work. I have a suspicion that a lot of stress that people experience in relation to work is due to them ignoring their own inner experience in order to get through the day.
Relationships for growth
This is a broader learning I’ve had from growing up in a community. It has less to do with self-governance, and more to do with the way cultures seem to operate. I found myself encouraged to grow within the community, to learn and explore, and to support others too.
However, there was an underlying sense that my learning was within a certain context, and that to seriously question it would be problematic. On one level, critical thinking and reasoned argument were encouraged. However, I found myself relying on increasingly elaborate mental loops in order to convince myself that the teachings were correct. My questions ended up getting better than my answers.
I was holding myself back from freely-assessing the community I belonged to, and this was due to the cost of leaving. My family, formative memories, major life experiences, and imagined future all belonged in this context. An honest critique of the worldview I held also came with a sense of dread, isolation, and future pain.
I did leave, and it was tough.
I don’t have many rules-of-thumb for life, but here is one of them. Relationships should allow for growth. By relationships, I mean with other humans, communities, and organisations. They shouldn’t stop us from exploring, getting better answers, knowing ourselves, and others.
The community I was in couldn’t contain the types of experiences I needed in order to grow, and the things “I’ve got up to” since leaving would have had me kicked out of the community many times. (DM me if you want the details.)
In a work context, I see cultures encouraging growth up to a point. And when a person grows in a direction that doesn’t “fit”, they are ousted or left feeling deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps they simply hide their more progressive or dangerous ideas to stay safe. How many people have you met at work who are surprisingly more interesting when you meet them outside of working hours?
As a result of this pattern, I have a sense that most corporate workplaces infantilize employees - restricting their people to operate with little autonomy and self-leadership.
So, can we create workplaces that encourage growth in employees? And then cope with the outcome? Is it possible, or desirable, to hold a broader space for a multitude of worldviews and behaviours? Yes.
And when someone’s journey takes them beyond the organisation - perhaps their curiosity simply doesn’t serve the purpose of their workplace - can we develop cultures where departure is a natural (healthy) part of working with humans?
All relationships should allow for growth - even better, they should encourage it even if the growth results in the relationship ending.
Conclusion
Perhaps growing up in this dynamic helped me be more clear-eyed when it comes to the apparent benefits of self-organising. If I had to choose, I’d say shared-governance/self-organisation is a good way to handle complexity - and humans are complexity personified.
A pyramid structure clearly has merits too - some big things have been done using it. But to concentrate so much formal power in individuals places a much bigger burden on their leadership skills.
We don’t appear to have a sufficient supply of ‘good enough’ leaders when compared to the number of pyramid structures that exist in our society.
I hope that you’ve found this long-view on shared governance helpful. Distributing governance isn’t new, and it doesn’t mean the end to all challenges when coordinating large groups of people. The key for me is expecting change, and supporting people when this happens. In ‘Reinventing Organizations’ Frederic Lauloux talks about Evolutionary Purpose as a key to self-organization. I also see the value in stability over time too - it takes away some of the noise and allows for focus on the task at hand.
I value tradition - it gives us a sense of our place over time, and helps us build trust as a group. It can also be stifling, and maintains things that aren’t helpful and that ultimately become destructive. So the ongoing question must be what do we keep, and what do we choose to let go of?