How To Cause The Change

Get together with willing participants, and without assigning accountabilities, work to identify a logical array of requirements, milestones and critical success factors (CSFs) that can move the needle towards organizational purpose.

There are just 2 fundamental principles to grasp for cyclic synergistics:

• Phased Prioritization

• Transparent Deliberation

Phased Prioritization

Instead of assigning or proposing a project in entirety, all projects for decentralized decision making move through two distinct phases: OC and AC.

OC: Opportunity Consent

Begin by gaining consent on a gap, challenge, or problem. This can be done on calls or in chat or in documents.

• Clearly state the opportunity.

• Detail how it relates to purpose.

• Validate the opportunity with evidence.

• Assess the impact of inaction vs resolution.

• Gain consent.

AC: Approach Consent

Once consent is gained on the opportunity to be addressed, contributors can collate possible approaches to address the opportunity and then arrive at a starting point.

• Present options.

• Justify preferences.

• Seek input.

• Gain consent.

• Here's a template. Copy the file and build better together.

Template for Phased Prioritization

Transparent Deliberation

To deliberate means to conduct intentional and diligent consideration. Distributed decision making requires diligence. Embrace it.

Input should be welcome by anyone at any time. Documents should be commentable. The collective spirit is to pursue better ways of doing things, based on experience, talent, research and experimentation.

Use shared drives and documentation. Decentralized decision-making can not happen when work-in-progress is kept on private drives. On the whole, all project work should be accessible to anyone trusted by the team.

How To Consent

Sociocracy does a good job of describing the difference between consensus and consent.

“Consensus means a decision is made when everyone agrees. Consent means a decision is made when no one objects.” — SociocracyForAll.org

Consent is given on the basis of harm. If Billy wants to do something, and Jennifer has no justified cause for concern for any risk of harm, then Billy is free to take action.

How is consent obtained? By asking for objections. Ask collaborators to specify any risks they see in the proposal. Simple.

If objections exist, agree on what would need to be addressed in order to resolve the specified risk. Rinse and repeat until consent is reached on whether the proposal is worth pursuing according to its proposed positive impact vs any identified risks of harm.

Objections must be addressed explicitly within transparent documentation. Sometimes, achieving consent takes a tremendous amount of time and energy. So be it.

Clarifications

Controlled Autonomy

Communicate to consent on needs (dependencies and challenges to address) and resource allocations. Do not communicate to dictate solutions or tasks.

Note for Product Managers & Developers: This is somewhat akin to Agile best practice where product owners advise on problems to solve, for which developers choose their own solutions.

Appointments of Power

Distribution of decision making authority is not a right, it is a policy decision by those who control the resources and therefore ultimately decide on organizational strategy. Don’t like them? Leave them!

The degree of conflict in a team suggests the degree of willingness in the team to give up control, push personal agendas, or failure to seek authentic consent.

Meritocratic Innovation

The inherent argument for decentralizing organizations is that better quality decisions can be made within an organization at the point those decisions need to be actioned. This also encourages greater contributor engagement with a more fulfilling sense of empowerment.

Those most interested and capable of contribution will naturally emerge through the process of Phased Prioritization and Transparent Deliberation outlined above. This is the great experiment of modern organizational design as society heads towards a more civilized (respectful and harmonious) way of being.

Team Shapes

There are various models for how to group people for work. From autonomous Agile teams, to distinct circles, pods or guilds.

Spotify invented a creative model for matrix management which itself failed to implement and moved away from, although it lends itself well to the idea of criss-crossing accountabilities that we can glean from.

Here's just one example article among many that help describe the Spotify Model.

In the Phased Prioritization model described above, team shapes are a secondary consideration. Start by defining work from AC to OC, and only then will it become practical and effective to begin shaping relevant teams.

Synergy Via Zero Organizations & Temporary Autonomous Consortiums (TAC's)

In decades past, careers were for life.

Today we might transition across career types multiple times.

In the future we may participate in many dozens... if not hundreds... of economic situations via smart-contracts that pay us for our contributions.

Similar to freelance designers, writers, or developers who work independently and have dozens of clients over time. They are not considered as employees or staff in the traditional sense. They may be consultants, advisors, or providers. Often referred to as contractors.

Similarly, a Zero Organization exists only in the temporary nature of its associations between 'contractors' facilitated by smart-contracts, forged by meaningful relationships.

Each of us gaining capacity to discover, align, and participate in countless explorations or outcomes based on our values, interests, skills, and experiences.

Zero Organizations are temporary consortiums between autonomous individuals.

Temporary Autonomous Consortiums (TAC's) exist only as long as the system requires and participants agree to mutual benefit.

4 Elements Of TACtful Collaboration

1. Prioritize Opportunities — Identify and align on what is important to stakeholders. This may start at the level of vision and values, and move towards milestones, gaps and challenges. It may include projects, strategic initiatives, gap analysis, contributor roles, policy requirements, and so on.

2. Assign Accountabilities — Appoint accountability to contributors based on some measure of merit (ability, interest, reputation, responsibility, consensus vote, etc).

3. Coordinate Contribution — Assigned agents are incentivized and supported as required to achieve their accountabilities.

4. Reward Result — Based on the agreement set for success, results are measured and incentives are rewarded to contributors.

Easier said than done but through web3 dynamics we are learning fast.

6 Principles For Incentivized Benevolence

1. Empower decisions driven by experience, propensity, knowledge or skill: Meritocracy.

2. Support transparency and record keeping so that contributors can raise their profile as they increase their capacity for effective contribution: Reputation.

3. Enable and encourage collaborative open dialog to efficiently arrive at decisions through authenticity and integrity: Candor.

4. Compare options to make informed choices at every possible level of governance: Juxtaposition.

5. Encourage transparency to collect a wide variety of inputs from diverse sources: Inclusivity.

6. Remove bad actors so they gain no entry into our new world of abundance until they make reparations: Ostracism.

Introducing The Zero Organization

A Future Of Temporary Autonomous Consortiums

The Zero Organization has no boundaries in the traditional sense of company, corporate, or institutional structures.

These archaic edifices attempt to bound collaboration within legal frameworks, hierarchal management structures, with a redundant way of tracing value flows.

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All this becomes superseded by micro traceability of work contribution, as hierarchies become flat through distributed decision making, and cooperatives that span innumerable geographic boundaries become the norm.

Take Vitalik Buterin's experimental 'pop-up city' concept Zuzalu (https://zuzalu.city) as example.

Or Burning Man.

Or hark back to Hakim Bey's 1991 cypherpunk-esque treatise The Temporary Autonomous Zone (readable online). A cornucopia of ontological anarchism suggesting the impermanence of collaborative groups that band together for a specific purpose, goal, event, or experience.. and then disband having fulfilled its temporary purpose.

As data becomes ever-more present and utilized in decentralized protocols, each of us gain capacity to discover, align, and participate in countless explorations or outcomes based on our values, interests, skills, and experiences.

In decades past careers were set for life... while today we might transition across career types multiple times.

So to in the future, we may participate economically in many dozens... if not hundreds... of economic situations via smart-contracts that facilitate payment for contributions made.

The easiest analogy is to think of designers, writers, or developers who work independently and have dozens of clients over time.

They are not considered as employees or staff in the traditional sense, nor are they independent contributors. They may be consultants, advisors, or providers. Often referred to as contractors.

Similarly, The Zero Organization exists only in the temporary nature of its associations between 'contractors' facilitated by smart-contracts, assisted by AI, driven by data, forged by meaningful relationships.

Zero Organizations are consortiums between autonomous individuals.

Individuals with budgetary power within an economic engine of value creation and distribution. With decision making power and ownership of resource allocations, they include other individuals to participate in specific project areas to collaborate on mutual value creation. Associations last as long as the system and participants agree a mutual benefit.

Hence...

Temporary Autonomous Consortiums, or TACs.

This model extends today's concept of a DAO; a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. A phrase that emerged around 2013 following Dan Larimer's suggestion of a DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Company).

The collaborative zero-hierarchy management structures of DAO's is still in its nascent stage of development, with various progress throughout the web3 sector.

Perhaps we will naturally see the borders and boundaries between one organization and another begin to fade, as work becomes entirely organized around the flexibility of individual autonomous contributors, rather than through the rigidity of pre-DAO centralized corporate structures.

This largely depends on futuristic data management that will allow greater filtering and matching between projects and passionate/capable parties, and the measurability of value flows, right down to the individual.

• On the individual level, see today's cutting-edge personal knowledge management tools such as Heptabase to glimpse the future of sophisticated individual-centric workflow autonomy.

• On the group level, there are many experiments towards distributed collaborative synergy, perhaps towards this concept of The Zero Organization via Temporary Autonomous Consortiums.

Time will tell.

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Invitation

If you would like to discuss any of this as part of an upcoming podcast series, contact the author, Gavriel Shaw, directly.

References

• Zuzalu pop-up city (The Zero City; Temporary Autonomous Cities) (https://zuzalu.city).

• The Temporary Autonomous Zone (readable online at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-temporary-autonomous-zone-ontological-anarchy-poetic-terrorism).

• Dan Larimer on The Decentralized Autonomous Company

• http://hypha.earth — an emerging network for collaborative decentralized organizations

• https://heptabase.com — a personal knowledge management application to build a 'second brain'

• Zeroth-Principled Thinking by Bryan Johnson

Authors Related Articles (on LinkedIn)

• The Good, Bad, & Ugly Of Decentralized Community Growth + How To Apply Impactful Incentives For Liftoff

• Introducing DAOs-with-a-Twist: "Decentralized Agile Organizations"

• Key Interactions Founders & Senior Managers Must Account For Between Product, Marketing, and More

• How To Govern Your Self, Others, And The World (in web3)

• Governance In A Web3 World — 4 Principles For Creator Incentivized Network Effects

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Addendum: Personal Note

I have seen too many teams falter and fail due to common pitfalls and bizarre attitudes of control. Read and re-read the above method as you discover the nuanced relevance of each sentence.

Learn to hear one another. Learn to think more clearly. Learn to organize ideas better. Learn to coordinate with the unique energies that everyone brings to the table. Learn to see past your biases.

Synergy feels really, really good.