Governance. Its hard. Read this.

[Moheeb Zara]

Sourced from places like hackerspaces wiki noisebridge et cetera.

Adhocracy, or government on the spot, is a type of ideal found in many hackerspaces who are experimenting with overcoming the glaring limitations of hierarchical forms of management.

But adhocracy has raised other problems, mostly organizational entropy: the dissipation of psychological (a space's raison d'etre) and monetary assets. The problem is a lot like handling resources in a multi-user computer system -- eventually processes crash into each other because there is no central point of organization to synchronize and manage it all. In traditional business organizations this is obviously handled by a "boss" who exerts authority from above. But this is not an acceptable solution for hackerspaces.

So what would a solution from below look like? The bottom-up solution is gamification. By drawing on the natural proclivities of human beings, "meta-"processes can be created to assist a space to self-organize using a concept called organizational memory. This can be as simple as posting instructions on each individual station, where you are gaming against the human tendency to lose focus. Further, one can post donation boxes at points where expenses are incurred, listing the average costs (per hour of energy or per toner cartridge, etc.) at each station. Post also on the way out the door so that users can insert the appropriate value to them. Money inserted here become like game coins in Super Mario: each time users donate, the space wins.

One space had an interesting solution that exploits hackers' desire NOT to be commanded by higher authorities: make a robot mother that tells people to empty the trash at scheduled intervals (or donate, clean the kitchen, etc).

Adhocracy are greatly served by coming together to write a Statement of Purpose. Through doing so, they either help form leaders or see who is holding tacit leadership ability over the space.

Like the U.S.S.R, bureaucracy is governance by a group of leaders. Some call it government by committee. In any case, the advantage here is that you get decisions made by people who are invested in the organization, debate with each other about the best course of action, and act as a point of appeal if there's a problem in the space.

The disadvantage is that it can slow down the organization to unacceptible levels if the bureau takes too much power. Bureaucracies work best when they are accessible to the public (public mailing list), state the purpose for their organization, and handle things promptly.

They can be aided by the techniques under adhocracy, but may compete for power if bureau members feel the need to be needed (like funding sources).

Do-ocracy

Government by those who do it. This is where things happen because some individual takes the initiative. It works, but it also needs the support components and attitude of adhocracy, like continual curation of documenting design patterns and publishing them in the space.

The weakness of this form of governance is that when those individuals make a mistake, everyone else has to deal with it.

Subtitle
Do-ocracy done well
Starts at
2019/12/30 14:00
Ends at
2019/12/30 14:40
Duration
40 minutes
Location
Assembly:HSBE

We explain how to run a do-ocracy and the lessons we learned from 6 years of hacking our own community.

• How do you solve internal conflict?
• How do you stop people from exploiting loopholes in the rules of your community?
• How do you create a culture and shared values?
• How do you keep directors from burning out?
• How do give people creative freedom?

History

Hackerspace.Gent was on the brink of collapse because of internal conflict. Instead of giving up, we decided to hack the hackerspace itself; find a system where internal conflict actually gets solved. We did an number of workshops to figure out how to do this, we wrote everything down, and got to work. Six years later, the disorganized workshop notes turned into an actual booklet: the hackerspace blueprint. We hope you can use this to solve issues in your organization.

https://hackerspace.design/

THIS ^ MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT READ/WATCH ^^^

An excerpt that echoes whats been on my mind a lot: "Allow people to fail. People need to feel safe knowing that they are allowed to try, and to fail. Thus, when people fail, we need to be kind and help them get better instead of berating them. The hackerspace gives everyone room to grow, and failure is part of that. For more information, read up on the idea of “blameless post-mortems” in the IT operations and DevOps communities."

Also a good resource: https://medlabboulder.gitlab.io/democraticmediums/mediums/do-ocracy/

Do-ocracy has problems, but those can be mitigated but it requires effort, communication, and resolving conflict without judgement and vindictive attitudes. 

Start with love. We are all opinionated but every voice matters. Every action matters. 

No one spends years of their lives volunteering out of malice.

Everything everyone does is ultimately from a place of love and wanting to belong.