Loomio
Tue 7 Apr 2020 5:51PM

Tell us about your congregation

RDB Richard D. Bartlett Public Seen by 100

In my dreams this Microsolidarity Loomio group includes one thread per congregation, with very occasional updates from someone in the core team, like a kind of diary sharing work in progress and creating a minimal baseline awareness of what our peers are up to.

If you are organising something congregation-like, and you feel moved to start such a thread, that would be rad because you'll be making my dreams come true!

Congregation diaries:

Do you have one to add?

VV

Victor Vorski Tue 7 Apr 2020 6:11PM

How does one start a congregation? What makes a good congregation?

RDB

Richard D. Bartlett Tue 7 Apr 2020 7:53PM

We don't know yet!

JF

Josh Fairhead Fri 17 Apr 2020 9:00PM

@Richard D. Bartlett - I've been thinking about the ternary recommend above, I wonder if it's people, place, purpose? Start with any two and the third becomes apparent.

JD

Josef Davies-Coates Sat 18 Apr 2020 8:26AM

@Josh Fairhead as @Richard D. Bartlett says there:

> I think it is important for a community to be aligned at the abstract level: having shared values, principles and purposes. However, I don’t think it is very interesting to create that alignment by talking about it. Instead, the focus is on finding alignment by doing stuff together.

So I think he's not included purpose in the "three concrete elements" to avoid the risk of getting stuck talking about what the group or congregations' purpose is?

JF

Josh Fairhead Sat 18 Apr 2020 9:20AM

Ahhh thank you, yes it's been a while since I read the article. I couldn't agree more then, espoused beliefs are usually incongruent with action. Thanks for flagging :)

RDB

Richard D. Bartlett Sat 18 Apr 2020 9:51AM

Ya these are just my reckons and biases though, time will tell what works in practice,.

TB

Toni Blanco Sun 19 Apr 2020 11:01PM

I have been lurking this Loomio for a couple of weeks and this particular conversation triggered my participation. I just published a post where I discuss the trap in which I see falling very well-intentioned people again and again. But there are other lessons I learned when participating in purpose-driven organizations like Ouishare. I participated there after being involved with libertarian-alternative organizations (for my PhD dissertation) that excel in what we understand as microsolidarirty and thrive economically but struggling in replicating/scaling. The result of that research, among others, was the creation of a pod (one year ago). 

I learned that Ouishare replicates and scale, but struggles in mutual support and nurturing "their commons". It is not that I saw plenty of things that, according to my research, I thought caused that, but my intellectual humility put that suspicion in the hold... until experience proved me right. I guess I will develop further in future posts, but here are some lessons that come to mind right now, for what it worths. 

1) Fuck Purpose and Values with capital P and V. We want to grow beautiful gardens of purposes and values. Find alignment in concrete practices and objectives in which those gardens can flourish. 

2) Regarding those practices:

  • Make your organizational practices fractal (consistency/coherence between internal and external relations).

  • Do not act as you know how others have to live their lives or run their business because you think you have higher moral standards. That leads to poor results, most of the time. Listen and be humble. Focus on adding value for both the one that pays you and the ecosystem. 

  • Think together the relational dimension of the community, the business dimension and the material conditions needed to make it sustainable.

  • Do not optimize. Think about redundancy and abundance as a must for surviving.

  • Prevent people with a scarcity mentality to occupy a relevant responsibility by organizational design (your set of practices). You will see folks that defend your purpose and values, sure. That certainly contribute a lot to the purpose and the organization, sure. But what you want to check is that they do not: a) only are generous with people with greater influence or resource access than them b) same with acknowledgment and attribution c) Barely participate in activities that put their flesh (not their financial contribution) in the game. 

  • Support asymmetrically the ones that prove to make the effort to jump in the wagon. Manage correctly expectations of reciprocity and mutual support in general (yours' and others'). Start micro, and then escalate. 

Sure we can discuss and improve the list above together. I have observed also a strong gender dimension here that I do not want to elaborate on now. 

I am currently busy as hell, but I'll try to join the conversation, and sharing the experience with my pod. I am really happy with it (so far).

RB

Ria Baeck Tue 21 Apr 2020 9:51AM

I would love to hear/read more on each of the topics you raise here!
Yes about shared practices! Also nice: 'make the practices fractal'! I would like to have some more 'flesh to the bones' on some of your next points. Maybe a blog article??? would be nice. thanks anyway! (as I read you are busy)

TB

Toni Blanco Tue 5 May 2020 12:43AM

Hi, Ria. I am sorry for not getting to you sooner. Never been this busy in my life! A lot of care work (toddlers, mum) and also that work that pays the bills.

The fractal idea goes further than what I summarized. And it does practically, not theoretically.

We had a plan to release consolidated knowledge and tools, and a beta tester call before releasing some materials (are they clear/complete enough?), but all this Covid19 mess is slowing us down. Look, I am catching up here at 2 AM! I am going to rethink that part of our planning and keep you updated. Explaining the fractal idea would be a fun post, I guess. It goes in two directions. a) We found that every practice we introduce includes, to some extent, the rest. That is why the more of them you adopt, the more effective and powerful they become, but also the easier is to adopt them. b) The way (the rules by) imagination works at the individual level, dyad, triad, crew/pod, congregation, and societal level is the same. And that is a clue to interpreting why the same practices (and their tensions) work, producing different outcomes, at any level. But I prevent myself to write about these things unless I clearly see how that would help to orient people into the adoption of practices. I guess that they do for researchers/experimenters, like the ones gathered here!

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