Organizations The Lionsberg Way

Organizations The Lionsberg Way describes pattens, processes, and tools that help Sovereign and Autonomous Individuals form and organize independent and autonomous Groups and Organizations.

We are co-creating these recommendations in concert with various sovereigns in the coalition, and intend to continuously improve them to reflect the Current Best Understanding of the Community.

In the context of the Lionsberg Integrated Delivery System, you may also hear Groups or Organizations referred to as Integrated Delivery Teams. These are relatively interchangeable Word Tools meant to point at autonomous groups collaborating in service of a Goal.

Purpose of Organizations

Organizations emerge to help groups of people accomplish what individuals cannot accomplish in isolation.

Like an individual or other living being, once established organizations can move towards goals, learn, grow, sense, think, and die.

Mechanisms of Organization

1. An organization has a Purpose, Principles, Values, and Goals.
2. An organization should establish a basic system of Governance to steer itself towards its goals, solve problems, and make decisions. This can be formal or informal.
3. An organization should define its Organizational Boundary. Organizations define their boundaries by creating Rules of Participation.
4. An organization should define its Rules of Participation. These can be formal or informal.
5. An organization should define its Agreements that guide its internal and external relationships. These can be formal or informal.
6. An organization should consider collaborating with other organizations to accomplish things that it cannot accomplish in isolation. This is a core behavior involved in Federating.
7. To accomplish things, organizations use Projects and Processes.
8. At the highest level, an organization might view itself as a Project of Projects, Process of Processes or a System of Systems. This creates a single overarching and uniting view of the organization as a whole.
9. A good starting point is to consider that Everything Is A Project.
10. Organizations can contain organizations within themselves, and can be contained within higher order organizations. This is critical to establishing the fractal patterning that works towards the idea of the universal Meta Organization.

How to Co-Create an Organization

First of all, don't be scared. Go for it. Over time, we want to work together to make it very easy for anyone who wants to take action with others to be able to do so freely and joyfully.

Spotting the Opportunity to Organize:

1. Pay attention to what is trying to emerge in conversation. Where are there potential or latent organizations that could come together, if they were noticed and attended to?
2. Pay attention to what needs to happen. Where are there things that need to be done, that you are passionate about and qualified to do, that are not being done? What vital component is missing?
3. Stone Soup: As you look at what is being cooked up in the field, what could you add that would make the collective experience even more delicious?

The Rule of Three

There is something very different about two than one, and something different about three than two.

One is a dot. Two is a line. Three is a triangle.

A triad is the minimum viable unit that creates a field of space.

There is an old proverb that says "A chord of three strands is not quickly torn asunder."

Wherever possible, forge a chord of at least at three strands. Forge a traingle. Forge a field. Hold space.

Three can break a tie vote. A third perspective adds depth.

Establish a Center of Gravity

1. Forge a locus of communication and organization that begins to create an identifiable Center of Gravity. The simplest version of this is three passionate people.
2. Choose a good descriptive Name.
3. Set up a Chat Channel.
4. If required, set up a place for Document Management.

Establish Purpose, Principles, and Goals

1. Establish the Purpose of the organization.
2. Establish the Principles and Values of the organization.
3. Establish the Goals of the organization.

Establish Rules of Participation

Establish how people will participate in the Organization, and how the Organization will participate with other Organizations.

Rules of Participation

Establish a Field of Agreements

Establish a Field of Agreements to govern the Domain.

Align Goals with the Goals of One or More Federations

We would highly recommend that:

1. Each Individual align their Goals with the Goals of one or more Groups or Organizations
2. Each Group and Organization align its Goals with the Goals of one or more Federation.
3. All Federations align their Goals with the Meta Goal of the Meta Federation.

This basic structure empowers individuals to act autonomously, while understanding the ways in which their individual efforts help accomplish nested Goals, all the way up to the Meta Goal.

Bootstrapping Cycles and Emergence

Bootstrapping up an organization is hard. It does not happen once, but rather through a continous iteration of cycles. #bootstrappingishard.

It is an emergent process, in that what the organization wants to do and is capable of doing is largely shaped by its participants, and the interest and willingness of the members to participate is largely shaped by what the organization wants to do, and how it wants to do it.

This is a constant negotiation and renegotiation between confirmed participants and potential participants, as they work together to continually rebalance the equation to everyone's satisfaction, in a way that accomplishes the Purpose and Goals of the organization.

Progressive Formalization

Just like any emergent life form, in the beginning nascent organizational life is very supple and malleable.

Over time as it grows, the Structure of the organization must progressively formalize itself and harden in order to support increased weight and activity of the organism.

A typical progressive formalization pattern might be:

1. Informal agreements and exploration
2. A written statement of purpose and goals
3. A Declaration
4. A Constitution
5. A fully functioning, evolving, system of systems and a documented and continuously improving Way of doing things.

In each case, the key is to start small and interate towards increasing proficiency and maturity.

Co-Create It In The Open

We would recommend the steps above be followed so that it gets the green shoot of what is emerging above the ground where others can see it and help cultivate it if they are interested. A Pattern of Failure is to try to secretly perfect things in isolation. A Pattern of Success is to rapidly iterate and collaborate in the open.

How to Operate and Organization

Project Delivery Guide Processes

Organizational Lifecycle

In the Old World, organizations where often established under the illusion that they might last forever.

We can expect and honor that organizations, like any life form, will develop through a lifecycle that eventually ends in a dissolution of thier energy back into the field of potential. This should be celebrated and honored.

It is cyclical and recursive process, but the patterns are often something like:

1. Idea
2. Conception
3. Coalescing
4. Defining
5. Evolving and Growing
6. Reproducing
7. Mature Steady State
8. Decline
9. Senescence
10. Dissolution
11. Rebirth

The desire of the Lionsberg System is to move towards a future in which these cycles are occurring in a Way that benefits All, and in which each birth and dissolution enriches the topsoil of the ecosystem from which diverse New forms of life continually emerge.

Rebirth

People and resources are recycled and reborn into other organizations within the Lionsberg Community and Commons. This makes dissolution a happy and generative phase of an organization, rather than a tragedy.

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