Dance to a different tune on a new dance floor — governance that makes SHfT happen! 🎧 🎶
Our unstitutional journey towards shaping and supporting life-affirming regenerative ecosystems and a society that can work for all has continued to intersect with some of the commons-based work of Evolutesix. The potential here, goes way beyond us — enabling so many amazing people, initiatives and entities to establish the conditions as needed for interdependent mission-critical ecosystem layer work that can gain resilient roots and flourish.
Perhaps old news by now, society’s GDP driven monocapital economic model is deeply flawed — on a spiralling degenerative trajectory. Mariana Mazzucato, Kate Raworth, John Fullerton, Dr. Steve Keen, and other enlightened economists advocate compellingly for overhaul, toward regenerative socially just, wellbeing economies.
Marjorie Kelly and Christopher Marquis are also doing stellar work exposing the dark underbelly of the driving economic system. Marjorie’s book: Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises and Christopher’s book: The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost — are potentially catalyzing forces to support needed shifts. There are many others who have written/published excellent books, articles and research whose ongoing work aligns.
Recognizing the need to advance alternatives, many of us reference R. Buckminster Fuller’s famous adage:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
There is a rise of local or cosmo-local, grassroots ventures and initiatives and conscious social and environmental impact businesses and entrepreneurs chipping away, trying to be the change — still impacted by the pervasive paradigm and hamstrung by conventional incorporation and business models and practices.
Many and growing numbers of capable people on regenerative paths with well-intended goals working hard to help shift the trajectory towards regenerative business practices, bioregioning and ways of living and working — lack enabling building blocks. While we realize (with considerable concern) this will take a long time, we continue to observe the widespread fragility and failure rate of start up efforts and initiatives.
Funded multicapital ecosystem scaffolding is increasingly imperative, to make and sustain meaningful tangible progress — from the ground up.
Graham Boyd, a founding pioneer of the FairShares Commons (FSC) pattern language and incorporation framework over many years, is a guiding force for adaptable governance stewardship towards meeting purpose and needs, aligned with long term regenerative capacity.
“A FairShares Commons is designed to meet the needs of multiple stakeholder groups (not just investors). It operates legally (with existing company law) to protect and enable the regeneration of all capitals that all stakeholders contribute (human, intellectual, social/relational, natural, manufactured and financial).
The ultimate driver for this is to create the conditions for a regenerative and circular / net positive economy to rise to our global challenges, (by protecting and enabling the regeneration of the common pool resources that each organisation and community uses, governs, manages and grows.)” ~ Graham Boyd
Seeking an alternative model, that will enable us to uphold our seriously and playfully articulated operating principles, Unstitution is patterned as a FairShares Commons. We’ve defined a FSC legal incorporation pathway with the governance and operating framework that aligns well with our purpose as a collaborative commons.
Co-catalyzed purposeful coalitions, living lab pilots, initiatives and ventures can also benefit, shaping bespoke governance frameworks with the right pattern or legal structure — tailored according to the purpose and nature of the work, as ecosystem development unfolds.
An overview — peeling back more layers
“Being a legally formed FairShares Commons entity, or as a DAO, increases standards of inclusion and equality between the different stakeholders, enhancing fairness and appropriate distribution of value and power.
FairShares Commons provides a sound foundation for any viable regenerative entity and cluster of initiatives because it can build connected ecosystems based on multicapital models. The integrity of purpose and principles are hardwired, whereby all key stakeholders govern and benefit from successful outcomes and impact.
The legal FairShares Commons framework, enables all stakeholders to share the rights and obligations (power) to govern the entity (or coalition) and the multicapital value/wealth generated. So all stakeholders work together to always find ways that meet core needs, including those of society and the planet.
Add in freedom from any concept of property, where the entity and its people cannot be bought or sold, and ensure stewardship roles to safeguard the interests of future generations — and the FairShares Commons becomes a demonstrated living, operating reality.”
The back story — a bit more on how we arrived here and why
Conventional business organizations are the usual formal legal structures through which work gets done in society. Most of these are primarily formed around the needs of one stakeholder group (e.g. most often investors or sometimes staff), and are also internally structured to operate as hierarchies.
We’ve all experienced the limitations as well as the waste and toxicity of many of these conventionally designed and operated organizations. Nevertheless, these have continued as the predominant form throughout the industrial revolution and beyond…
NGO organizations, formed around the needs of clients and constituent stakeholder groups of society, often fall into similar patterns — driven by needs for funding and funder stakeholder entities.
Important to note — B Corp certified companies, benefit corporations, co-operative ownership, purpose collectives and employee-owned companies have made good progress. However, their governance does not yet go far enough to enable and protect legal personhood, deep ecosystem-layer investment and development or safeguard the interests of future generations.
We’ve also observed the proliferation of various distributed networked groups. Loose, collaborative affiliations, collectives, networks, meshworks and alliances are great. While they help to build connections, relationships, communities of practice (CoPs) and provide some informal mycelium connective tissue between groups, organizations and initiatives — they generally remain fairly amorphous and permeable. Some evolve into more formal partnership agreements with terms of engagement. While these specify some mutual expectations, relationships are often transactional and surface deep. The potential for deeper collaborative interdependent investment, innovation and development, is generally quite limited.
While networks are wonderful and important, there are real limitations. People come and go — lots of start-stop — fluid and shifting priorities create difficulty gaining and sustaining momentum. The stakes are generally (too) low.
And networks are not designed to ‘work’ as ‘work systems.’
Conventionally established boxed-in insular entities and loosely configured mycelium networks sub-optimize for very different reasons. Neither are set up with the requisite enabling contexts and conditions for continuity to carry out regenerative work — emergent and designed — especially in a world that continues along a trajectory of engrained degenerative patterns.
A compelling overarching driving purpose is a key step that provides some real stakes and glue that binds. Sound evolutionary navigation strategy that guides direction helps to define pathways and make progress toward common goals. While we build these elements into the coalitions, initiatives, living lab pilots and communities that we co-catalyze and support, these alone do not necessarily provide enough form to support the needed function and to develop the resilience required to thrive over time.
A viable alternative governance and operating model and structure is needed.
There’s been lots of talk about the need for new models and structures that free us from the inherent fragility, flaws and gaps of current driving economic, governance and operating systems.
There are also decades of work pointing compellingly to the need to reconstitute the commons into the living fabric of society. Lots of foundational work has been done.
What if there was an alternative legal governing framework that can be paired with a fluid, human operating framework — with just enough binding glue to galvanize initiatives towards regenerative mission critical direction, while allowing for enough permeability and informal, healthy ebb and flow towards emergent creativity and learning?
What if it already exists?
It does! This is what we discovered through our ongoing learning journey, that can potentially complement and collectively strengthen the work of so many others who are on regenerative paths.
This new dance floor, as we playfully describe it, has actually been around for more than a decade. The FairShares Commons (FSC) is an alternative governance model, that couples fluid organization design and adaptive development with aligning roles and relationships — a whole governance, operating model and structure for companies, coalitions, ventures, pilots, initiatives and entities.
Doughnut Economics, through the ongoing work of D.E.A.L. and scientists throughout the world have been raising awareness and educating people regarding humanity’s perilous trajectory, escalating overshoot — exceeding the carrying capacity of the finite living planet we all call home. The FairShares Commons offers a workable way forward, that galvanizes and complements efforts to help shift the trajectory:
FSC Commons companies represent the most congruent incorporation for aligning with the Doughnut Economics model. FSCs are inherently adaptive and legally protective and enabling structures that prioritize the stewardship of multiple forms of capital — natural, human, social, and intellectual — while fostering inclusive governance and equitable wealth distribution. This aligns with the Doughnut model’s emphasis on operating within planetary boundaries while ensuring social foundations are met, making Commons companies uniquely positioned to balance ecological sustainability with social AND financial equity. ~ Evolutesix
The FairShares Commons framework is not a cookie cutter model and it’s not a methodology. It offers a viable legal holistic framework with plenty of adaptability.
The coalitions, initiatives and ventures that Unstitution co-catalyzes and supports can adopt the core framework, flexibly adapting it to serve specific needs. We can work together to guide and steward this process whenever aligned and deemed timely and beneficial.
Based on the nature and purpose of the work, coalitions or entities ready to embrace an alternative form will be better equipped to establish and sustain a regenerative path, developing mutually invested interdependent ecosystems that serve people and planet.
Again, important to understand that the FairShares Commons is not a methodology. It is an adaptive overarching commons governance constitutional framework and pattern language that provides enabling conditions for many different aligned methodologies, processes, technologies and tools to work better in the context of uncertain environments — a non-ergodic world.
Functioning in complementary ways, FSC patterned and incorporated entities are equipped with a nested governing framework — helping various entities and initiatives become anti-fragile and more resilient.
For example, place-sourced bioregioning and urban community initiatives can develop stronger interdependent ecosystem-layer regenerative capacity. FSCs can work compatibly with community land trusts (CLTs,) DAOs, tokenization, alternative currencies, and blockchain technology. It all works together.
Stewardship is important. All FSC incorporated companies or entities have legally drafted constitutions with articles of incorporation that must uphold a core set of general principles. In the beginning phases of the entity’s life, stewards’ roles are especially vital to enable, protect and live into these principles.
To protect:
🔮 Capacity to be a commons for its members — with a deep embodied understanding of what that means
🔮 The interests of future generations — at least seven generations
🔮 Freedom such that it cannot be bought or sold
🔮 Against narrow interest or stakeholder groups or stakeholders gaining controlling power over the company, its IP curated as a commons, its operations, or the wealth it generated
🔮 The FairShares principles of wealth generated being shared across members and a fair share of the right to engage in governance across those affected by governance decisions
🔮 The three Adaptive Way rules: care for self, care for the other, care for the whole
To foster the:
🔮 Wise use of IP, effort, and wealth for the good of members, human society, and living natural ecosystems
🔮 development and deployment of technology as an enabler — not a runaway driver
🔮 Generation of long-term sustainable wealth across multiple capitals, including financial, human and environmental, in accord with the entity’s values
🔮 Use of processes designed to surface multiple perspectives in all decisions and integrate them into a final proposal that takes into account all the perspectives from all stakeholder groups, regardless of size. For example the consent / integrative decision process of sociocracy or Holacracy
Incorporating as a FSC meets the law of the land, in a way that makes maximum use of the law to deliver regenerative outcomes — instead of today’s practice, which is to deliver maximum return to financial capital investors. To complete the legal incorporation, it is necessary to work with an open-minded corporate lawyer, accommodating the specific local and country legal requirements.
It’s also advised to get accounting and tax advice to comply with local financial authority policies and processes.
In summary
Why the FSC model is a good idea — a practical, adaptive alternative whose time has come:
🔮 Ecosystem layer entities (companies) with clear societal driving purpose and legal personhood
🔮 Restores original (lost) wider and deeper meaning and purpose of a company
🔮 The company or entity is not an ownable good, but is legally a person with its own agency; a commons of people and capitals
🔮 Anti-fragile…robust over time and within the contexts of changing environments and an unknowable future
🔮 Enables good startup initiatives and ventures to become resilient
🔮 Values multicapitals or capacities
🔮 Establishes clear rights and obligations aligned with purpose
🔮 Ensures fairness with benefits for all stakeholders — nature and investors etc -with the highest Return on Investment and Return on Impact potential in uncertain (non-ergodic) environments — over time.
🔮 Creates the conditions for essential collaboration with healthy competition — sometimes described as co-opetition
🔮 Allows for different categories of contributions/value, voting rights and remuneration etc.
🔮 Demonstrates how adaptive (living system) practices enable human systems to function and thrive — pretty much what Indigenous cultures have always understood
🔮 Fosters progress toward economic circularity
What FSC accomplishes:
🔮 Provides legal governing structure, principles and practices that place value on multiple forms of capital, contribution, or capacities that interdependently best serve the entities and the common societal good
How it generally enables and protects:
🔮 Mitigates against risks of bad actors or actions, with clear minimum critical provisions and safeguards, baked into the Articles of Incorporation
🔮 Delineates clear transparent decision rights and obligations
🔮 Facilitates decisions aligned with the commons ecosystem and driving purpose for existence
🔮 Flexibly shapes or tailors the legal FSC according to the special nature, properties or requirements of the particular entity — not a cookie cutter
🔮 Engenders the high level of systemic trust and justice required
🔮 Meets current needs and adapts to changing requirements and circumstances over time
🔮 Preserves core principles and elements
🔮 Provides a crucial missing link, tangibly helping us navigate the shift from conventional Horizon 1/2↗ regenerative Horizon 3
Coalition and ecosystem building work can be more joyful. We can benefit from the diversity and flexibility of networks while working within a legal or patterned FSC framework that values its members for the work we love and are able to do, while collectively learning, developing, contributing and adding value, and living into a regenerative future.
In this video presented at the 2024 Ergodicity Economics Conference, Graham Boyd articulates the potential of FairShares Commons companies/entities. He points the way towards integrative regenerative ecosystem building, elaborating on the structural integrity, systemic trust and resilience of FSC, undergirded by governed cooperative profit pooling among ecosystem stakeholders. There’s a treasure trove packed into that 10 minute intro clip.
These are the missing links— the functional catalytic HOWs that can get us off the pervasive degenerative monocapital system moving toward a Horizon 3 life-affirming paradigm.
It really needs many of us on board building and contributing to regenerative ecosystems, to:
🔮 Shift the trajectory and yield the mutual social, environmental and economic benefits
🔮 Leverage and step up needed shifts that are not dependent on global scale economic change happening first
🔮 Understand how the principles of ergodicity with fractional-pooled investing at the ecosystem layers, can be applied — factoring in realities of living and working in an uncertain unpredictable non-ergodic world
🔮 Unlock and allocate the funding flows required to support and gain resilient life-affirming regenerative progress at the interdependent ecosystem layers
Going a bit deeper still…also important to note that FairShares Commons incorporation isn’t limited to new startups — beginning fresh and starting from scratch.
Ventures/entities that already operate with pre-existing legal status as incorporated businesses can transition. FairShares Commons has some flexible provisions for reincorporation that deal with pre-FSC company incorporation.
For example, pre-existing share distribution can be accommodated whereby the new team/members/stakeholders have all the appropriate governance power even if some of the financial value of the (original) founder’s shares remains with the founder. A fixed or revenue dependent schedule can be established for founder share purchase. Alternately the founder can treat their shares as qualifying for royalties (% of profits / revenue.)
Good to know that FSC reincorporation is an option, enabling transition from conventionally incorporated and governed monocapital entities toward healthy adaptive multicapital regenerative ecosystem-layer governance and operations.
Phew! Congratulations for hanging in.
We know this stuff cannot be absorbed with a cursory skim read. That’s why we are so pleased to be working with the Evolutesix team and evolving constellations of ecosystems, easing the way for many more of us — as part of an ongoing emergent and strategic co-learning journey, designed to make real progress that will widen access for all.
Working through the actual decisions and details with those who need to help shape the course, is a valuable part of the emergent process, as work gets underway. It’s part of the work. It is not necessary to figure everything out with granularity, in advance. In fact, trying to do so is counterproductive — a leftover of the predict-and-control mechanized Industrial Age that fails to serve real needs.
We now know with confidence how a FairShares Commons governance framework can truly help change the game in ways that align with adaptive living system and life-affirming principles that so many of us hold in our heads, hearts and hands. That’s what we mean by:
Wisdom with teeth
When we figured that out, we broke into a big happy dance!
Come dance! It’s going to take many more of us working together to make things better!
Music: album In a Time lapse by Ludovico Einaudi 🎶
*This article was updated again January 2025, reflecting additional information, perspectives and ongoing action research, as we continue to observe, listen, assimilate, curate and adapt — a learning journey for us all.
Unstitution was birthed as a collective creative commons and nested ecosystem. We (co-)catalyze and support collaborative communities, initiatives and coalitions where people from across sectors, disciplines, cultures, generations and walks-of-life work together on mission critical issues. From readiness through to regenerative progress — moving beyond polarization — is how we roll. The links embedded throughout this article are a warm invitation to go a bit deeper, at any time. For more insights reflecting our ongoing journey, our suite of Unstitution articles are published on Medium. They reflect a small sample of the ways we are adapting and contributing among ever-expanding commons-based communities and initiatives inspired and fuelled by citizens — perhaps better described as denizens — anywhere in the world — living into the principles and spirit that govern our collaborative work. Each article is a fractal-like glimpse into the unstitutional ethos.
A note about the extensive use of italics. We recognize that so many words and terms are filtered and interpreted through different lenses. Deep shared understanding is gained through generative dialogue — active listening and inquiry. The articles are serving as catalytic springboards, inspiring deeper excavation towards collective coherence.
You can follow Unstitution and engage with us on LinkedIn. Many of our posts and perspectives also pop up under hashtags #messyhumanness and #wisdomwithteeth.
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