Our way of being — starting with Unstitution’s governance patterns
“If you don’t have a moral question in your governing process, then you don’t have a process that’s going to survive.” “Every day you don’t do what’s right is a day you lose an option.” ~ Faith Keeper Oren Lyons
People often glaze over when the subject of governance is broached. And yet there is growing, if not a looming sense that governance, sorely neglected, warrants focused serious attention, rethinking and reform.
We can’t really address governance without revisiting purpose. So — that is where we began…
These days the meaning of purpose seems to have lost its way.
What is the purpose of purpose?
A real sense of purpose sets us up to navigate well towards an envisioned, yet unknowable future — within an uncertain non-ergodic world.
Purpose also requires a moral compass that helps us discern what is (roughly) right and wrong — good and bad.
At a personal level, we have and need our own sense of purpose, infused with meaning, while aligning within larger nested purpose that interconnects us with our lives and work.
To be fit-for-purpose, organizations — coalitions, ventures, and living lab initiatives and entities — are necessarily directed by some common unifying principles.
Contexts are vital. They influence sense and meaning-making, purpose and direction and human system values and behaviour.
To be fit for (future) purpose, it’s essential to view purpose through the lens of broader societal needs — taking into account the differentiated and interdependent roles of business, government and civil society.
“It’s time to operate from a deep sense of purpose, that transcends institutions, borders, and boundaries.” ~ Otto Scharmer
In fact, society is way out-of-balance, exceeding the carrying capacity of the living planet we call home. The evolutionary clock is ticking loudly.
Clear, commons-based missions and enabling structures that are fit for present purpose and adaptable for future purpose, are needed to arrest degenerative escalation and humbly guide the way toward regenerative wellbeing and flourishing potential — conducive to life.
From this contextual reckoning, we began our search for an alternative model that will enable Unstitution’s collaborative commons to evolve and stay true to our spirit and driving purpose — to reboot society’s operating system. This, of course, is a very big hairy mission that obviously involves many more of us collectively working along multiple pathways over many years, well beyond our lifetimes.
We learned that the purpose problem arises and becomes increasingly problematic when a purpose becomes disconnected from the driver — the deeper context and need that typically inspires original founders to establish their venture in the first place.
Purpose and vision too often drift into insular, self-perpetuating navel gazing instead of evolving, at the speed-of-change, always grounded in context and relevant to changing needs.
And so …
The driver comes before any purpose. The driver is the combination of the current environment and the need calling to be met. The purpose (alone) is insufficient…(It is essential) to always (adaptively) meet the need, within the constraints and possibilities of the current environment (within an evolutionary context over time.) ~ Drawn from Rebuild: The Economy, Leadership and You
We discovered FairShares Commons (FSC.) This resilient governance model and pattern language enables the legal designation of stewardship roles and integrates with an operating framework that supports driving fit-for purpose fluid organization design and healthy ecosystem development.
What is a FairShares Commons company or entity and why designing an organization as an ecosystem of people using this pattern language is important?
“An FSC 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
The FSC reference to company restores the original (lost) meaning and purpose of a company. Western society has led companies down a soulless myopically-driven economic path. We need our companies and institutions to work well and contribute to a (reasonably) balanced (bio)diverse society.
The origins of the word “company” are traced back to the old French term compagnie meaning: society, friendship and intimacy and further back derived from the Latin word companio — one who eats bread with you. Earlier still, its roots go back to Germanic expressions translated to mean with bread and companion.
FSC provides basic structure, principles and adaptive practices on which Unstitution’s collaborative commons is patterned. The FSC model will help us live our driving purpose and, over time, develop collaborative ecosystem development functions, based on evolving needs and synergistic opportunities.
The FSC governing architectural scaffolding helps to delineate, enable and protect clear rights, obligations and safeguards. It fosters systemic trust and aligns with our unstitutional ethos — the seriously-playful operating principles that inspire our code of conduct.
Trust as a design principle?
Trust — another term that is often referenced.
🌏 Do we know what we mean when we talk about trust?
🌍 Do we understand the contextual conditions that engender or erode trust among and across groups, that affect human capacity to work well?
We all know that trust matters. The quality of trust between humans plays a crucial role in our relationships and the functioning of interactions and their impact on the system of engagement.
There are different kinds or thresholds of trust, whereby (interdependent) people can count on one another with reasonable assurance, of what to mutually expect from the relationship and the exchange.
The context in which relationships function plays a powerful role influencing, shaping, valuing and rewarding behaviour — the way we engage and work.
The formal, legal governing and operating systems of the entities (organizations) involved provide crucial context-setting parameters that can safeguard a minimum threshold of systemic trust, facilitating working relationship conduct.
Sadly, most of us have grown up in a world with institutions and organizations that have steadily eroded trust. This is a deep subject with many underlying contributing factors spanning decades. The context and conditions that foster and sustain systemic trust are generally missing.
Good intentions and big hearts are important ingredients — but not enough. Many of us have learned this through painful disappointments…
This has become even more important than ever as we navigate between worlds through extended times of escalating destabilization and turbulence.
Many people feel trapped, employed by organizations that are not fit-for-purpose, doing work that doesn’t feel meaningful, that fails to add real value. Many more are struggling to find work and channel their passions and energies into work that they value.
This represents a tragic misalignment. More than ever, we need the best of people’s agency, diverse capabilities, collaborative creativity, co-intelligence and spirit — valued and channelled toward the most important work of our time.
The FSC governance model and structure offer an available, workable alternative that intentionally, consciously builds systemic trust into the legal (patterning) framework. The decision process — as people get underway applying, defining and adapting the FSC framework, aligned with the entity’s purpose and needs — is itself necessarily highly participative and developmental.
Indeed, the FSC is founded on trust as a design principle, rooted in the original intended reason that companies were formed — to create trust between and among (prosperous) people, from multiple, instead of just one ‘wealthy’ family.
In the FSC, that is expanded across all stakeholder groups, capitals, or asset classes. This design principle is based on the original source of capital — a wider interpretation that naturally includes all the capitals or capacities that hold value and are required for exchange or flow that contributes to the regenerative health of the whole.
While there are many variables, including informal elements, that affect the level of relational trust between people, that cannot be designed or hard-wired into the beingness of living systems — the governing context goes a long way to building trust-enhancing conditions and preventing trust erosion. Systemic trust can provide a foundational layer needed for systemic viability and resilience over time.
Why incorporating as a FSC is important
The FSC incorporation builds systemic trust between organizations, communities and individuals to work together to meet the needs of all life.
Incorporation enables:
🌏 Systemic trust between individuals and groups of people who need not necessarily like, agree or want to collaborate with each other.
🌍 Multiple stakeholders incentivized to work together and regenerate — whereby the capitals or capacities they contribute and grow can create truly circular economies
🌎 The whole system to prosper — regenerating all capitals in balance, as required to thrive
🌏 Limited liability to its members — whether creators, builders or users of the common pool resources — what DAOs are currently missing
🌍 Built-in commitment and adoption of democratic / sociocratic organizing principles and consent-decision-making processes — rebalancing power and abolishing extracted and consolidated wealth (degenerative conditions)
Important note: Ongoing inner and leadership development is vital for the health of the whole system. The FSC journey builds in and tailors this development in the context of the specific coalition, venture, or living lab pilot initiative.
Those involved collaborate and jointly decide how best to include and fund this work that enables the ecosystem and constituent parts / members to function well, in accordance with the FSC’s life-affirming principles and practices.
There’s lots more to all this, including:
🌏 Clarity of multiple (and evolving) stewardship roles that safeguard governing principles, over time
🌍 Specifying the value flows / exchange of multicapitals or capacities — way beyond financial
🌎 Many ways to reward/recognize different contributions — what we often describe as gifts differing
🌏 Various ways to enable and protect our core mission — the essence of the entity
We sure had lots of questions when we embarked on this path. Initially, we thought it might lead us down a deep rabbit hole.
Then we discovered how adaptable the FSC governance framework really is — designed to suit specific current needs and flex to changing emergent requirements over time. That adaptability is crucial. It means that — apart from the key overarching constitutional elements established from the start that protect us and all life — there are many decisions that can be made and adapted as we evolve, based on shifting needs, learning and ongoing development.
The FSC framework and pattern language, applied with care, is inherently regenerative — by nature.
In short, FSC is helping us define our minimum, yet critical structural requirements — just enough metaphorical binding twine and glue so that the really important stuff can hold together and stick!
We are always putting our decisions and actions through a filter, to ensure and test alignment with our why — driving purpose and congruence with our how — a still evolving living operating system. Not perfect, but we work at it every day.
Adaptive living and working is not about perfection and certainty. This has always been true, though many of us living through western dominated colonizing industrialized society have lost touch with this.
Navigating regenerative pathways is an ongoing (un)learning journey — breaking free of binary, reductionist, extractive compartmentalization.
As living communal beings, we need adaptive life-affirming governance and structures and prosocial practices that value our interdependence with all life. Co-discovering the ways and means to realign our relationships into ‘right relationship’ and towards wholeness — perhaps, the greatest challenge of our times!
And while we are here, a few more words about our navigational moral compass…
While we care deeply about the many overlapping social, environmental and economic issues that underlie the world’s and humanity’s serious challenges — the meta-poly-perma-omni crises— we don’t have a vested interest on any one particular issue, set of solutions or methodologies.
We are omni-partial — relatively subject and methodology agnostic. We do not assume fixed ideological or authoritative subject expert positions. This is intentional, given a very polarized world and no lack of expertise, experience, methodologies and wisdom on which to draw and ways we can partner, with gifts differing — within and across ecosystems.
As a collaborative commons entity working from the space between, we maintain a omni-partial orientation. In essence, we are on the side of all parties, stakeholders or participants toward common(s) purpose in the best interests of the whole or nested wholes. We work at keeping open minds and resist (unchecked) assumptions and judgments that amplify divisiveness.
We do, however, draw some red lines that we don’t cross. Here are a few:
🌏 We don’t promote or work on behalf of any one organization, sector or interest group to gain advantage over or compete against other organizations, sectors or interest groups
🌍 We don’t accept funds that might compromise our ability to stay true to our mission or operating principles or compromise our ability to make sound congruent decisions
🌎 We don’t participate in partisan political affairs or advocate from political platforms
Being a collaborative commons, our overarching guiding compass and focus, orient us toward partnering patterns and a reframed sense of belonging that can potentially open and widen the space toward regenerative patterns — ways of being. And so, we are especially mindful of domination-oppression patterns that insidiously reinforce and sustain a degenerative paradigm of apartheid.
The coalitions, communities and living lab initiatives we co-catalyze and support can also have their very own FairShares Commons governance framework — as a preliminary guiding pattern — and, in order to fully benefit — as a legally incorporated entity.
This is an ongoing evolving journey. Having learned some basics, and still learning, we’re hopefully clearing the way for many others to embark and shape context-based and place-sourced entities and pathways that best suit purpose and needs — aligned with the spirit and embodied principles of regeneration.
A bit more information about the way a FSC can be shaped and set up for other coalitions or entities can be found here, with additional resources on which to draw, attuned to specific interests, needs and readiness to navigate forward.
Reach out to learn more and explore synergies.
This article was updated September 2024, reflecting additional 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.
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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