Great thread…Some thoughts on bottom-up decision making…
I would push back on the assertion that “this is all theoretical and without lived wisdom, experience, or embodiment”. As seen in the presentations during the Governance Jam, there is a long, rich lineage of more bottom-up organizations. Sociocracy and DisCOs seem the most promising (post on DisCOs coming soon). Coops are huge. According to the International Cooperative Alliance, “At least 12% of people on earth is a cooperator of any of the 3 million cooperatives on earth”. While all of these have some form of hierarchy, well, all systems do. I think the distinction here is between those organizations where people at the bottom have visibility, voice and agency, and those that don’t. More power at the edges.
Stepping further back, it is commonly argued that the USA beat the USSR and communism because of decentralized information processing. Millions of businesses empowered to make their own decisions can distribute resources better than a central planning committee ever could. Small businesses are arguably the largest decentralized movement, and generally treat workers better.
I really like this.
I think many in our community have experience being in (and organizing) more bottom-up organizations, like I mention above. We can learn from them, in addition to using the tools and frameworks those organizations have created for others to create their own.
Also, as I mentioned in the Emergent Strategy reading today, I think SourceCred is already providing people a taste of bottom-up structure. I think this is something that is getting lost in the discussion here. SC is already a breakthrough in decentralized management. If you, person who is reading this, like this post, some Cred and Grain (i.e. money) will flow to me. In nearly all top-down organizations, this power is reserved for only those at the top. Perhaps a few people at the bottom have access to “petty cash”, or something similar. Small amounts of money to spend at their discretion. But nothing like what we have with the graph. Sure, those with higher Cred scores will move the graph more. But that is a feature not a bug. It is earned authority. Which is really what most (or at least I) want. Which brings me to another point…
SoruceCred, without an org structure laid on top of it, already has a visible hierarchy. Indeed, our default view in the Cred Explorer is a list of contributors by Cred score.
We can also drill down, see where contributors’ Cred comes from. We can see how much they’ve been paid, how much Grain they’ve sold. This already provides far more transparency and visibility of the hierarchy than you’ll find at a company, for instance, where the real power structures are often hidden, do not always map well to the org chart, and pay is typically unequal (often vastly so).
And as @Beanow points out in a recent reply on Cred weighting, being visibly higher in the hierarchy can itself provide a lot of authority.
But even having an informal status of core contributor and being 3rd on the “leaderboard” in my experience gave me a snowballing potential over others. It comes with more visibility, authority, easier access to other influential people (at CredCon for example) and easier access to off-the-record information. Those benefits compounded my ability to earn even more Cred.
Certainly I didn’t feel like core contributors need additional help to secure a fair amount of Cred for their work. At the same time, my case showed a new contributor was able to work their way up to core without knowing anyone on the team before. So (at least for a developer) the previous situation delivered on the promise of reduced gate-keeping and being meritocratic.
I’m not saying we don’t need more hierarchical structures. Just that they should be aware of and make use of the current formal power contributors already have. And Cred scores! How can we not use these! I believe our existing structure can take us a long way, perhaps further than we think.
I think one recurring theme, which nobody seems to oppose, is the idea of people “owning” things, projects. Simply taking responsibility. Which seems to be a bigger barrier usually than trying to resolve disputes over what to do, or trying to coerce other contributors to work. I remember all the time we put into fleshing out Champions and Heros, Initiatives. I remember that working well when we started using it. I was excited. Then it was abondoned for the Creditor. Which is fine. But I think just simply having people take ownership of things, on a project-by-project basis, or roles for fixed time windows (e.g. Treasurer), is a solid mechanism. One that is fairly permissionless, aligned with anarchic systems (which do have hierarchy usually!) and fits into other suggested models as well. This may not work for every type of decision, but should not be discounted IMO.
I think there’s consensus on adopting some form of formal governance structure. However, as stressed by Adrian Marie Brown and many of the proposed systems, you don’t have to rely on hierarchy as much when you have shared understanding and values. I’ve seen a lot of great ideas and progress here, particularly in the Cultivation branch. And think we’re surprisingly value aligned generally. However, creating an explicit document of shared values, code of conduct, would reinforce and systematize that. This could be especially useful when we run out of friends of friends to sorucepill, and contributors with less shared context come in. A values statement could also be used to help resolve disputes. Not only about problematic behavior, but which direction to go in.
Another related coordination mechanism commonly used is a mission statement. The one I’ve been using in my head is “To accurately value every contribution”.
One way to build shared context and understanding is writing. E.g. a newsletter. One way to help that is to build the Creditor, so this type of work doesn’t go unpaid. Building up Cred legibility, Crediquette, and documentation generally will also help this.
One more thought I’ll add, is that once the Creditor is live, we’ll have the ability to give Cred in a more strategic, higher-level way. This will mean, necessarily, that activity not in alignment with our explicit goals (i.e. people not rowing in the decided direction), will get less Cred and Grain. This ‘pull’ towards productive work I imagine has the power to replace more coercive mechanisms (information asymmetries, exclusive access, taking away binary roles (“firing”) , etc.). I’ve seen 1Hive already have success directing behavior by just changing weights. For instance, reducing the #meme channel on Discord to 0 made all the meme spammers go elsewhere very quickly. The sort of deal I imagine is, do whatever you want. If you add value, you’ll get rewarded. But the system values contributions more if you’re furthering project goals. If your side mission ends up being valuable, great. But you take on that risk, not the project.
Or we just consult the I Ching to make decisions 
Actually, just got my copy of this in the mail. Have already used it to reflect on SourceCred stuff! @blueridger
To put my thoughts into I Ching form, let’s just shape the topology such that contributors flow like water to where we want them.
This website is pretty good too if you’re lazy like me,