In the last few years have been a journey into a brave new world, indeed. From a neat, tidy world of corporate hieararchy, I have transitioned into the world of self-employment - a world of alternative and complimentary healers and of spiritually-based organizations and a business called Explore with Hypnosis. What I love about this world is that, for the most part, there is no boss. Diffuse though it may be, we all serve with one goal, and one focal point - spirit and the betterment of our world.
Having said that, I have found that spiritual, healing and non-hierarchical organizations tend to have the same issues as any other organization. While we may seek to be part of a collective soul, field consciousness, spirit of unity - there are many names for it - each organization is made up of humans. Humans have viewpoints, egos and emotions. And so, like any organizations I have ever worked with in corporate America, the spiritual healing world finds the same problems of team building, group management and interpersonal dynamics.
In our own organization, The Circle of Healing Arts, we have been studying possible ways of more efficient decision making. We have looked at a number of ways, including the coop and communal models of the early1900's, a board-and-committees model of present day business, and a few others. In the process we have discovered the same question as any other spiritual, new-age or healing-focused organization. How do we combiner business and spirit in a way that gets things done while maintaining the integrity of the organization?
This has all led me to become interested in one big question. How do non-hierarchical organizations manage themselves? How does a leaderless organization get business done? And how does such an organization avoid chaos.
There is one difference between the corporate world and that of the healing and spiritual oriented organization. In the corporate world, there is usually some degree of hierarchy. At the top is the CEO and/or the chairman of the board. Further down the food chain are varying degrees of management - ranging from almost none in the tiniest startups to many layers of unwieldy bureaucracy in the most behemoth organizations. In the corporate world, At the end of the day, it is results that count. Regardless of how the organization is structured, each person within it is accountable for their work. The CEO is accountable to the owner, investors or stockholders. Managers and/or directors are responsible to the directors, and so on down the hierarchy.
This chain of accountability is built in to even the flattest of organizations - it's part of the culture. If absolutely necessary, a manager or director can step in and impose order. For better or for worse, such as during a crisis, sometimes the boss has to call the shots. Yet, in a non-hierarchical world, there is no boss. Thus, in crisis mode, who fills that role?
In more than one new-age organization I've seen, we had the abrupt and brutal realization that non-traditional though we might be, we were still a business. Like any business, we ultimately had to provide value and quality results to our customers (clients). We also had to balance income and expenses, pay the bills, market ourselves, etc. We had to organize meetings and conduct the work of the organization. This sometimes led to conflicts of philosophies, styles, personalities, etc.
So how does a new-paradigm (whatever that means) organization run itself? Is there a president? is there a board of directors? I've been reading a number of business case studies on-line, from business and new-age journals, etc. Many talk about how the non-hierarchical structure for a business is a concept fraught with peril. Yet I have also seen it work.
The largest organizations I've read about, which embodied non-hierarchical principles have been diverse entities such as the Occupy movement, the software organization Mozilla, and many semi-private or non-profit foundations. Among them are non-business entities such as Alcoholics Anonymous. So, again I ask, how do they do it? And how can organizations such as some that I belong to at the present time do the same?
One interesting book I've been reading is Calling the Circle, by Christina Baldwin. Diane, one of the healers in our coop, suggested it as a possible idea, and I believe it has a lot of merit. It combines a certain amount of structure, yet retaining a consensus-driven, non-hierarchical approach - perhaps the best of both worlds.
In Calling the Circle, Christina Baldwin gives a methodology for conducting leaderless - or as she puts it, shared leadership - councils for decision making and problem solving. She says that the council circle is one of the oldest forms of governance in humanity, what she says is the First Culture. And her claim is that by returning to this form of communication/meeting, we can again solve problems that have bedeviled our current culture.
According to Baldwin, we now are in what she calls the Second Culture - comprised of hierarchical governance, with a designated leader or leadership structure, and the rest who do the following. She states that by integrating the council structure into the modern world of business, government and spirituality, we can create the Third Culture, a return to some of the First Culture principles, bringing their benefit into our present-day world.
Baldwin provides distinct rules and procedures for conducting a circle. She has combined these into a trademarked process she calls PeerSpirit. We are currently studying this as a possible way to run coop meetings. It will be interesting to see what works, what doesn't, and how we might adapt this methodology to the operations of The Circle of Healing Arts.
Meanwhile, I wonder if Christina Baldwin's Peer Circle methodology would have interesting applications in other areas of life. As I/we study it more, learning the ins and outs of this Third Culture, the results will be fascinating to see. Maybe we will begin to see the answer to the question, how can non-hierarchical organizations govern themselves?
