Category: Democracy

  • Tom Atlee on co-creation and democracy

    The following quotes of Tom Atlee are from Jim Rough‘s interview with Tom Atlee on March 7, 2000: “We are co-creators… And that’s the stance we need to learn to move into whatever is happening. Even if we are bystanders we are co-creating. It’s like the audience and the theatre co-creates the performance. We are…

  • Organizing reflection 25

    This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. The purpose of this post is to reflect on subjects occupying my mind. I make no claim to fully believe what I write. Neither do I pretend that others have not already thought or written about the same subject.…

  • Coming to the right solution for all

    “When we have to find solutions, we take our time. We begin in a circle of chiefs, with the grandmothers standing behind. The chiefs must answer to the grandmothers and to the community they represent for their decisions. They understand that they have a lot of responsibility, not to their own egos, but to the…

  • Mae-Wan Ho on the autonomy of organisms

    Mae-Wan Ho, is best known for her pioneering work on the physics of organisms and sustainable systems. Here’s what she writes on the autonomy of organisms in her book The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (in italics, my emphasis in bold): Organisms are never simply at the mercy of their environments on…

  • Lasse Berg om san-folkens egalitära kultur

    I sin bok Gryning över Kalahari: hur människan blev människa skriver Lasse Berg om san-folken och deras kultur (min betoning i fetstil): Hos san-folken råder en strängt egalitär kultur. 1 Samförstånd är det som gäller i alla san-grupper. … Men på samma sätt som jämlikhet inte betyder likhet, så kan samförstånd inte likställas med demokrati.…

  • Makt är att vara med och dela kunskap och information

    Jan-Erik Sebestyén skriver i ett mail till Agile Swedens maillista 2015-10-07 10:25:26 att: Ett grundproblem är makt hamnar hos individer i dagens system. Det gör att kunskap och information blir makt, något som gör flödet av kunskap och information segt. Det vill vi ha är detsamma som i alla demokratiska system: att makt är att…

  • Autognomics: Radical self-knowing

    Autognomics translates from Greek and basically means “know yourself at the deepest possible level”. Autonomics points to a unique characteristic of how life-knows itself. The “g”, making it autognomics, is added for greater clarity of meaning drawing from the word gnostic, to know. Skye Hirst is co-founder of The Autognomics Institute. The mission of the…

  • The egalitarian Vikings

    What you may not know is that the Vikings were surprisingly egalitarian. When settling in Iceland, they founded one of the world’s early democracies. The entire community was invited to the debating hall to thrash out the hot topics of the day, followed by a vote, with each person’s opinion carrying equal weight. Legend has…

  • How will companies approach the management challenge?

    Here is a visionary tweet by Kenneth Mikkelsen on how companies in the future will approach the management challenge. The businesses will: Have a higher purpose beyond making profit Hire people who are passionate about this higher purpose See all stakeholders as equally important Cultivate long-term relationships with suppliers Have open doors and be transparent…

  • Ackoff on consensus

    I have written previously here that I am convinced that sociocratic principles can be implemented in many ways. Below is an additional example from Russel L. Ackoff on the use of consensus which sounds very sociocratic to me: “Decisions made by a majority of participants usually create a dissatisfied minority.” “Decision-making by consensus avoids such…