For an introduction to this expanding meta-thread see Integral Anti-Capitalism pt I. We continue here because we have, hilariously, exceeded this website's capacity...

LAYMAN PASCAL

I agree that holacracy should be singled out for special investigation. The provocative notion that we are dramatically over-emphasizing the need for "conscious leadership" pertains very pertinently to this discussion. Robertson, like ourselves, is pointing to the fact that business (organizations) which integrally improve the interiors and cultural
spirit of their participants are still predisposed to certain outcomes as a result of their actual structural habits of communication and their specific decision-making protocols.
His notion of a constantly self-correcting dynamic organization drawing upon the capacity of individuals to act as tension-sensors relative to the "evolutionary purpose" of the organization is compelling and admirable.

More important is simply that he is making a stand and making an attempt to construct a protocol (constitution). I am not fully versed in the 4.0 version of the holacracy constitution but we should get deeper into some of these proposals.  

Given the level of your current knowledge of their protocols, what would you want to change or add in order to ethically and functionally empower this approach even more?

THEURJ

First some housekeeping in providing links in part I to comments on holacracy: their website, comment 1, comment 2, comment 3 (and 3 more on p. 7), and the first 7 comments on p. 8

I’m not yet familiar enough with holacracy to know it might need. So for now I’ll ask questions.  From p. 8 there was a blog post on ownership and the model might (but not necessarily) include outside capital investors. I asked:

“One question immediately pops up on outside investors. Are there limits on the amount of outside capital investment? What if their investment is such that without it the company could not financially survive? And/or depends on it for start-up? Then such investment would control the company, like it or not. If you don't do what I say I'm taking my ball and going home. No ball, no ballgame. Not the same as a mortgage or loan company.”

Granted why such investors are included on the Board there are other stake-holders to balance their input. But are there rules about which outside individuals or companies can invest? Do they have to have similar values like triple bottom lines instead of just profit for their investors? Can a Goldman Sachs provide start-up capital? Or Romeny’s ex-firm, Bain? Just wondering, so perhaps it’s time for those out there more familiar with the system to engage us?

LAYMAN PASCAL

I appreciate your inquiry about the potential influence of outside investors in holacratic systems. Perhaps they have a good protocol for that. Or perhaps not. In general, all "smart groups" need to comprehend and anticipate the distortion influence that donors and enablers wield. The psychology of human nature shows that we may believe ourselves to be quite sturdy and impartial while we are really bending in the breeze.

One of the concerns I had while perusing the holacracy constitution was about the voting procedure for filling roles. There are many parts of their approach which impress. In particular I would like to make not of the necessity to place constraints upon discussion. When the mention of a concern is met with the mention of counter-concerns then the intelligence and practical efficacy of discussions drops dramatically. A highly suspicious mind might even supposed that the human hive is encouraged to engage in the constant casual usage of dysfunctional conversation. So their use of controlled phases in both operational and hiring decisions is admirable. However, their actual voting protocol seems (to my naive glance) to be based on a model of transparent majority. A sophisticated "show of hands".

So this may be an area in which holacratic principles can be expanded to include a more thorough use of "secret ballot" and "averaged ranking".

The former often seems like a show of bad faith and an invitation to covert dangers... but these are considerably outweighed by the liberation of individual intelligence from any conscious or unconscious concerns about the social consequences of their input.

The latter evades a primitive "first past the post" approach in which our intelligence is functionally limited to a yes/no determination about each candidate relative to other candidates.

Another thing I admire about holacracy is that it represents a functional procedure and culture in which participants would appear to become better participants by participating. Their capacity and ethical commitment to the good of the organization through its evolving protocols should be an increasing trend. Any smart group needs to be arranged so that even people who try to distort the results will find their capacity and will to do this reducing over time. Replaced by the inspirational efficacy of the group.

This brings me to another issue relative to voting, both in political and economic groups. That is the relative absence of specific instructions about how to translated ones feelings into a vote-mark. This is almost completely unaddressed in terms of popular elections. To discuss it even seems insidious to some people who fear coercion (and/or wish to maintain the current material power structures).

Protocols should have at least a clear suggestion about how to locate both "gut" and "intellectual" data within ourselves and convert that into a numerical value which can be contributed to a group decision. A lack of clarification at this critical junction may act as an invisible source of drag upon an otherwise very functional group organism.

It might even be possible to define an "integral-level organizational set up" for business or politics by simply compiling a list of areas in which intelligence and capacity are distorted. We might recall that most of Wilber's philosophy has emerged in levels correlated to his discovery of "fallacies" or "basic errors". Integral proposals about business and society could be all over the map unless there is a reasonable set of constraints that make sure they fall in the most lucrative zone.

So other than the potential influence of outside "helpers" and "donors" what other sources of distortion or inhibition do you see going mostly unaddressed in otherwise progressive groups?

THEURJ

My next question of holacracy is who came up with it? It seems to be the pet project of Brian Robertson, his own brainchild. I'm wondering if that is so of if it was a community or P2P project? I mean, the structure of holacracy itself calls for distributed decision-making but was the creation of holacracy itself derived from this process or mostly dictated by Robertson? I've yet to find an answer at the site so I posed this question to them via contact info. I'll provide the response if/when received. I think the answer is pivotal in determining if this thing called holacracy arose from its own medicine.

LAYMAN PASCAL

I look forward that answer if it is forthcoming. The notion of self-arising systems is something which haunts the periphery of these discussions. My fantasy is that we can devise a group protocol which so reliably and simply exceeds the cognitive capacity of the individual participants that it would be foolish to predetermine the purpose and nature of the group. Collectively we could a better job of determining what kind of a collective we should be. "Smartgroups" of this kind could then spread through the world in a very radical social uprising. How possible that is remains uncertain...

As I understand holacracy, the different companies making use of it are assumed to engage in their own mutational modifications of the "constitution". So even if Brian wrote the whole thing out in his bathtub it still retains an open source quality. The answer to whether its current forms are or are not the result of distributed decision-making is almost certainly: sort of.

One of the reasons the holacracy approach is so amenable to business organization is that it seems to depend upon the functional axis of a specified purpose. The aim is somewhat pregiven -- our job is to sell widgets or maximize share-holder profit, etc. His use of the metaphor of the sensors on an airplane derives from a mechanism that is assumed to be designed for a well-known purpose.

My question would be whether or not this "aim" is a necessarily functional element in generating enhanced organizational capacity? Or whether it is simply an artifact of the need to make these systems serve a relatively conventional marketplace task?

THEURJ

Your suggestion of a smart group that arises creatively from a continually evolving set of parameters seems to be the intent and practice of holacracy. As to the organizational purpose of Holacracy One, it seems to have multiple bottom lines including but not limited to profit. For example, see this post in the comments where I noted that the top to bottom pay ratio is 3 to 1, and quoted some of those multiple purposes:

"With Holacracy at play, the game is entirely different: with the decentralization of authoritythe separation of people and role, and the dynamic evolution of those roles, we end up with a situation that looks more like free agents going about their work with no central planning. There might not even be a single person who knows about everything you do."

This sounds much more like the sort of emerging P2P organizational structure discussed throughout this thread. And also of significance in the post following this article where The Integral Center of Boulder has "voluntarily relinquished their rights to control their company as owners. Instead, they have ceded authority to a purpose-centered governance process called Holacracy, a model that distributes authority across the organization and gives primary power to the organization itself."

These are indeed advances over the kind of conscious capitalism promoted and AQALly packaged for sale at I-I.

LAYMAN PASCAL

(comment pending)

This is an interesting moment. Apparently Amazon.com is experimenting with a version of holacracy as well. It clearly represents a theoretical advance over the typical kind of conscious capitalism which combines advanced sentiments with a potentially dangerous and uninspected ideological allegiance to more primitive routines of social organization and wealth production. Yet we cannot know the results of the experiment in advance.

I have tremendous optimism about emergent p2p organizational structures. Experimentation is utterly necessary and should be strongly encouraged. I am also very hopeful that advances can be made in terms of quantification. This is very central in my thinking lately.

It seems that experimental protocols for advances social organization systems suffer from the lack of a quantifiable evaluation of their respective degrees of "collective intelligence". Most people are drawn to such possibilities by ethical and aesthetic criteria which do no necessarily persuade the world. So I would love to see experimentation supplemented by the attempt to devise a metric for estimating the intelligence of a social organization protocol.

Along similar lines, my "tetrabucks" type notions represent the possibility/necessity to structure our currency at a level that correlates to advanced P2P organizational structures and post-pluralistic consciousness.

The potential of an evil holacracy has hardly been broached. If it works -- it works. Other than simply the tendency of less complex people not to use more complex systems, and the tendency of more complex systems to complexify their participants, there needs to be some inter-organizational structures which incline all organizations int he direction of broad human well-being. It is my assertion that as long as primary areas of value remain outside monetization the actions of groups trying to utilize official social credits will constantly become unstable.

So I am imagining a line leading from pathological capitalism to standard capitalism to conscious capitalism to trans-capitalist network organizations to such organizations bound together by a integrated set of metrics for determining the intelligence of groups and splicing together (at least) four broad domains of human value.

Along these lines -- how will we decide whether holacratic integral business is working better?

THEURJ

As to how we determine whether alternative economic paradigms are 'working,' I'd suggest that even by the standards of typical business democratic workplaces like co-ops are successful. If by that we mean the organization runs smoothly, has low employee turnover, high employee satisfaction, makes a profit or surplus over operating costs, and other such typical measures. Plus they fulfill their stated purposes as expressed in theRochdale principles, like community education, cooperation, democratic control, etc.

I'd say the same applies to holacracy. They also have to accomplish the usual business parameters like above but also meet stated principles like in their constitution. Given Robertson's business acumen I'm sure at the site he has precise and measurable indices to track such progress, though I didn't try to find them as yet.

LAYMAN PASCAL

(comment pending)

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Hilltop Oatcakes just got a new model. Jacob's Ladder has apples in it. The combo of crispy texture outside with softness, sweetness, and some texture waiting inside is like a stairway to heaven, hence "Jacob's Ladder!" The preparation time is so great for these oatcakes that it limits supply and competition. The more labor intensive, the better the prospects for an upstart "indigenous corporation" like Alltop. (Combined words of "Allsville and Hilltop" -- plus everyone is at the top, no top and bottom). 

Now to "write live" my way toward actualization of this first economic empowerment vehicle for the Hilltop area. More product development and a whole lot more gathering of human resources and expertise is needed. The Sociograph method will be used informally to get community buy-in, or at least a fair hearing of the proposal at some point in the next few months. Meeting with the intern living at the mission house might be the very next move, or soon at least. As that person will function as the church's representative or "diplomat." 

Darrell

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

"Sociograph" instead of gram is the right term I believe. Finding the key players in the social system. It seems a good way to start with a communty development project. Making a version of a sociograph, that is. 

d

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

Hi salt, Got a chance to speak with a church member yesterday about the Hilltop woes. One main problem is vacant homes. Brings down real estate value and disparages stable folks from moving there. Second problem he mentioned was instability. Then trust. These all are interrelated. Low real estate value attracts the low rent crowd who happen to be more transitory. This creates an unstable community and sets the stage for lack of trust and cohesiveness. The person I spoke to mentioned the approach of working with a few stable neighbors who have been there and plan to stay, and to try to use them as both positive role models and as messengers or interpreters. Outsiders like myself and other interventionists would not be trusted enough for a good union unless backed by the trusted ones who live there. All told, the issue of "trust" loomed large in my head after hearing some of my advisor's comments. Then I thought of another trust issue. From Bridges Out of Poverty workshops I remember that lower class subculture members have little or no trust in systems and tend to have a learned helplessness attitude about systems. The "indigenous corporation" system which I (we?) would want to "pitch" would be dismissed as just another big idea that no one follows through with, not to mention that learned helplessness would lead to dismissing just about any hopeful intervention and goal no matter how rational and effective. When you give up, you can't afford to buy into a hopeful idea that will just build your hopes up and then let you down. Building up trust would at least offset the part of the hopelessness which assumes that no one will actually follow through or go the distance to help. The more trust, the more rational hope can be built up in the "edges" of the group mind, so to speak. By that I mean something like getting a foot in the door. Enough trust will let us get our foot in the door to at least explain a possible new process toward greater prosperity (like an indigenous corporation or small business co-op, resource pooling, etc.) for the affected community.  

   This is not the same as my going to meet the neighbors in the Hilltop area, but it probably is a good orientation for do so in the future. I see now that I would need to identify and stable and strong neighbor who others there are likely to look up to and listen to. At first I could just ask that representative what he/she things the neighborhoods problems and possible solutions might be. If a problem solving attitude can be achieved with such representatives then the likelihood of them and others considering innovative social transformation concepts goes up a bit. More open mindedness. The strong/stable representative could then role-model this openess and willingness to weigh options. Without enough hope and openess then hypotheticals or reviewing lists of alternative solutions would be next to impossible. Depressed people simply won't risk entertaining such possibilities. The dark filter assumes the possibilities won't work. Plus the energy to try them isn't there anyway, so why invest. It is a "we can't win for losing" sort of culturally shared attitude. The key (or one of them, anyway) is to get the role models to shift toward the combo of trust and openess and an assumption that solutions just might be found and just might work. In other words, the strong/stable role models could help break the cycle of group depression and/or disenfranchisement. 

Sound about right? If so the next step is for me to ask around and see if I can find the candidates for role-models and representation. I forget what these key figures are called in a sociogram? "Alpha" something or others? Who has clout and respect and the most influence on the overall group? 

In summary, I think I decided on what might be termed the "sociogram" approach to helping the affected community. 

Darrell


inthesaltmine said:

Hi Darrell - nice to see you here; I just finished your book yesterday.

What have you been up to lately? I'd like, if possible, to contribute some of my available energies to working with you if you're organizing anything at the moment.

Best wishes. 


Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

Would be interesting to me personally to examine the holocracy concept up next to my own "giftocracy" concept as forwarded in Allsville Emerging.

"Anything short of completly overiding democracy will not allow the modern elites, the Plutocrates, to continue to control the levers of power."

Have you failed to notice that this is already a fact? We in the US already live in a plutocracy and democracy died some time ago. This is no reason to lay down and die, of course. But it is a fact to be dealt with to know what we're fighting and how to restore said democracy. And/or create some better political and economic system.

To some extent, yes, it is a window dressing democracy. But even the window dressing is like an ember in a fire which seems dead, but is capable to being fanned back into a flame/fire. As long as there is even the amount of democracy or democracy-like process we have, the embers IMO are strong enough (have enough potential) to carry us forward to the inevitable evolutionary point. 

   Totally unrelated (sort of). Last night's dream pre-cognitive content was my dreaming that an old work collegue had unexpectedly written a book or two. This after a reunion with him. I never would have expected "Willy" to do so. 

   This morning at the barber shop (going from the '70s to somewhere near today in hairstyle) one of my barber's collegues unexpectedly (to me) was working on a Movie script. We talked about writing issues. He was my "Willy, the unexpected Writer. Willy Writer. 

   When the precog events are near morning they happen sooner the next day. In the night, earlier in the dream activity, the events happen later in the next day. The unfolding of time is reverse order for dreams as compared to waking state reality. 

   I take a pretty good stab at an explanation of this phenomenon in Your Third Nature. When dreaming you locate in deeper (intermediate, subtle body zone) of the flare/self. The flare/self is a little bang. Like the big bang there is a correlation between time and spatial unfolding. The most "out" or "up" part of the expansion is the most recent and moving along with the so-called normal direction of the "arrow of time." But when inside the flare looking somewhat out and up (toward surface) you also start the dream sequence deeper in the flare and then work your way up/out toward the rim of the flare (little bang). That means the intitial dream frames started deeper, which defies spacetime more, and end shallower (yet still deeper than gross body) which is closer to spacetime (but still somewhat ahead and apart from it). Regular direction time starts at the flare's rim where we become consious of (the present) upon waking. From there the arrow of time goes in the regular past, present, future direction. But where the dream sequence starts, deep in the flare, you start with future and move toward present, a reversal of the arrow of time. Past? Not sure.

Darrell  

theurj said:

"Anything short of completly overiding democracy will not allow the modern elites, the Plutocrates, to continue to control the levers of power."

Have you failed to notice that this is already a fact? We in the US already live in a plutocracy and democracy died some time ago. This is no reason to lay down and die, of course. But it is a fact to be dealt with to know what we're fighting and how to restore said democracy. And/or create some better political and economic system.

1985 was the year i ended 5 years of living on the streets. I've known for some time that nothing has really changed:

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/climatesnapshot/stuck-climat...

You would have to watch shows like Boardwalk Empire to see how things got this way. These corporations  ARE mafia thugs. This should not be debated or watered down or considered inflammatory rhetoric. They own most every politician, the justice departments, and they are funded by a different mafia cartel called the banksters. Greed and corruption through and through. And frankly, colour coding these FACTS is a waste of time. The only question left in my mind is when will these two groups engineer the third world war. And for the record, i will take Ali's stance on this coming phoney, manufactured global war. I would prefer prison.

It should be noted how utterly amazingly efficient this Messiah is when it comes to finding technology to get more and more carbon out of the earth. Truly, astonishing. The monological god Ka$h at its finest.

As a follow up to this post, see this post. Do we need a modern day Robin Hood(s)?

Also see this article. An excerpt:

"If too much power resides in the hands of employers and capital more broadly, the tension builds and builds until, ultimately, the masses seek to check that power through the only means that remain available to them. They go outside the political system. They engage in mass demonstrations, strikes, and other civil actions. And if that doesn't work, then you get revolution and bloodshed. No one wants things to get bad enough for that to be seen as the only alternative.

"I don't believe we are near the point of that kind of revolution yet. We do have the minimum wage, and we have other labor laws in place that -- while they are not strong enough -- are not so weak as to lead people to risk everything, even their lives, to bring about change through violence. But let's not kid ourselves, we need to do a lot more to bring things even close to where they should be. Furthermore, there are certainly many on the right who believe in an Ayn Rand style vision of how our economy should work. If they somehow were able to implement that vision, the kind of practices McDonald's of which is accused will be looked back upon fondly.

"We cannot allow that to happen. We must make sure not only that we raise the minimum wage, enforce laws against wage theft, etc. We must also make people understand how severe is the imbalance of power between many, if not most, workers and their employers. We have to make them understand and feel in their gut that without government putting its thumb on the scale on behalf of workers, that imbalance would be so severe as to be unsustainable.

"Without strong government measures playing a role in the equation, workers will at some point come to believe they have no choice but to simply knock the scale to the floor. That's the kind of destruction we must make sure we avoid."

Fight oligarchy. If you don't there is no effective integral movement. In the linked post Senator Sanders articulately lays out the regressive agenda and how we need to controvert it. IMO he is an integral exemplar of effectively enacting a progressive agenda, thereby providing the political and economic infrastructure for equal opportunity into the higher reaches of human potential. This is the real program to that end, not the superhuman operating system.

Unless, of course, by integral movement we mean circle-jerking each other with grandiose theories that benefit our own insular, elite, narcissistic in-groups and have little to do with enacting said equal opportunity for the rest of mankind. At least religious groups keep the latter in mind, except perhaps for those engrossed in capitalism. Would not our 'more highly evolved' postmetaphysical spirituality have some, if not greater, responsibility to said 'rest of mankind?' And do our theories help them improve the quality of their lives? Important questions, don't you think?

It should be noted that politically, since Obama gained power,  the Christian right shifted focus onto taking control of state legislatures. They have been far from idle. I don't see how anything can change in North America unless someone can convince that demographic that they have been lied to and corrupted over the past 50 years. I will ask that the question of ontology be put aside for the moment for what remains of this post while we explore my previously stated thesis. It's truly a sad day for the God of love when the best exemplar this God has in North America is Liza Simpson! The laity within the Christian demographic has to be made aware that they have been sold a lie and have chosen to serve Mammon. They have chosen to be the goats in the parable told by Christ. They have chosen to accept being consumers by the false Messiah ( The Corporation) and concomitantly have accepted every corruption that goes along with that choice. They have accepted having their personal bio/living systems poisoned by institutions like big sugar, big fat, big fast food, and big pharma, to name just a few. They have accepted the lie put out by big petroleum that the poisoning of the Earth's atmosphere by carbon pollution in untrue. They are DELUSIONAL when they think that God will reward them for being complicit in the destruction of the Earth's living systems. The Christian laity HAS to rebel against any clergy that teaches that the corruption of their soul is acceptable. They have to reject being servants of Mammon ( the god Ka$h) and get back to being responsible stewards of the environment, and once again promote a healthy social gospel. If this can happen; then imo, more enlightened memes stand a chance of developing. Regrettably, the shepherds of these goats would rather, i suspect, attack the messenger here. Well sirs, think not that god doesn't know my sins and yours! My humble suggestion would be to take the corruption out of your own eyes first! Now onward integral solders!

Here is a link to The Portland Hotel Society Scandal occurring now in NeoLiberal B.C. :

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Liberals+both+unlikely+into+spendin...

Now, this society has been run by the most progressive left leaning activists in North America. I challenge anyone to find anyone in North America to find a society this progressive when it comes to helping and dealing with the worst addictions of drugs and alcohol, and, divergent types of serious mental illness. These folks worked tirelessly to run a safe injection site among many other programs and services since the 90's. And, FYI, the downtown Vancouver east-side is shocking for it's crime, addiction, and poverty. It rivals the worst of any poverty stricken district in N.A.  I know, i've lived it there and visited most of them back in the day. NOW, my point is this: this article doesn't even come close to touching accurately how much money was misspent by these left wing progressives! It's truly a small fortune! As Obama has proved endlessly and cases like this amplify; the left is every bit as prone to corruption as the right when it comes to being in relationship with the monological god Ka$h.

Corruption is not particular to party politics but to people. Of course there are examples of corrupt progressive people. And it seems only a few corrupt leaders in PHS were involved, not the entire operation or staff. That's hardly adequate reason to put progressivism in the same basket with the regressives, where such behavior is the rule rather than the exception.

I think about a half dozen folks at the top were the only offenders here. So, no, my post was certainly not an indictment of that very worthwhile lifesaving society. To me, it's truly sad what these folks did. Believe me, i can't even recognize this country or province since the rise of Neo Liberalism. Glen Clark, the former left premier of the province took a job as the right hand man of the richest NeoLiberal in the province: Jim Pattison. So what i am seeing seems to be somewhat different than what you are seeing. I just don't really see much difference in practice between these two poles under financial globalism.

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