How might we...

• Practice/Emergence: How might we practice the five elements?
  • How might we ensure that we have adequate research behind our answers to what is governance and what are alternatives to governance?

Hypothesis

If we research alternatives to governance then the foundations of our work moving forward will be informed both by our own insights, and the value of people who have come before us – leading to strong outcomes for all.

Design

• First, we could define the scope of governance and alternatives to governance that we want to look at?
  • Are we philosophically asking the question of all forms of governance – applicable to staff governance as much as boards? OR would we like to focus solely on forms of governance applicable to Boards?
  • Let’s assume we want to focus on Boards for the rest of this experiment.
  • We may want to start by grounding the questions “What is governance” in research on the original ideologies/laws that created the 501c3 Board format/container. At some level, we’ve been shadow boxing with those original assumptions rooted in patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy. So let’s go back to the source materials and really flesh out that that origin story is.

• Then we may want to research different practitioners who have attempted to create alternative Board structures from their own world view, including:
  • Different culturally responsive alternatives to Board governance
  • Different economic alternatives (i.e. models coming out of anarchist collectives or solidarity economics)
  • Different organizational development decision making 

• Finally, we could review these models along different rubrics, compare them, and determine which insights feel most relevant to the questions we are trying to answer. For example, which of these models do we find:
  • Have the most useful conception of individual, group and justice?
  • Have the most effective way of making decisions that acknowledge and support healthy power dynamics?
  • Work better for larger or small non-profits?
  • Work better for political vs non-political organizations?
  • etc……

Metrics

Success:

• We will be successful if we have a body of research that provides us a “useful set of legos” to play with in our other experiments – allowing us to make new connections that we had not previously made in our work, or allowing us to fill in gaps in our own understanding.
• We will also be successful if we feel that we have matched the amount of time and depth of energy we have spent on research to the audience/outcome we are seeking.

Failure might be either:

1. over researching information and not being able to effectively use it in other experiments
2. not clarifying our audience and so then not feeling a sense of motivation or purpose to why we are researching, undermining the integrity of the process.

Decisions

Questions