Awesome Active Autonomy

It is not desirable - it is not even possible - for all the decisions that affect yunity to involve every contributor. yunity needs individuals that are confident to do things for the group when they see something that needs to be done - people like you! We each have eyes, ears and a brain and no one knows feelings or experiences better than the beholder. We trust you to make decisions and do stuff. In yunity there are no formal power hierarchies and people actively seek-and-destroy informal ones. As such there is no authority in the group greater than the group itself which you are equally part of. Ok, so you want to do something...

If you see a job, it's yours! You can do it, delegate it, flag it or try and organize others to help you with it. (You can also ignore it or complain about it.... but don't do that)

Awareness

Start here! As the person taking action, it's really important to first have a dialogue with yourself. Do you have internal consent to perform this action? Also think about:

• Effect. Who is affected? How are they affected? How strongly are they affected? Why are things the way they are right now?
• Reversibility. Can you see unintended consequences? How much energy would it take you to reverse your actions?
• Transparency. Do other people know what’s happening? Can they easily get involved if they want to?
  
  

Modes

Now that you're hyper-self-aware, here are three modes of AAA you can consider using:

• Just-do-it: Simply go ahead. Go on, try it! (a.k.a. Doocracy)
• I-will-do-it: Announce that you plan to do something by HH-DD-MM-YYYY. Be sure to listen to any feedback you receive.
• Ask-for-advice: Ask each person that you think might be affected for their advice (not their authorization). You can also tell them about your great idea but first ask for - and listen to - whatever advice they might have. (a.k.a. Advice Process)

Beware

Watch out for some of these non-awesome, potential side-effects:

• Tyranny. If the same people keep doing the same stuff, a concentration of knowledge and experience will grow. This is not a bad thing - it is specialization - but can lead to informal power hierarchies (boo).
• Passivity. The effect on people who assume that the person who did something a hundred times will continue doing it.
• Burnout. The person who did that thing a hundred times? Yeah, they're pretty tired now.
• Passive aggressiveness. If several people rapidly change each others work without considering it, it can be disrespectful and lead to informal or formal conflict.
• Confusion. If many people are doing many things simultaneously without connecting this can lead to wasted energy of people doing the same things.
• Waste. If multiple people do the same thing without realizing there can be a loss of efficiency. (See Going to group)

To remedy: Keep reminding yourself and others to communicate well and often and keep knowledge accessible. Consider mentoring other people in what you do so they can learn by experience - by rotating and having many people able to do many things, the group builds resilience and flexibility. Confront conflicts constructively as soon you see them and be humble.

Bootstrapping to group

There are some pretty huge limitations in doing things solo. It can be lonely or demoralizing and sometime it is simply impossible to do certain things by yourself (e.g. building a free, open-source, global, multi-sharing and saving platform, ha!) So don't do it alone. What you are looking for, my friend, is Creative Collaborative Consent.

Further reading (inspiration for this article)

• How to Nurture a Living and Evolving Doocracy - Article by Zarinah Agnew on her experience living in a Network Embassy house lead mostly by autonomous action.
• Community Wiki article on Doocracy - Nice short article with examples.
• Reinventing Organizations Wiki on Decision Making - Focused on the Advice Process where advice is actively sought for before action.