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)
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:
Am I the right person to handle this Situation? Is this truly my responsibility to solve? No? OK, who is the right Situation handler? Have I triangulated the facts? Have I discovered multiple different perspectives regarding the Situation? What has happened to the facts as I’ve looked at them through different lenses? What has this triangulation told me about my sources of information? Do I have complete context? For this given situation, do I have all the essential facts, opinions, and lies surrounding the situation? Have all relevant, affected, and interested parties who care about the Situation weighed in? What is the track record of my sources of information? Do I trust the sources of information? If I have a track record with these humans, how does that color the information they provided? Do I understand the nature of the biases of those providing the information? Am I clear what they have to lose or gain by sharing this information? Do they volunteer these losses or gains as part of my discovery? What inconsistencies in facts have been discovered and do I understand the nature of those inconsistencies? I’m not looking for resolution for inconsistencies, just the nature. He and she disagree on principle. He didn’t have all the essential facts so it kind’a looks like he’s lying. Do I understand my biases relative to the Situation? If my role in this Situation is to make a decision, part of understanding involves understanding my bias. With this understanding of bias in hand, am I still the right person to make an informed call here? Do I understand my emotional state relative to the issue at hand? A sure-fire way to bias my judgment is emotion. Like bias, it is nigh impossible to separate my emotions from an issue, whether those emotions are positive, negative, or a bit of both. Am I clear how emotion is affecting me relative to this decision? If it’s affecting me negatively, will cool-down time help? No, OK, who is a better neutral party who can make a decision here? A close to final test for me is: Can I coherently explain multiple perspectives of the Situation? What happens when I explain one perspective of the Situation to a neutral party? How about when I explain the competing perspective? If I can effectively explain the Situation and its complexity from both perspectives and with a distinct lack of emotion, I’m close. |
Now that you're hyper-self-aware, here are three modes of AAA you can consider using:
Watch out for some of these non-awesome, potential side-effects:
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.
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.