On Persistent Roles in Fractal Governance
How can initiatives persist beyond the term-length of an elected delegate?
The Necessity of Persistence
One important question which many people have had when considering the long-term organizational properties of a fractal governance structure (such as Eden on EOS) is how discrete efforts within the community can persist across terms of elected representatives.
Corporations, for example, use a hierarchy of roles which attempt to encompass the lasting needs of the organization. People and teams may come and go, but the roles and their subsequent budget allocation persist. This is an important part of an effective organization, and allows initiatives to outlive any individual proponents.
If initiatives in fractal governance structures were to only survive through the lifetime of a single elected representative, the impact of the initiatives would necessarily be limited. Therefore we need a structure to allow for community members to contribute to initiatives for which there is confidence their longevity extends beyond the lifetime of a single election term.
A lot of discussion and work, primarily led by Chris Barnes and Joshua Seymour, has gone into the possible instantiation of a similar set of roles patterned after the C Suite structure of a traditional corporation within a fractal governance structure, known as the Holacracy Framework [1][2][3]. Though the Holacracy Framework offers a reasonable starting point for some much-needed structure within fractal governance, I would like to offer an alternative to the holacratic approach which I believe better represents the spirit of fractal governance.
Bottom-up Holacracy
This “new alternative”, is not actually new, and it’s not really an alternative to holacracy. It’s fractal in nature, and may end up producing a structure very similar to the Holacracy Framework. Therein lies the main difference: it may end up looking like the Holacracy Framework, but if it does, it will have emerged from the fractal governance process rather than through a centrally-planned effort.
While Eden on EOS is small today, it will grow. People who are particularly passionate about occupying a needed role within the community will be able to start Edens of their own, rallying support around that need. For example, someone may start a Marketing Eden, someone may start an Operations Eden, etc. As the initial founders of these Edens, they will participate in the Eden on EOS election to receive support and funding for the formation of the new Eden. Once funded, these Edens will, to an extent determined by the free market, grow a community of their own. They will regularly carry out their own elections, allocating their budget according to the mechanics of fractal governance to whatever sub-roles are needed to effectively accomplish their primary goal. Their budget may come partially or entirely from the budget given by Eden on EOS, and the amount is decided by the extent to which the spokesperson can convince others that this role is necessary for the community to fund.
Therefore, the Holacratic nature of the organization will be descriptive, rather than prescriptive, emerging from the fractal governance process itself. Rather than spend effort attempting to plan the structure of an effective Holacracy of arbitrary resolution from the top-down, we can instead each pursue the formation of an Eden around the effort to which we’re naturally drawn, and watch the Holacracy emerge from fractal governance, bottom-up.
The Mandel
The only official role we must therefore establish as a core part of Eden, is that of the figurehead, or public spokesperson for that Eden. The primary responsibility of this role is to ensure that the goals and efforts of the Eden are transparent to any interested party. The person filling this role should either be the chief delegate himself/herself, or should be directly appointed by them. Codifying the process by which this person is appointed is important to prevent the formation of an incumbent figurehead by either of the ambiguous protocols: “popularity” or “status quo.” This person would also be responsible to campaign for funding. In the Eden on EOS community, that may entail being the primary spokesperson to request funding from the EOS Foundation, and in any other Eden organization it would entail participating in the Eden on EOS election process to receive funding.
It would be useful to have an official title for this role within fractal governance other than “public spokesperson.” I propose the official name for this role to be “Mandel.” Mandel is a simple word, both in pronunciation and spelling. It is an abbreviation for Mandelbrot, which is a reference to Benoit Mandelbrot, who both coined the term “fractal,” and also discovered the most well-known mathematical fractal, the Mandelbrot Set. Mandel is also roughly homophonic with the word, “mantle,” which is sometimes used to mean “the role or appearance of an authoritative or important person [4],” as in the idiom, “to take up the mantle.”
The formation of the Mandel role has, in fact, already naturally emerged from the Eden on EOS trial elections, in which Chris Barnes assumed the position rather than the elected chief delegate. This has already been an important and effective role at communicating the goals and goings-on of the organization.
Conclusion
The roles people fill within Eden on EOS should change over time. This change should not correspond to the change in elected officials, but rather to the change in the actual needs of the organization. This could be done through the ongoing effort to centrally plan out the needs of Eden, or, as I propose, it may be achieved organically through the existing fractal democracy mechanisms. Our efforts should therefore concentrate on accelerating the availability of the tooling necessary to build new Edens and to encourage leaders within the community to spearhead the formation of these sub-organizations. The Holacracy Framework is both a useful outline of Eden on EOS’s current needs, and a reference by which leaders can organize their own campaigns in the Eden on EOS elections, but I don’t believe it should be codified as any kind of official structure within the Eden on EOS community.
