Valuing diverse perspectives and treating everyone with basic dignity and respect can lead to valuable and innovative ideas. Good ideas can come from anyone, regardless of their background, and by listening to everyone, one can gather good ideas from anywhere. It is important to recognize that even if not all ideas are great, they are still worth being heard. The best ideas often emerge from the interactions between different people and conflicting perspectives. By approaching discussions with the objective of growing shared understanding and treating difference as a resource, incredible proposals that address various concerns can be developed through patience, trust, and a good process.
In this episode we speak with Richard Bartlett, co-founder of the tech cooperative Loomio, and The Hum, management consultancy for organizations without managers. In the conversation, we cover his history and experience with patterns of decentralized organizing picked up from the punk scene and Occupy Wellington in the early 2010s, what he learned from those patterns, and how he co-created new organizational structures that put them into play with his co-founders and fellow workers. This episode will be particularly interesting for listeners who want practical advice on how to organize in DAOs, cooperatives, and other organizational forms that seek to work in non-hierarchical ways, but still get meaningful work done.
Here are the show notes: