Making Decentralization Work

We don’t have the space here to cover in immense detail all the specifics of a decentralized structure. Nonetheless, there are some general principles about making a decentralized structure work:

• Link to vision. If your vision (values, purpose, and mission) is clear, people or groups operating autonomously can self-regulate themselves relative to the shared overall vision. They can all sight on the same guiding star, yet be in separate vehicles heading toward that star. Shared vision is the crucial link in making decentralization work.

• Overcome lack of centralized control with increased communication and informal coordination. People need to know what other decentralized subunits are doing so that they can act in concert with them. At Patagonia, for example, product line directors meet at least once per month to coordinate. Another way to gain increased communication and coordination without the burden of increased bureaucracy is to use electronic communications— electronic mail, voice mail, computer networks, tele-conferencing, etc.

• Facilitate the transferring of valuable knowledge between sub-units. Hold internal seminars where members from different sub-units share ideas, present papers, and learn from each other’s experiences. Grant prestigious awards to those who contribute a significant idea, invention, or other valuable assistance to another sub-unit.

• Have an open system. People operating autonomously can make good decisions only if they have good information. One of the best ways to achieve this is to make lots of information available to people—even traditionally sensitive information. At NeXT, for example, any employee can get access to any piece of information—even people’s salary levels and internal financial information. Although you may not feel comfortable going to this extreme, we urge you to head in this direction. Again, compare centralized, secretive societies like the Soviet Union (and how terribly inefficient they are) with open systems like the United States. The same principle applies to companies.

• Avoid matrix structures. In an attempt to have the best of both worlds, some companies make the mistake of creating matrix organizations. Don’t do this. Matrix structures remove the fire of personal ownership, not to mention accountability.

Though expensive and usually belated, reorganizations are widely regarded as the only way to realign an organization with its environment. As a report by the Boston Consulting Group put it, “Rapid change requires companies to reorganize faster than ever before.” Good luck with that!

What’s needed are radically new organizational models that downplay formal structure. In a world of relentless change, trade-offs need to be made as close to the front lines as possible. Boundaries must be malleable. Resources, rather than being hoarded, must flow unhindered toward promising opportunities. Interunit coordination must be the product of nimble, self-organizing communities and market-like transactions rather than blanket policies or cumbersome councils. In short, we need organizations that, like the biosphere, the internet, or a vibrant city, are more emergent than engineered.

As the former editor of the American Journal of Public Health observed in a piece summing up AA’s first seventy-five years: “From what looks like anarchy—traditions rather than rules, maximum local autonomy and independence, and absence of centralized or layered tiers of authority—emerges consistency and stability.” That’s the power of community.

We have been growing otherness, borders, separateness. And in all that division we have created layer upon layer of trauma and vengefulness, conditions for permanent war, practices that move us into a battle with the very planet we rely on for all life. The scale of division, conflict, racism, xenophobia, and hierarchical supremacy on our planet is overwhelming.

Finding the places of healing and transformation, moving towards a world beyond enemies, is work that has to be done for our survival. Which means transformative justice—justice that transforms the root causes of injustice—is necessary at every scale, but I am particularly focused on how it becomes the common orientation and practice of movements for social change, for peace, for liberation.

Tools for Increasing Interdependence and Decentralization

Study Groups/Learning Community

This one seems so simple and old school, but having community to learn with is actually really crucial for human development. It means we learn to see ideas, not just through our own singular and limited perspectives, but to see how different experiences create different ways of thinking about things, of comprehending and applying ideas.

Loretta Ross teaches us that, “When people think the same idea and move in the same direction, that’s a cult. When people think many different ideas and move in one direction,

that’s a movement.”...

The more people who grow understanding and vision together, the more people who will feel at home in the resulting experiments. Right now we are living inside the results of other peoples’ imaginations—people who couldn’t imagine Black people being free, fat girls being sexy, disabled people being leaders. People who could only imagine their own power and dominance. When more people imagine together, and then step from imagining into thinking through the structures and protocols of a society together, then more needs are attended to. Responding to common text is a great way to do this. And it doesn’t have to be just a reading group—it can be a group that watches films, listens to music, or compares experiments in changing movement practices.