Raising a flag: Innovation & Do-ocracy

Citizens of New Zealand are currently being asked to consider options for a new flag.
Love it or loathe it — whether you think it’s a complete waste of time, a political distraction or something worth flying from your own rooftop, the flag is a collective, creative manifestation of our identity as a country.
We are inherently invested in the outcomes of this decision — it’s a symbol of our nation — the thing we fly at sports games when we win, the thing that kids draw at school, and the thing that reminds us of home when we’re abroad.
Our flag builds legacy and emotional attachment. It is how we brand ourselves to the world and how the world reflects our own identity back at us. It is a banner for all of us who identify with New Zealand in some way — it’s no wonder we find it easy to feel invested in this outcome.
Unlike the dreary norm of democratic issues like climate-change, health, education and NZ’s contribution to global warfare, the flag has many of us interested in democracy.
Dinner tables, water coolers and social media across the country have been buzzing. As citizens we’ve been discussing, complaining, sharing opinions, design critiques — aware, engaged, vocal, involved and annoyed by the democratic process and the content presented through it. Social media reflected our views and — after visible, public discussion ‘Red Peak’ was added as an option.
It’s got me thinking too; less about colours and shapes and ferns, and more about the democracy and the internet, and what is happening to bring the two together more meaningfully. At Enspiral, we’re fortunate to have lots of people working together, thinking about how to use the internet, and all of its tools, to invent and reinvent the systems we need to organise better, to work together better at be more useful in the world — it got me thinking — how might we widen the conversation to be more useful to more people?

SYSTEMS UPDATE REQUIRED: Your democracy is running on an out of date operating system.

In the past 15 years (4 electoral cycles) the process of consuming music has completely evolved. People don’t pay $30 for a disc in a plastic case anymore. It takes about 30 seconds for an artist to upload their work to one of thousands of platforms online where it then becomes instantly accessible to every connected person on the planet. As connected listeners we can instantly stream music, build and share playlists and connect with any global, obscure sub-genre community of artists and fans at any hour of any day. The internet fundamentally changed the end-to-end process of engaging with music.

The current system we use for democracy — with postage, paper, manually counted systems and slow, centralised, bureaucracy to administer the whole thing — was designed for a world without the internet.

Democracy is our operating system for society, our way of making decisions together and distributing resources, and we know it needs a huge upgrade.
The jump from the world of yesterday into an internet enabled future isn’t like the latest incremental iphone upgrade — it’s like jumping from manual punch cards and MSDOS to iOS6 and Android Marshmallow.
How do nations and large institutions work when they are wired with networked, internet technology instead of archaic top down command and control structures?
It’s a big question — and with emerging technology, we don’t even know what we’re capable of. We need to invest time in understanding the potential and work out how to better resource where the innovation will come from.

Where will this deep innovation on democracy come from?

Meaningful innovation means changing the rules of what can be made possible. For this to happen we need to have space to imagine a new system, to give each other the chance to try things and to ask for forgiveness, not permission.
To work in a culture of inherent permission is to be supported to test ideas and to be supported to be fearless of failure. To borrow language from an early motto from an innovative company called facebook, people need to feel OK to ‘move fast and break things’.
As members and contributors of Enspiral, we support each other to invent new rules and processes all the time. We have to — to keep ourselves sane. After 4 years our processes are alive and always improving, the structures keep evolving to keep up with the growth of people, companies, projects and opportunities coming through the network.
As you can imagine the processes for gathering collective wisdom and working collaboratively for 1 company with 10 people in the same city don’t work for 30 people networked across locations and then what works for 30 breaks at 50 people and 150 people and now, with around 300 people globally and over a dozen companies Enspiral is going through another evolutionary step change.
A key tool for this work is Loomio . People at Enspiral are inventing new ways of using it all the time.

• We use it to set large scale, network wide agreements.
• We use it to get a view of options and narrow them down quickly.
• We use it to check attendance into meetings.
• We use it to confirm the recruitment of new members.
• We use it open big chewy, deep strategic conversations that sometimes take months and multiple attempts at answers before the ‘collective mind’ digests perspectives and lands on eloquent, elegant solutions that could never have come from one, or even a few minds.

Using Loomio like this helps us open up the organisation beyond one centralised mind or small group to dictate what Enspiral does or is capable of achieving. In this way of working there is no bottle neck at a CEO (or a Prime Minister) and the base recipe is fairly simple:
Firstly, we all know what we’re trying to do together…

Enspiral is building a collective of values aligned people and companies that are supporting each other to grow into greater positive impact.

Secondly, everyone has permission to try things…
Critically, we openly support each other to ask big questions and try things to look for answers. We aim to listen deeply, learn quickly, and improve systems as best we can — with as much inclusion from everyone as possible.
Our best examples of innovation start with the support to be #fearless . So far, the result has been the best version of ‘democracy’ I’ve engaged in. As a member of this system, I’m normally a pretty happy customer, and when I’m unhappy, I have space to speak up, clear paths of action I can follow to try new things or propose improvements.

As customers of democracy in 2015, we’re currently getting very slow service from suppliers using outdated tools.

A friend recently put it to me bluntly.

The left wing is screwed. The right wing is screwed. The whole bird is screwed. #Killthebird.

We can’t just ‘kill it’, but it’s a valid point. As a customer of the current democratic system, I’m fatigued by both our current suppliers and their tired, outdated processes. In the age of Soundcloud — I’m sick of record store democracy.
How do you currently participate in decisions that affect you? In your home? In your place of work or your school? In your sports and social groups? As members of institutions? As citizens of countries?
The team at Loomio is tackling a deceptively simple articulation of an extremely powerful mission:
Loomio exists to make it easy for anyone, anywhere, to participate in decisions that affect their lives.
The Loomio tool is just software. Really, quite simple software. The trick isn’t in the software, it’s in the culture that builds around its use.
Ben Knight, co-founder of Loomio presented a central question to this work at the Bioneers conference in San Francisco earlier this year.

If humans are the only species getting collectively more intelligent over time, then why are our biggest institutions getting so much dumber!?

There is a depth of enquiry here that holds real power — to innovate, upgrade, transform, change — call it what you like — to update how we organise and operate collectively as groups, and as a species.
You can watch Ben’s talk here — 30 very worthwhile minutes.
As individuals, we’re highly intelligent and adaptable, our ability to solve problems and work for the betterment of our lives seems infinite. Yet, as large institutions, as democratic nations, as multi-national corporations we act extremely unintelligently; slowly, selfishly, aggressively, violently.
Peaceful citizens belong to warring nations and moral, hardworking employees build organisations that destroy the planet.
Collectively, as a species — we need to change how we think and how we act.
Collectively, we are facing multi-systems collapse without urgent interventions in how we use the resources on this planet.

Collectively, we need to get smarter.

Loomio are a part of a global cultural wave, driven by software, that is is transforming our planet and our society. Good timing too. It has never been more important or urgent to harness this potential to change and this will to improve.
So, it seems we know where we need to go. We know what we need to do. How do we get there from here?

Democracy + Internet: Testing… Testing..?

Instant, infinite music streaming services didn’t happen overnight. There were stages, there was resistance, there were lawsuits, an industry crumbled and a new one emerged.

Who will invent the mp3 for democracy? What is the Napster for democracy? What is the iTunes for democracy? What is the Spotify for democracy?

Where will these innovations come from? Who will pay for them? Who will build them? How can we start testing them?
It strikes me that choosing a flag would be a fairly low risk, high engagement experiment. It doesn’t affect our health care or education systems — it doesn’t dictate who we go to war with.
But it’s something we find easy to identity with, it’s something we can engage with — even at a simple level.
An internet enabled process for choosing a flag would extremely public, visible, globally leading example of embracing progressive technology to make a democratic decision.
We all know what we are trying to do….

Use the internet to help us with the decision to update the New Zealand flag.

What if we were all empowered and supported to invent how we did it? What would that process even look like?
Internet enabled creativity produced flag designs that made plenty of noise and international media . What happens when we use this same creative resource to help us design better processes?

• We have tools like Loomio already used by hundreds of thousands of people across the world to have discussions, make collaborative decisions.
• We have platforms like Action Station where anyone can instantly, publicly add their voice instantly to behind an idea.
• We have discussion and deliberation platforms like Ask Away to pose direct public questions to leaders .

How could we put these tools into action to meaningfully use the internet to design a better democratic process to help us choose a flag?

Opening the doors for do-ocracy

Flags aside, the point is, for technology solutions to grow they need visible, public testing. We need to have space to run experiments, gain data and widen perspectives on what (democracy + the internet) can look like.
My hunch is, to really make an impact, we need the internet to go beyond tools and enable a culture of do-ocracy. We need a culture that allows people to embrace the unknown, open potential messiness — and try some things to measure the results and work towards better answers.
I’m still left with some genuine questions and would love to learn more what is currently happening to improve how democracy is working…

• Who is doing this thinking? Where are the organisations that are currently commissioned and resourced to fearlessly prototype the next evolution of democracy?
• What is the plan? Is there a plan? Where is it? What is it? What is currently being tested? When is the next test or prototype happening?
• What’s in the way? What is holding this process up? Who is holding this up? What are the barriers?
• How can we help? At Enspiral, opening the doors and windows and building processes to let more people help solve problems helps us work better, faster and build stronger solutions — how would we, or anyone else, help engage this work?