If you want input on what you are trying to create to bring about a better society, here are some terms that I've tried to define, and some ideas people associate with these terms.
Alliances tend to be formed amongst pre-existent organizations. It is a term used by the
right-wing. The Alliance Party in Western Canada brought two existing political parties together against the Liberals.
The left-wing tends to use the term 'coalition'. You see single issue groups like 'Coalition against Poverty', etc.
I don't know why people use these terms. It may explain why people
hear Alliance in a name and think of it as right-wing.
The term 'movement' suggests person-to-person collaboration and coordination.
Look in a dictionary to confirm whether what I say about these terms is correct and maybe get back to me if I'm wrong.
Ask whether the word 'movement' captures the essence of what you are doing. It might serve better than the word 'party'? People probably have reasons for starting parties, because party
sound familiar, political and gets people in the door. However, when you go
global people may find the word 'party' confusing. It may have slowed
down the growth of the Green Party as it expanded out of Germany.
The women's movement was never slowed down by its name. It grew enormously fast. It took nine months
to go from the kitchen table to a world conference in Japan.
There
are two types of movement. Next decide if you're driven by
ideology - in which case you are probably (a single issue movement, like health reform?) a transformational movement big on advocacy.
Now if you say that you want a paradigm shift (towards coordination rather
than every individual, group or organization looking out for themselves), you
start off as an 'expressive movement'. This suggests you're bringing people together to take on an array of
challenges. If that's the case I believe you are an 'expressive movement'.
A challenge is a problem that has been defined. It can be defined by individuals or a network.
Now
a movement probably has no structure to begin with. It's pretty fluid. To get things done either you adopt a top-down command-and-control model, in which case you become an organization. This is how the church, monarchies, military and big corporations got things done.
Fast-forward to 21st century ....
We're looking for creative adaptations to the styles of organizing we've used in the past.
These days we're more into distributed decision-making. This allows us to be global, national or local in outlook yet be flexible enough to take very local situations, and deal with them immediately, i.e. without waiting over a month for the board to meet and tell us what to do next, or ignore suffering because of higher priorities. When you have hyper-local decision-making an international movement will have taken on the form of a geographical network of
hubs or centres. When that happens, you call yourself a network.
So when you are interested in creativity and participative operational styles, why not start off with the idea of a network reflected in the name?
Funding a network that has no tax base requires an agency that brings money to individuals creating a better world starting in their neighbourhoods. Otherwise you go to the same bankers that everyone else ends up getting in with.
With an agency in place to generate income for a network, you can go from global thinking, to hyper-local action with compassion, and without compromise.
A network that is working with an agency to handle client needs is the only way I know that we can create a compassionate society where no-one is left behind socially and economically.
No comments:
Post a Comment