Collectively accepted leadership

Leadership should be collectively accepted.

Principle

Leadership should be collectively accepted.

Collective influence over leadership choices

If contributions are used as the way to determine who receives governance rights within an organisation the choice of leadership could change over time as the needs and preferences of the organisation and its contributors change. Effective leadership could still remain in their roles for multiple years or even decades. Collective influence should be more useful for situations where there is problematic leadership. Contributors would be able to select other people to fill any leadership positions that exist.

Emergent leadership

Not every organisation requires formal leadership positions. Some organisations would prefer a flat operational structure where everyone participates in each decision democratically to influence how an organisation is operated. In these organisations an alternative approach that might be accepted is emergent leadership. Contributors could naturally take initiative and put themselves forward to lead certain tasks and solve certain problems when they have relevant expertise or experience around certain areas. The main outcome that is important is that the other contributors collectively accept this emergent leadership. Contributors that do not like the result of emergent leadership could voice their opinions and concerns. In some cases contributors might suggest the introduction of specific processes and systems to prevent emergent leadership from happening. In other cases contributors might prefer to introduce a formal leadership position with a selection process.

Democratically elected leadership

Growing organisations can benefit from leadership roles that delegate certain responsibilities to selected individuals. Leadership roles can help to provide more structure and simplicity in how an organisation makes decisions and operates. It is difficult to expect every contributor in an organisation to be up to date with what is happening across an organisation and be well informed enough to participate in multiple governance decisions across different topic areas. Creating leadership positions with certain responsibilities can be an effective way to handle this complexity of scaling an organisation. In these situations a group of contributors could elect one or multiple contributors that are suitable for this role of handling certain decisions or responsibilities. If the leadership that is selected does not perform well, or the role becomes no longer necessary, the contributors should be able to remove the current leadership and the role entirely through a collective decision process.

Leadership contracts

When a leadership role is defined a leadership contract could be used as a document to record the exact parameters and responsibilities of the role. Leadership contracts could be useful for isolating the exact responsibilities and authority that a leadership role is given and the constraints and duration of the contract. Startup organisations might decide to use leadership contracts so that the founders have long term influence over executing the vision they are trying to achieve. The benefit of leadership contracts is that workers would be able to see the exact scope and parameters of the contract and when that contract will lapse. This makes it easier for them to make informed decisions about which organisations they want to contribute towards based on any existing leadership contracts and any other working environment factors. Leadership contracts are also separate from incentive rights. Workers that contribute labour that is more impactful than people in leadership positions should still be able to receive compensation that reflects the larger value and impact of their contributions. This is an improvement over capital based shares that can give founders and people in leadership positions perpetual governance and incentive rights irregardless of their actual performance. Leadership contracts could be an effective solution for complex organisations where a balance needs to be struck between the efficiency of electing competent people into leadership positions against the need to also ensure that the collective opinions and preferences of those that work in the organisation is also taken into account.

Principle compliance

Contributors that govern the organisation should collectively decide whether leadership positions should be introduced or whether they should continue to exist or not. If they should exist, contributors should decide who will fill those positions through a voting process. New organisations may have leadership contracts that are self issued by the founders. In these situations any person that is considering joining the organisation must choose whether to accept the leadership or not when they decide if they will join the organisation. All leadership contracts should be publicly available for people to review so they can understand what the roles and responsibilities are for each contract. All contributors that govern the organisation should be able to define what those roles and responsibilities are when creating new contracts or when updating existing ones.