Bitnation in partnership with Swarm is developing a proto-constitution, or what it referred to as a holonic contract to govern interactions within its “Slack Community”, which is a collaborative messaging and sharing platform used globally by organizations for a better workflow, while emphasizing the autonomy of its various holons and individual contributors. How is this system different from existing systems of organisation? What is the targeted achievement from this organisational system? How does it work and what is its viability?
A new decentralised system of organisational structure is about to be launched by Bitnation and Swarm where every individual becomes involved in what has been referred to as “Supportive” rather than “Delegative” leadership. A system which can be seen as a contract that governs relationships between people and groups, sort of like a constitution.
Traditional Holocracy model not fluid enough
Speaking to Cointelegraph about this development, the CEO of Bitnation Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof says:
“We’ve both experimented with different forms of organisational governance structures for our organisations, and we’ve systematically found that fluid, holonic structures works best. However, we felt that the traditional Holacracy model wasn’t entirely suitable for us, because it wasn’t fluid enough for the type of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations(DAO) and Distributed Collaborative Organization(DCO) swarm structures we're building. Hence, we decided to codify a “Liquid Holacracy” governance model. We hope the open source model will be useful for organisations both inside and outside of the crypto space.”
Authority is decentralised
Susanne says the major difference between Liquid Holocracy and the Blockchain is the fact that you can see it as a contract that governs relationships between people and groups, sort of like a constitution.
Furthermore, she stated that in the same way some organisations use various types of democracy (i.e. majority voting) to make decisions, this is based on a nodal model where people operate more autonomously, and don't have to wait for a decision from the top to act, whether that decision is democratic or autocratic and that there are some similarities with how for instance the Pirate Party movement and Anonymous are structured, giving the example of a talk by one of the advisors of Bitnation who is the founder of The Pirate Movement, Rick Falkvinge. Emphasizing that the system is such that authority is very much decentralised, and decisions flow freely between autonomous and semi-autonomous individuals and holons which are groups that emerge spontaneously, in connection to the DAO/ DCO.
In summary she said:
“It's much less top-down and rigid than even direct or so called liquid democracy systems.”
It is a powerful combination
Joel Dietz, the founder and CEO of Swarm whose company is building the core technology, described Liquid Holocracy as a powerful combination of the best of flat organizational structures and blockchain technology. According to him, It increases the sense of interpersonal connection, promotes transparency, and provides direct incentives for every participant in a collaboration. Excitedly, he said:
“I'm happy that we will be bringing this solution to the world, and the potential application areas are staggering, it's the ideal tool for any organization that uses slack and needs some streamlined way to make decisions.”