Relational culture

See our Relational Agreements here.
See our approach to collective decision-making here.
See our agreed rupture and repair process here.

Beyond power-over paradigms

When we compost the ways in which power-over shows up in us and our groups we tend to naturally start to cultivate relational culture. Right now many of us - and our groups and organisations, are in the messy bit of the composting process - our power-over ways are kicking and screaming as the dying process kicks in, To survive these times as a species we must learn how to do this at scale; bio-regionally, nationally and internationally, as well as within our groups, organisations and communities.

As adrienne marie brown points out in emergent strategizing, it is the relationships between people that make movements and transformation possible, not the individuals themselves. Relational cultures are committed to intimacy of heart, compassion, care, courage, creativity, love, beauty, rest, pleasure and play - in service of health, co-creativity, regeneration, transformation and justice and in reciprocal relationship with the wider web of Life. This is why it is not possible to bring about change alone as an individual.

Part of the underpinning of the consciousness of power-over culture is the illusion of separation and supremacy - both in regards to ourselves, other humans and Earth community. The illusion of human exceptionalism and its resulting over ’use’ of the Earth as resources for our own needs has gotten us into a situation from which going forward is extremely challenging, to say the least. Our consumerist way of life is coming to an end, and thank goodness! Whether we will transform in the ways needed for us to survive as a species remains clearly in question.

For us, relational culture is as much about relating with our other-than-human friends and allies, as it is about relating with other humans. Releasing ourselves from the stranglehold of power-over culture means turning towards Earth community with an intimacy and way of loving that is unfamiliar to most of us. The way in which we relate and live with Earth and within the ecosystems we inhabit, will decide our survival. Whether and how we do this will determine if we are able to create a future we are proud to leave to future generations. It really does matter that much. 

Tending our connective tissue

At Starter Culture we are actively learning how to cultivate relationships that are healthy, generative and transformative. This means we are humbly on our own journey of learning together how to compost our relationships with power through collaboration, collective decision-making and ways of working which include relationality and co-creativity. Recognizing there is no fixed point or end to this journey, we practise emergent strategizing, listening deeply to each other, regenerative conflict practices and other “warm skills”. We relish when connection and collaboration flows and stay open to inevitable ruptures within our relationships, actively tending to repair from a place of heart-centred radical self-responsibility.

In our experience, prioritising tending to our connective tissue within our organisation is both deeply rewarding in its creativity and productivity and sometimes immensely challenging. How we hold the creative tension between “getting things done” and “being in a good way with one another” so that time, power and resources flow even more fully through us and back into the world, is the living laboratory of our approach to change. The practices, structures, processes and agreements we are experimenting with emerged from that which our founders previously developed together. As we continue to weave in new perspectives and experiences our culture evolves to include multiple perspectives and support collaboration across increasing difference.Beyond serving our needs as a group of people working together, our evolving organisational culture is a significant part of our offering to the wider movement of organisations, funders and change-makers. We are exploring ways of collaborating together with a shared purpose in the world that is centred around including the inner dimension of life within our efforts to help co-create a more life-affirming world. We hope what we learn might be of use to others as they grapple at the threshold that is inner-led change in these times.

Relational agreements

In order to lean into the paradox and complexity at the threshold of inner and outer change within our Starter Culture collaborations, we have created a set of relational agreements. These agreed ways of being and relating provide a container that intends to support enough safety within each of us to be able to regeneratively experiment, collaborate and co-create within. They provide a kind of north-star (overarching intentions) for our collaborative culture - and a reference point for when tensions and conflict arise, to support this to be a healing and generative process. As we learn and our lived understanding changes and deepens, so too do our relational agreements, which are updated when needed to match our current understanding of what supports relational culture even more potently.

All Starter Culture core team members and active collaborators commit to proactively doing the inner, shadow and relational work necessary to more and more align with these agreements, whilst recognising that these are aspirational and none of us are, or need to be perfect. After all, Life evolves at places of rupture through repair.

Check out our relational agreements here.

Rupture and Repair

Even with the best relational agreements, tensions arise and we act out from our wise and wounded protective parts rather than from our adult self.  When there is a relational rupture, we intend to turn towards our own hearts and feel what is moving in us and our many parts. Then, when ready to speak for the parts of us who have been hurt or upset, we approach the other/s with radical honesty and radical self responsibility. To support us to act in accordance with our values and ethics, especially when emotions are running high, we have an agreed process for how we repair when there has been a rupture. We also have regular ‘hearth tending’ sessions where we grow our shared ground to navigate conflict more transformatively together. It is not always comfortable but it is real and true and is resulting in a beautiful and rewarding deepening of our relationships and our capacity to meaningfully collaborate across our differences - and compost power-over culture within ourselves and our Starter Culture collective.

For more on our approach to conflict transformation see here. 

To see our agreed Rupture and Repair process see here.

Shared governance

Our collective work flow is shaped and inspired by what we call a ‘shared governance’ model which is a blend of Sociocracy and Holacracy. It consists of a range of evolving processes, structures and agreements focused around placing power in the process rather than in certain individuals or roles. Shared governance empowers collective decision-making. It supports decisions to happen both horizontally and vertically, in service of unleashing the group's collective intelligence. As a small team (of humans at least) on a wildly ambitious mission we are learning how to integrate shared governance within our particular context by constantly  dancing with the emergent paradoxes arising within our group. We are also exploring how we might weave in the cycles and intelligence of Earth community to decentre human ways of working and include Earth as part of our collective decision making. 

This video produced by Université du Nous gives a sense of the philosophy that underpins the model of shared governance - Video: our relationship with power.

For more on our shared governance model see here.
For more on our approach to collective decision-making see here.
For info about collective decision-making workshops see here.