Being Weaved:
The Art of
Collective Decision-Making

How we make decisions in our groups and organisations is important. It holds up a vivid mirror to how we relate with and share power. It shines a light on the degree to which we are in alignment with our values around relationality, equity and justice.

Collective decision-making is at the heart of how we cultivate relational regenerative cultures of compassion and care. Learning how to make good decisions together is perhaps one of the most transformatory things we can do in these heart wrenching times, as it inherently requires us to compost power-over culture from the inside-out, within ourselves, our groups, organisations and movements. 

Most of us grew up in environments with adults who were not able to exercise their power in entirely healthy ways, which has resulted in us all having a lot of wounding around power and decision-making. It is this, alongside a lack of elders and healthy alternative examples - that can make this shift to collective decision-making so challenging.

It is helpful then to remember that our struggles around decision-making are part of a great historic untangling, a re-membering of how power, as life energy, flows through us all.  Transitioning from centralised power and top-down hierarchy, to healthier, more relational, regenerative, caring, equitable and just ways of making decisions together is inevitably messy and can, at times (often), feel very painful and despairing.

Even though it is often uncomfortable, without turning towards and investing in learning collective ways of making decisions in our groups and organisations we are guaranteed to replicate the very power-over culture that is the underbelly of our current crises in which those with less structural power and from more marginalised identities and communities tend to pay the price for.

Reclaiming our power: Supporting emergence

Witnessing and experiencing just how disenfranchised and disempowered our relationships with power have become in the face of governmental institutions, corporations and technology, it is hard to not feel despairing. Collective decision-making offers us ways of reclaiming our sense of empowerment by collaborating and organising at a depth and scale that power-over culture cannot compete with. 

The flavour of collective decision-making we teach is a particular blend of sociocracy and holocracy that involves a range of tangible practices, processes and structures that will enable you and your group or organisation to organise and make decisions in ways that tune into the inherent power and potency of Earth’s Life-death-life cycle by:

Enabling dynamic collaborations within which we each feel a sense of freedom to unleash our creative potential and take action.  

Becoming energised and informed by collective intelligence and a diversity of perspectives drawn from across and beyond your collective of humans.

Achieving more clarity about, and skill around; working in circles; inhabiting roles; emergent strategy; holding healthy flexible boundaries; and how radical self-responsibility meets regenerative feedback - for the benefit of your collective and those with whom you connect and collaborate.

De-centring the individual human self, and even the human organisation, by learning how to become Earth-centric and reverent to what the world is longing for through you and your group or organisation, so that you can contribute to a time far beyond that of your organisation.  

What we’ll get up to

Our collective-decision making workshops offer a blend of the tangible processes and structures you need to transition to this way of making good decisions together - alongside those practices that support you and your organisation to compost power-over culture from the inside-out. Together we will:

Explore ways of working that help you and your team operate more effectively and transformatively in a complex and fast-changing world, responding to what emerges while staying connected to your organisational/ group purpose.

Explore ways of working that help you and your team operate more effectively and transformatively in a complex and fast-changing world, responding to what emerges while staying connected to your organisational/ group purpose.

Explore ways of working that help you and your team operate more effectively and transformatively in a complex and fast-changing world, responding to what emerges while staying connected to your organisational/ group purpose.

Nurture and experience the modelling of group culture, processes and structures in which power and decision-making is visible, examined, composted and distributed.

Invoke and experiment with processes and structures that enable a blend of vertical and horizontal power and decision-making supported by clarity and transparency around roles, accountabilities and where decision-making power lies, and why.

Integrating earth-centric practices to support reverence to a power greater than the individual human self. 

Learning how groups grow and transform over time as they create an identity and discover; their true purpose; which roles are needed to embody that purpose in the world; and how each team member can bring their unique gifts and creativity to this shared group purpose. 

Check out our Vital Ingredients and Design Principles for Composting Power-over Culture to better understand  our theory of change and get a sense of the foundations of how we approach power and decision-making.

You can find out more about our approach to collective decision-making and how we put that into practice by checking out our Relational culture, Relational Agreements and agreed Rupture and Repair process.

Who are these workshops for?

These workshops are for those wanting to learn the practices, processes and structures needed to transition towards collective decision-making. We offer workshops both for individuals (who are part of a group or organisation) and for groups and organisations themselves. Please be in touch via the form below to let us know about your needs and interests.