Dreamship systems doc August 9th, 2018
You live in a what
I live in a 16-person house, and we'll grow to 22 some time in the next year. Usually when this comes up in conversation people's eyes bug out and I can see them imagining a beer-soaked frat house, a den of nudist hippies, or - if they're from San Francisco - a hacker house (shudder). To be fair, there are many houses that fit these descriptions. The Archive, however, is not: my experience is of a group of reasonable adults who tried living alone and find it more fulfilling to live with a group of inspiring, well-adjusted people. We still have our privacy, and surprising things become economical at this scale: we have a chef come every week, for example, and we recently bought a 4-person sauna.
The time is ripe for a resurgence of communal living. Adults the world over are lamenting how hard it can be to make friends after college, the Internet and social media exacerbate our social isolation, and older generations continually remind younger generations to spend more time with their friends and less at work. As someone who isn't great at staying in touch with old friends and has been lonely before, let me assure you - coming home to a house where close friendships just happen without any effort on my part is wonderful. The level of social and intellectual stimulation is kind of like college.
"Sociologists since the 1950s consider... three factors crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other" - New York Times
So naturally I've been researching the lifestyle further. What do the houses with the most fulfilled residents have in common? Urban communal houses seem distressingly short-lived - would they be more stable at a large scale, say at 100-150 (Dunbar's number)? Can communities support members through big life transitions, like starting a family? I don't know, but I hope to find out by interviewing people about their community experiences. Here's a working list of best practices:
[#]Principles for a great community
- "Strong gate, soft center." If you have a high bar for housemates, then you won't need as many rules.
- No bosses, many leaders. Empower everyone to execute big projects with a "doocracy": distribute decisionmaking and funding decisions, and make consensus-building as low-friction as possible. We post proposals to a Slack channel and vote with emojis đ.
- Don't shame disengaged housemates, support them. It's natural for your energy for a house to ebb and flow, particularly when you're feeling overwhelmed.
- Avoid breakups. "Housemates are your siblings: don't penetrate them" -- Tina, house poet. Note that this is a norm, not a rule, because we're all adults and a rule would probably backfire anyway.
- Automate common friction points. It's amazing how much stress unclean common spaces
Many more to come! I just started this project in late July 2017.
Key research themes
- Scaling. Would this actually be better if we were a village of 100-150? I imagine we'd be more stable, and I feel like we'd have super strong "social gravity", which would enable us to attract brilliant and fascinating people from around the globe. But how does this actually work - how does intimacy scale? How do we keep the house introvert-friendly?
- Sustainability. How can we make a community that is supportive of big life transitions, like starting a family?
- Recruiting. How do we recruit well? How do other houses manage this? What proportion of short-term to long-term housemates is optimal?
- Governance. What technologies can help keep logistical details low-friction at scale?
- Space. How might we design spaces for both extremes of the introvert/extravert spectrum? What communities have existed in unique spaces (e.g., an old cruise ship), and how has that affected their experience? What legal structures enable or inhibit communal arrangements?
- Culture shift. This lifestyle is fringe, but many would benefit from trying it - how can we normalize and evangelize it? How might we increase the supply of communal houses?
- Impact. What can/should we stand for and what difference can we make in this world?
- Culture. Some communities have a culture that says: "you are enough"; the Archive's culture says "grow into your full potential". Both have advantages and disadvantages. Is it possible for both to exist in the same place?
[#]Want to contribute to these principles?
Great!! Let's hang out: just claim a spot on my calendar with Calendly (I'll be automatically notified), or message me on Facebook. Interviews are typically about an hour and I post all my research here so anyone who visits can benefit from them. Thank you! đ
Sources, notes:
Key: âď¸ is a blog post, đ is a flashcard, no emoji means notes & highlights.This house is so J it hurts even me. Some of these processes don't even seem like they were problems first (like the water boiler) but if they pull it off then power to em.
Some of my favorite ideas from here:
- You can miss obligations to "follow your dreams" đ. We gather Monday evenings to celebrate together and nurture all edges, with a meal from our Chef, Marisa. We start at 8:10pm. Unless you are out of town or following your dreeeaaams, if you are late you will go onto our Shame board. Shame can be repented with procurement of ice cream or wine
- House Retro! We meet Friday mornings from 8:30AM to 9:00AM for House Retro, a place and time set aside for us to intentionally come and reflect on the best and worst of Dreamship... we aim to approach these situations with epistemic humility and as a chance to grow and learn
- A channel to check while you're grocery shopping: Staples like Bananas, milk, butter, can be purchased for the house out of the Treasury budget. These items were picked because they benefit the majority of shippies. If you notice that an abundance item is running low, post the item in the #abundance channel. If you find yourself at grocery store, you can check the #abundance channel and react to any items you plan to purchase with a â
- Some items can be refilled with amazon dash buttons. If you notice that we are low on trash bags, tide pods, or cascade dishwashing packs, press the nearby dash button! The dash button will blink green, and the item will be ordered online and delivered within a few days. I love this!! Update: we already have it.
Dreamship systems doc
Welcome, to Dreamship, shipmate! Hereâs what to know to make your voyage a success: Rent Rent will be $XXX/month per person. In addition, a $300 per person Dreamship All Inclusive Monthly Amenities Fee will cover Utilities, Cleaning, Shared food, and other spending as the house may decide. We c...
The Frequently Overlooked Path to Happiness - Daniel Gross August 5th, 2018
Identify people that excel at the things you want to excel at, and surround yourself with them. Communal living is a brilliant mechanism for enabling this. A good argument for a larger community, in my opinion.
The Frequently Overlooked Path to Happiness
Iâve found that one of the most controllable aspects of my happiness and acumen is the people I spend time with. Because many of us are in a good-not-great situation in this regard I suspect many might not realize how deceptively important it is. Iâve split my interactions with others into three:
Routine People. Those that you interact with without planned effort. Your spouse, co-workers, neighbours and family fall into this bucket. Do you enjoy being with them? Do they motivate you to be better? Think smarter? Be kinder? Most of your life will be spent with these people. You should have extremely high expectations of them. If they arenât stellar, you should treat that as an urgent problem.
Out-of-routine People. Planned social interactions. For example, dinner with a friend or a trip to see family in a foreign city. Key questions to think about: Do you have a list of people that youâd like to spend time with? How often do you try to meet them? Not sure where to start? Think about qualities you want to have. Then think about the best person who excels at that virtue in your extended friend group. Want to become more empathetic? Spend more time with very empathetic people.
Once you find people that you really enjoy being with, you might figure out how to turn them into Routine People. For example: move near friends so that you can see them causally without the overhead of scheduling.
Out-of-reality People. While not as good as being surrounded by (living) fantastic people, Iâve found that reading about inspiring individuals (Benjamin Franklin, Gandhi, Shackleton) to afford similar advantages. For example, I found I was thinking about leadership principles much more in the week after reading about Shackletonâs Incredible Voyage.
Think carefully about who you surround yourself with. Your time on Earth is a valuable resourceâââit might merit optimizing.
The Cooperative - Wikipedia August 5th, 2018
A group of 6 French parents, including Marie Curie, took turns teaching each other's children. Emphasized STEM, self-expression, and play. And whaddya know, one of the daughters went on to earn a Nobel prize (her parents were also laureates, but still). Reminds me of Elon's Ad Astra school.
The Cooperative
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This article is about the group of French academics. For other uses, see The Cooperative (disambiguation).
The Cooperative was an informal group of famous French academics organized in 1907 to teach their children at a higher level than was available in Paris at the time. The group started when Marie and Pierre Curie noticed the strong mathematical potential of their daughter, Irène. Unable to find a school that could meet her needs, they joined forces with several other parents with strong academic backgrounds including Paul Langevin and Jean Perrin, and decided to take turns teaching one another's children.
The curriculum of The Cooperative was varied and included not only the principles of science and scientific research but such diverse subjects as Chinese and sculpture, with great emphasis placed on self-expression and play.[1]
Notable results
Irène Curie won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1935.
References
- "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-07-14. Retrieved. Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation2012-10-19
Andrea from Embassy SF July 31st, 2018
Andrea is passionate, opinionated, has lived in five communities ranging is size from 6 to 50, and has a unique perspective - in other words, she's the perfect first interview subject. In particular, I loved her nuanced thoughts on diversity, and her exhortation to have a high bar in recruiting.
Topics covered:
- "There has to be a heart to the house. Community is harder when you don't have one - where you can go into the house, do all your things, and not run into anyone else."
- "I would not start a house where everyone wasn't required to pay into food - that's how critical I consider sharing food to be for house culture."
- "The benefits of being internally focused is that it feels really nice... but as someone with more of a diverse identity: I honestly couldn't really relate to that. It feels like a super hippie thing to be so inner-facing. As someone who's spent parts of her life at various socioeconomic statuses: to limit our impact to ourselves feels not great to me."
- "Take diversity only if people can actually hold space for it... Always offering to pay for shit for the one low-income person in the house eventually will make them feel like shit and creates a weird power dynamic. No one wants to be the house's charity person. So are people genuinely going to be cool with not always going out to eat?"
- "Once someone feels unengaged, and like they haven't been participating, they feel guilty. So they pull away more, and then they spiral out."
- "Everyone should still check Slack. Spend literally five minutes to like, keep decision making going. That makes a gigantic difference. It's when people go silent, silence like fucks with everyone."
- "Strong gates, soft center. You'll have a lot less rules if you're really strict on who gets in"
All house names other than the Embassy and the Archive have been omitted.
[#]A house needs a heart
You've grown too much when you can no longer host all the people at the same time in the heart of the home. And for your house, the fact that all the kitchens are divided... like, there has to be a heart to the house. At [a past house], when you walk in: it's the kitchen. Here, it's the dining room. It's harder when you don't have one - where you can go into the house, do all your things, and not run into everyone on all the other floors.
Why isn't the heart of [that past house] the backyard?
Well, I think it's both. But it's the fact that it's really hard to go about your day without going through the kitchen. You can go your whole day without being in the backyard unless you live in the cottage. But no one's gonna not go through the kitchen.]
We don't really have that. That's why Embassy has the porch, isn't it.
That's part of rationale. And that's why we're so meticulous about cleaning the common areas. So that's my #1 tip: be careful that as you grow you have a place where everyone can fit.
Right. For us, that's the backyard.
So I would dope out that backyard. Like, buy heaters... and create a house culture where people don't have their dinners in their rooms all the time. Make sure they eat and meet in the backyard.
Where have you lived?
[5 past houses]
What did you like best about living at [a large, fun past house]?
I was actively looking for a place like that for behavior change... like I didn't want to be a workaholic all the time like I was in college. I wouldn't have been able to stay there and have a career, or a relationship. Just maintaining friendships outside of that house is really difficult.
[#]Scaling up to 50
[One of her college houses had 50 residents.] How close were you with other housemates?
Pretty close, but everyone was in college together... so by life stage we were pretty similar. There were some people who were MIA. Like they'd go in through the backyard, have headphones in, go to their room. I would argue that there are some people who are missing from [the Embassy]. And you really feel those people.
How so?
You can just tell when someone's checked out. It makes you less excited about the community. I think a major decision point for you is that as you grow, there's going to be more labor that goes into the house. The Archive has cleaners, fantastic. Food ordering and recruitment are the other two big ones. And at 30 you should have someone doing onboarding (which kind of goes with recruitment). And maybe someone doing events -- like, community wellness.
When you're that big, the people who take up a lot of time putting in - either you pay those people, and that sucks, because then people feel entitled to their time and I kinda don't recommend it - that's how Mission home ended up in financial problems, and I've never seen the dynamics work out very well. I really recommend not having paid labor exchanges between housemates. We do ti here only for guest ops, where what they're being paid to do doens't relate to housemates. Like I'm doing food here, and I'm not getting paid to do it, I just feel passionate about it. So then the doocracy documents help a lot. But if I for instance am coordinating food, and putting in a ton of hours, and then the proportion of people who do absolutely nothing, who just show up and don't even want to have a conversation with me goes up to much, then you're just kinda like - oh, I'm curating an experience that you don't contribute to.
What proportions have you personally experienced, and how did each of those feel?
Well, this and [a past house] were the only houses where we didn't exchange money for that, and at [a past house] we recruited well so it never became a problem. We once had 60 applicants for 1 spot. Strong gates, soft center. You'll have a lot less rules if you're really strict on who gets in. I went through a co-op that went through a strike by those who did the jobs, and that was the worst. It was just awful.
[#]Dividing labor
Here, sometimes it comes up - like, why doesn't this person contribute? It tends to be gendered. The guys here are really good about cleaning up after themselves, but especially the guests - the people staying in the hostel beds - the guys, on average, tend to just leave their shit in the sink and the women don't. I've never lived in a house where there wasn't a gender dynamic around house labor. and that is a tension point especially if it tends to be (and this isn't necessarily always true) male-identified people that are like "my job is too important for me to be cooking with someone or cleaning or helping or doing stuff". If it starts to disproportionately fall on the women, then that's a quick way to end up with a male-saturated house.
What have you tried to fix that problem?
[A past house] didn't have cleaners, so there we tried a job system, where you had chores, and if you didn't do it, you had to pay someone else to do it. We had lower-income people, and they were down.
If you have people who work from home - the Day Crew - then that's another huge source of conflict. If I go to work, and I come back, and I'm exhausted, I'm like - well fuck it, I'm too tired to clean up. If I'm a freelancer or WFH or unemployed and have to look at the disgusting sink from people who left "too busy" to clean up their dish... well, I can either be pissed about it all day or I can clean it. We had to put a name to it at [a past house], and here that's been a source of people burning out. People who work from home do disproportionately more. Even dumb things, like the packages that gets delivered, the food that gets delivered, random people that come to the door, the repair person who comes over...
How much did you pay those people? How did you arrange that?
It was an experiment, really, and I'm surprised that they've kept it and not iterated on it. It's $15, because each task wasn't meant to be longer than 30 minutes, and if no one volunteered then we just called a TaskRabbit. We also logged who consistently didn't do it, and after a while we'd have a conversation about whether you were a good fit for the community. Because after a while, if you're going to be unable to contribute -- even if you're paying for it -- it's like somebody else volunteered to do their community contributions. But I wouldn't want that. If you commodify my time and community contributions... then it would just ruin it. Then I'm gonna compare it to everything else that I do that's monetized.
[#]Distributed decisionmaking requires participation
Is there a good ratio between the doers and the people who are in the ebb of their community energy?
I think it's more about the energy than the ratio. It's part of the reason I left [a past house]. I started to not feel super stoked when new people moved in, I just didn't have the energy.
If you're not excited to do it, then you should like back down, you know, like, they should never feel like resentment. That requires being really honest about when there's too much burden and brainstorming as a community. Just like there's ebbs and flows of people's energies... The problem is that the most difficult times require the most energy. And that's where you need some people that can really keep people motivated.
Conflict is a big one. And then it might be useful to already have a plan for that, like, do we need someone the community to find a mediator to guide us through this? You can request one from alternative justice for free, for example. If not, well, that's what takes a ton of work. Emotional labor is a huge one.
The other thing is, if you're in an ebb phase, the other way to not burn out, is to just support the people who are doing stuff by staying active online. Cheering people on. Everyone should still check Slack. And just at least say, like, awesome, I'm so glad that you're taking that on. Or spending literally five minutes to like, keep decision making going. That makes a gigantic difference. It's when people go silent, silence like fucks with everyone.
Tell me more about your decisionmaking and Slack.
We have an #input-required channel and a #private channel that's for very important things. #input-required is like: you should want to have input on this. Like, "I'm going to invite someone to say my room for two weeks", or "The roof is leaking, I'm callling a plumber." Some people still tap out of those, though. We reserve Loomio for: we're voting on a new housemate; things that would result in a house meeting otherwise because they're so important. #input-required is like: "I'm thinking of changing the couch." And if no one writes anything on Slack, then it just gets done.
We use Loomio maybe once every two weeks, and it's things like new housemates, changing the monthly dues.
How do you do monthly dues? We have people with different willingness to pay and different abilities, different resources
$375. Rent is pretty reasonable, like $1500/month, and it's the cleaners, the food ($2800/month), and the shared alcohol ($400/month).
[#]Community wellness
The food here was super good.
Yeah. I would not start a house where everyone wasn't required to pay into food - that's how critical I consider sharing food to be for house culture.
We have like a shared Thursday dinner, where it's BYO, but they're haphazardly attended.
If people are so busy, why do they want to grocery shop for themselves?
Well, they don't - we have chefs, they eat Soylent.
Well, another thing you can do is camping trips and retreats. [Past house] did a camping trip every two months. I think hanging out together outside of the house is more important than hanging out together inside the house.
That makes sense. We'll do a camping trip ASAP after people start living here. What are the house values of the Embassy?
Doocracy, impact, and experimentation. Experimentation in particular - you can feel it. People are really into testing things. [Past house] was like love, acceptance, gratitude, and sustainability.
How does experimentation manifest?
If you propose anything here, like, "What if all this furniture was on one side of the room?" No one's going to stop you, it's like - yeah, let's see what happens. We also tested governance structures. We tried doocracy, dictatorship, having a CEO, and we tried a matriarchy.
Whoa! How'd the matriarchy experiment go?
My understanding is that it's good that we survived that process. But it's written online.
[#]Impact-oriented houses vs inward-oriented houses
Why do you want to maximize that number of people that come through the hostel?
To increase the Cobudget money, so the money goes towards like community. Part of impact of the Embassy and the reason we want it to look nice is so that people from non-communal living situations see that this is a possibility for them.
I totally worked on me! And here I am, a year and a half later. I came away from my month here so invigorated and inspired.
That's really awesome - it's an Embassy success story!
The Embassy is very outward-facing.
It's funny, though, because I could never see that happening at [two other houses] - those two houses are just too inward-facing for the projects we do. Which is beautiful. And I love being there. Because you're just surrounded by love and hugs.
What impact does it have in house to have an inward-facing vs outward-facing orientation? What are the pros and cons?
I feel like I've been in both, and I think you need both. I kind of came here thinking that part of my contribution to this house would be internal community building, as much as external.
The benefits of being internally focused is that it feels really nice. It feels great to come home to a super strong, huggy community. The problems that I see, is that as someone with more of a diverse identity: I honestly couldn't really relate to that. It feels like a super hippie thing to be so inner-facing. As an immigrant and someone who's spent parts of her life at various socioeconomic statuses: to limit our impact to ourselves feels not great to me, especially when our community tends to not be very diverse.
It also makes conflict way worse, and makes people moving out way worse. You just got caught up! I mean, like at [other house] we'd start fights about where to put the toaster. Every two weeks we'd have a two hour meeting. And when you think about it, that house didn't have any impact. Unlike here: we never have meetings and there's an entire Embassy Network with five houses around the world.
That being said, you need to come home and feel safe and comfortable. I love coming home and sharing a meal with somone. For me, cooking with people and talking in the kitchen is really important. You will burn out of a house if you can't come home after a crappy day and talk to someone.
Part of being able to like co-create something big outside of the house is being in a place where you want to collaborate with people. So I think you need both. But I think you get more diversity when you're at least partially outward facing.
[#]Diversity
What are the pros and cons of diversity in ideology?
One con is that it can be emotionally exhausting. I couldn't live with a Trump supporter. [Other house] is actually less progressive than this house in terms of political views, and that impacts diversity. I've known friends who would have lived there, but they were like, "Oh, I'm gonna be misgendered the entire time I live there". Or people who don't have the best understanding of mental health. Like people with depression tended to move out because others required that everyone be super excited and high energy all the time and they just didn't have the emotional intelligence to hold space for people with depression or introverts quite as well. So it's hard. Especially because once you start to go down a slope, no one wants to be that token person. And whoever leads recruiting can end up perpetuating things.
I think age diversity is really fucking important. You need young people, because they're energetic, and you need old people, because they help you realize that the world isn't going to end like every five minutes. [Laughing] it's true! Diversity in jobs can go either way. If you're all the same, it can be really cool because everyone nerds out about stuff. If you're super diverse, it's really fun.
Take diversity only if people can actually hold space for it. And that takes people like checking in with themselves: "Will I actually enjoy coming home if we have both introverts and extroverts? Or does this space always have to be party?"
How about diversity of socioeconomic background?
Hmm. Important, and difficult. It's difficult because I think income to some degree is kind of cultured. It affects what you eat, it affects what you wear, it affects how you speak sometimes; it affects a lot of things - where you went to school, etc. A lot of times people don't realize that when they say, like "fuck processed food," that someone of a lower-income background might never have had access to anything but processed food, and that you're shitting on their childhood. It's tough to navigate. It can't come from a place of pity, either.
Let's say one of your low-income friends says "I can't go to that party because the tickets are expensive". And there's two ways to be inclusive and respond to that friend. There's an "I'll pay for your ticket", and then there's "Cool, what can you afford to do, and I'll go with you." If you always have people doing the first, it's very mild fuck you. It's like - I'm going to stay on what I have access to, and not take any of the discomforts, and I'm just gonna bring you into my culture and my experience as opposed to like: "to have this friendship, I know that sometimes I'm gonna have to experience your life experience, which is different and means sometimes not going to stuff." Always offering to pay for shit for the one low-income person in the house eventually will make them feel like shit and creates a weird power dynamic. No one wants to be the house's charity person. So are people genuinely going to be cool with not always going out to eat not always ordering expensive food and sometimes cooking? You have to be willing to partake in this person's lived experiences!
Are there other nonintuitive cases in which holding space for a kind of diversity might be a different experience than you'd expect? What's it like for a straight person to hold space for LGBTQ person?
I think that staying on an emotional level on these topics can be hard. Something that hit me recently was that Supreme Court change. It can feel really isolating to have people be like "why is that so awful, don't worry, it's gonna be fine". People taking an experience to an intellectual level is really hard when you just want to like feel upset. Microaggressions don't feel rational, because it's not really about that thing - it's about like a whole other giant thing. It's also hard, because people are curious, too. They're like - "Oh, yes: tell me more about that...", for example, people wanted to debrief and talk to me on an intellectual level about the Orlando shooting. Like I grew up in Florida, and it was a shooting against Hispanic queer people. I just wanted to be upset, not be the explainer person.
On that topic. We have like these casual book recommendations for newcomers - Nonviolent Communication and Crucial Conversations.
Oh, oh - Conflict Is Not Abuse! It's a really good book. Really good book on the role of community and managing conflict. I read it after our shenanigans about kicking someone out of a past community.
By the way, I want communities to start thinking about relationships. So let's say someone has a relationship in your community, and then they break up: like, two people break up, well - who stays in community and who doesn't. So I'm writing community level agreements about what to expect from my community should two people day and go through a breakup.
[#]When a housemate is disengaged
I want to ask you about governance. What are the pros and cons of doocracy, in your experience?
Well - [other house] did not execute it well, and so I used to think, it just didn't work [laughing]. In retrospect, the number one source of difficulty in a big house or in a doocracy is if the disparity of knowledge between people gets too large. Let's say you've been in a house for two years; you've now gone through a discussion about cleaning bathrooms three times over. And then a new person walks in full of ideas and with no experience.
You can burn two types of people out. You can burn out the doers with differences in knowledge, which it's a really bad cycle when someone goes down. Once someone feels unengaged, and like they haven't been participating, they feel guilty. So they pull away more, and then they spiral out.
How do you bring people back in when they're disengaged?
Exactly. A really earnest conversation with those people that isn't shaming. If you go down the path of shaming, which I've seen communities do, then they disengage more and more and then they move out.
What's a good way to frame that conversation?
Ask, "Hey - what's going on in your life"? Like, sometimes people aren't contributing because they have so much other shit going on. Like: "We really love when you show up in the space in these ways; the other night, I shared a dinner with you. And it just made me so happy when you did that. Here's what we know you're capable of what you could do more of. How do we help you with that?" Not passive aggressive sticky notes. I've seen like, three different houses go through a leaving notes phase.
Tlling the person that we really appreciate when they show up in this way, and looping them in. And this is where I think it's really bad: if, if someone needs to take a break, they should still stay on Slack and stay engaged in what's happening. Because if not, when they want to jump back in, they're gonna be like, "Cool! I took a three week break. Now, I'm ready to jump back in", and people are gonna be like, "Oh, we talked about that last week." And then they're gonna be like... OK, I should stay out.
What do you do if they don't participate even after such a conversation?
After a while there should be a conversation on whether this house meeting their needs. Are we cocreating something? There's an opportunity cost of living in community - like, you're taking the spot from someone else. You kind of have to choose there.
[#]Distributed leadership best practices
The other thing that can happen, which really blows, which is why I like that Loomio has a set amount of time for proposals, is that the doers can't work siloed without a set amount of transparency. Let's say I don't tell anyone that I'm thinking of painting the room. And then I go off and buy the paint, do the research, find out what's non-toxic, do all this stuff. And I come back to paint this room, super stoked. And someone raises her hand and goes, "Hey, what about latex paint?" I'm gonna be like, look, I've already bought this, we're not opening that can of worms again. Yeah. And they're gonna be like: "What? Why are you being a dictator?" And I'll be like "you're underestimating that I already put five hours of work into this". So while it's really amazing that people are doing work, you need to let people know what you're doing and give them time to weigh in. Setting a timeframe is amazing. Like, "If you want to join this or have an opinion on this, you have 48 hours to weigh in". And that's when doocracy works well. And it's not 48 hours to shit on it. It's like: 48 hours to decide if you want to be part of the solution.
At [other house] sometimes people would just go rogue. And there wasn't a clear distinction on what needed community consensus and what didn't. Here, if it's reversible, then just do it and we'll test it for two weeks. And then we'll reverse it we don't like it and the doer has to put the energy into reversing it. [At that past house] it was a fuzzy line on which things needed consent - like do we have a family meeting to throw a party, or do you just post about a party on Slack? The line was way too blurry on what was or wasn't reversible.
A lot of things are reversible with enough effort. So anything that you're willing to put in the effort to reverse is considered reversible?
Yeah, exactly. Essentially what's not reversible is a new housemate or property damage.
[#]Have a high bar for recruiting
How do you decide when to let someone in?
Ugh... recruiting is the quickest way to ruin friendships. OK. You have to be super transparent with the people you're recruiting and give rejections in person, if it's someone you know, and honestly. Don't lie to people. I've seen so many people be like - oh it's just like not a good time for us, we're like we're just not accepting more [specific house] people. I had someone do this to my friend: they told him we're just not accepting more [other house] people now and then like three weeks later they did accept another person, and he's like - now I know you lied to me.
How do you decide between this person who seems pretty great but you and you have a lot of information, you could do a vote, but there's only one spot - and then there's someone way earlier the pipeline, on whom we have no information, but they seem amazing.
I think you should only accept fuck yeses. What we do here is that everyone has to be yes and there have to be more "fuck yes, I'm so stoked" than yeses. And as soon as your bar is met you send an offer. Don't wait for someone else in the pipeline because that's a quick way to end up not filling spot. So just like set the bar high and then be grateful that you found one. And that bar's really high.
And you can tell people that! Tell them that the Archive has this arduous recruiting process, but one of the beautiful things about this place is that once you move in you know that everyone in this house was a yes and most were a fuck yes.
How long does your recruiting take? What interviews do you do?
Well, here it's been long because people here travel so much. At [a past house] it wasn't that long. It also depends on how often you're recruiting. It gets harder to get people super stoked to do recruiting when you're doing it all the time, and that's gonna be one of the growing pains. So have a really good written application and don't give everyone an interview - definitely have one or two people filter. And have a champion to each application who's super stoked, who can say "you have to meet this person" - a champion. If you allow every Craigslist person to come over for dinner then you're gonna have people stop wanting to have dinner at the house.
Don't waste your time on people who didn't even take their time on the application. And post it on the Haight St Commons page. Most people who ended up being amazing knew someone else. Yeah, so someone championing the person and then maybe like two or three rounds of dinners, or of coming over and meeting a few people, and if one person is a veto after the first one, then that's it! Just cut the person. And if someone comes over it's okay for someone to say I'm still undecided. I really believe that the person should come over at least twice.
When you interview people, are you looking for different things than in your application? Do you all different requirements?
I think I think everyone's looking for something slightly different. I think it's really good for people to be aligned on what they're looking for. Also for people to be in the mindset of "we're showing off our house and trying to win someone" instead of "I'll see if you're good enough to live here" cuz then a fuck yes does come through and then you scare them off. So becoming good at interviewing and set the person up for success.
I think everyone at least writing down what they're looking for and what questions they want to ask - that will help. Some big ones for me are "How much time do you think you'll be at home? What would be a contribution that you may really excited to do or what's a project you've taken on? What brings you energy?"
Thanks Andrea!
Sounds like the Archive would get along well with the Embassy.
Condorcet voting method â Open Agora blog July 30th, 2018
Condorcet voting is similar to instant-runoff in that it considers ranked voter preferences.
Where they differ is that Instant-Runoff would select very polarizing choices, as long as they had the most #1 ranked votes, where Condorcet voting selects the "most consensual" choice by doing head-to-head matchups between each pair of choices.
Condorcet voting method â Open Agora blog
At Open Agora, Condorcet voting system is like our Philosopherâs stone . A source of development and progress for Humankind which we try to promote through our values and products. This article will present this voting method using a concrete example. Using another example, I will demonstrate some advantages of Condorcet system when a consensus, i.e. a decision which satisfy most of the voters, is needed. This voting system was created by the French mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet at the end of the 18th century.
Centralized leadership (one leader: the boss) makes it hard to decline a task.
Distributed leadership (many leaders, no bosses) is distinguished by the ability of people to decline a task.
It's enabled by collaborative tools and a culture in which anyone can lead and delegate (and everyone else is empowered to decline).
Key prereq: distributing information (Slack), enabling low-friction consensus (Loomio), and empowering anyone to allocate funding (Cobudget).
Careful: people tend to accrue positional power by being doers, and the power to decline can erode. Constantly renew people's ability to decline.
Principle: No bosses but many leaders, enabled by tools that enable low-friction consensus building and that empower everyone to allocate funding.
A friend got in touch with a questionâŚ
âDo you have favorite lessons from being a professional Cat Herder? Iâm working in a flat, collaborative group, but Iâve realized that by jumping in to save the day all the time I am establishing myself as the point of control. People instinctively go to me instead of the group at large with ideas and problems. Now Iâm worried that if I step back, our plans could fall through."
Leadership is the force that guides people to achieve desired outcomes through coordinated effort. It doesnât require a boss.
My friend is running into trouble precisely because she has leadership skills, but in our society we arenât really taught how to apply leadership outside of hierarchy.
In the absence of leadership, hidden hierarchies will emerge based on personal relationships, charisma and persuasiveness, and various flavours of privilege from wider social dynamics. This is not a new conceptâââThe Tyranny of Structurelessness was written in 1970. A leadership vacuum results in ineffectiveness, interpersonal conflict, disempowerment, and burnout. But does this mean we have to put someone in charge?
Imagine that you are like my friend, observing a group of people struggling to get coordinated. They want to work together, but they are having trouble identifying the necessary next steps and delegating tasks amongst themselves. Theyâre tripping up trying to communicate with one another. Theyâre vacillating between putting you in the role of boss, and not wanting a boss. You care about the success of the project. Your intuition and experience is telling you what the group needs to do to move forward, but youâre committed to a collaborative approach. What do you do?
Key factors to leadership without hierarchy:
Mandate and consentâââconscious facilitation
Decoupling from person and positionâââdistributing acts of leadership through collaborative process
Facilitative servant leadership
Mandate and Consent
Itâs common for those who have leadership skills, and are deeply committed to equitable collaboration, to try and hide or minimise their abilities so as not to create either hierarchy or conflict. It can feel way too easy to manipulate people into doing what you want, or to cause conflict and resistance if people think youâre trying to take over.
Are you having backroom conversations to socialise your preferred idea? Or leveraging your persuasive communication style to get your way? Did you cause an argument by pushing the group to move forward without someone feeling heard in the process?
This kind of shadowy manipulation isnât a good use of your leadership skills. And if youâre into equitable collaboration, it probably makes you feel icky anyway. What the group needs is someone to skillfully hold space to talk about how it wants to work togetherâââin other words, facilitation.
Host a conversation where you bring into the light any leadership thatâs been taking place in the shadows, or efforts toward leadership that are being resisted (your own and others). Whatâs going on? What does this indicate about what the group needs? Whatâs working and whatâs not?
The group needs to own its coordination collectively. Your role is to hold the space and reflect like a mirror what people are saying they need to be effective and happy. The group can then delegate responsibilities with everyoneâs consent. If they decide to appoint someone to take charge, but retain their right to withdraw that consent, then itâs not a coercive hierarchy. If they want you in that role, donât be afraid of it just because you donât want to be anyoneâs boss.
From Person & Position to Process
Leadership is a force that operates in a group, away from conflict and chaos and toward harmony and effectiveness. If the right culture and processes are in place, anyone can take acts of leadership.
What can you devolve from a person or position to a process that many can engage in? Distributing leadership means distributing power and information. In groups I work with, collaborative processes have often turned into software, like Loomio for decision-making, and Cobudget for budgeting. But itâs not the tools that are important, itâs the cultural context of meaningful participation.
Effort put into developing collaborative process will pay ongoing dividends far beyond directly jumping in to solve problems or take on tasks yourself. Your impact can reach far beyond your own capacity. The role of leadership then becomes supporting the group to carry out and continuously improve their collaborative processesâââa kind of leadership most, if not all, group members can participate in.
Facilitative Servant Leadership
If you are a natural leader, it may surprise you that others donât immediately identify tasks that need doing, and people to do them. Some people are extremely effective at carrying out work, but appreciate support clarifying and structuring it. Having to simultaneously hold the big picture and the immediate tasks at hand, as well as navigate stuff like permission and prioritisation, is a lot of cognitive overload.
Listening to the group and reflecting back and clarifying the tasks that are emerging is an act of service, and a skill that can be honed. Some people naturally have a knack for it. Scoping and assigning work, however, is just one of many important tasksâ delegating doesnât make you superior. It also doesnât always need to be done by the same person. Those who have the capacity to manage task delegation need a break from it sometimes, so they can focus on the details level too.
If you can see the work that needs to be delegated, donât be afraid to craft invitations to action. Shouldertapping is a sign of respect, a statement that you trust someone to deliver. Many people have a need and a preference to be offered clearly defined tasks in order to reach their own potential to contribute. Invitations to responsibility can create space for others to achieve. As long as they can safely say no, and are empowered to do so if they want, itâs not a coercive hierarchy.
Reclaiming the Concept of Leadership
As someone who is deeply committed to equitable collaboration, I have struggled with the tension around leadership in bossless environments. I donât want to stand over anyone else. But I have come to realise that taking acts of leadership is often the most valuable way for me to serve.
I believe there is no such thing as âself-organising"âââthere is always work to be done and a skillset required to coordinate people to move together toward a larger shared goal. Unfortunately, âleadership" has been co-opted by our hierarchical capitalist society to mean âpositional coercive authority". But I reject that definition. Itâs a relic of a bygone era when communication technology necessitated militaristic regimentation of work and conflating a person with a role.
I want to reclaim the concept of leadership: throw out the positional authority, but keep the genius for helping people to achieve more together.
While leadership is necessary, it does not have to be centralised into a specific person or titled role. It can be distributed, unlocking the leadership potential of vastly more people. And once you transcend centralisation, itâs clear that contributing to leadership should not imply superiority, but is simply one of many necessary aspects to overall group success.
How I Try to Stop Myself from Taking Over the World
Iâm not going to lieâââitâs way easier for me to take charge than not. Iâve been this way since I was a kid.
Even following all of the above advice, taking acts of leadership can easily tend toward positional power. For example, suggesting a particular delegation of tasks creates a cognitive anchor and a lot of inertia to go in that direction, and framing a discussion has a lot of influence on where it will head. Iâm also not naive about how social capital accrues to people who have certain leadership skills. Just being a confident communicator can, over time, build up positional power.
Some things I do to try and keep myself honest as a servant leader, in case Iâm accidentally turning into a dictator:
Surround myself with other strong servant leaders. Iâm succeeding as a leader when Iâm contributing to an ecosystem thatâs building up people as leaders all over the place. Sometimes itâs hard when two people in the room both think they know whatâs best for the group. (Have you ever seen two facilitators in a meeting together? Hilarious). But my greatest lessons about leadership have come from working alongside other leaders in peer relationships built on trust and mutual respect.
Value dissent and diverse perspectives. Ask, âWhoâs not in the room? Who are we not hearing from? Why is that?" If no one ever disagrees, youâre doing it wrong. If no one ever convinces you to change your mind, youâre doing it wrong. (Meanwhile, make sure youâre also investing in good conflict resolution processes.) And remember that there are lots of kinds of leadership, and they might look very different from your own.
Insist on regularly renewing mandate and consent. A lot of times, it feels so much easier to just charge ahead. But unless Iâm hearing loud and clear from the group that they want me to play a leadership role, I wonât. People are dynamic, and groups of them even more so. Evolve roles as the group evolves.
Spend social capital on increasing participation and collaborative process improvement. Having leadership skills means I probably get to swipe the collective attention debit card more than some other people. I try to spend it on what I think will distribute that power more in the future.
Self Awareness is the Secret Sauce
Hereâs a lesson Iâve had to learn the hard way: when leadership is decoupled from positional authority, itâs easy for oneâs sense of responsibility and level of agency to become mismatched. In other words, I can see all the problems and I care about them, but I canât fix them all myself or force anyone to fix them for me. This is a sign of an unhealthy culture, whether in a hierarchy or a collective.
Itâs no accident that servant leadership enacted without positional authority is afforded low status in a hierarchical paradigm, and often done (by women) in roles like âcoordinator" and âadministrator". A similar dynamic can be seen in non-hierarchical structures without a healthy relationship to leadership. The result is a lot of work bottlenecking on a small number of stressed out people.
You need good personal boundaries, and self-awareness is a prerequisite to define them. People with leadership skills will naturally see what needs to be done to keep the group moving forward, but if they continually pick those things up they will become overloaded. Not every piece of work you can see has your name on it.
Facilitation, delegation, and collaborative process design arenât just to serve everyone else, they are for your good as well. Know your limits, gain consent to delegate, and develop systems to reduce bottlenecking on any one individual. Use your clear boundaries as a way to reflect when the group needs to invest in better processes.
And know when to quit. If you do your best to genuinely offer servant leadership, but your efforts are rejected or ignored, then walk away. The group doesnât actually want to collaborate, or itâs just a bad fit for you. For me, one of the hardest things of all is being willing to let something fall over. But if something is so fragile that it will fail because one person walks away, itâs not a true collaboration.
Advice for Servant Leaders
Donât take it all on yourselfâââknow your boundaries and delegate.
Collaboration is about achieving more together than one person can on their own. If you have leadership skills, you will often be the first to identify work that needs doing. Reflecting what you notice can be a service to the group, but that work doesnât always have your name on it. If it all depends on you and you alone, youâre neither leading nor collaborating.
Never take anything on that will cause you to end up feeling resentful. Sticking to clear boundaries will force a healthy discussion in the group about how to distribute the load, and set a culture of personal wellbeing. Challenging yourself to delegate creates opportunities for others to develop as leaders. Burning out is not the way to serve your group and its goals.
2. Recognise and value your own leadership ability. Donât shy away from it because you donât want positional authority.
Understand that your leadership can be in service of, and not in conflict with, equitable collaboration. Genuine skillful facilitation and delegation is powerful, but itâs not a power grab. Keep yourself honest by working alongside and helping to nurture other strong leaders. Serve the group by naming leadership so it can be discussed openly. Insist on explicit consent to take on leadership, but donât be afraid to act on it when consent is given.
3. Invest in developing collaborative process over accruing work or power to yourself.
Focus your energy on designing processes to distribute leadership and power as widely as possible, in groups that want to work that way. Continually ask what can be devolved from a person or role into a process that everyone can engage in. Invest in processes and tools that can have a much bigger impact that you can have as one person.
âď¸ Recruiting books roundup July 23rd, 2018
Quick summaries of 6 interviewing-related books I read on Blinkist.
Common themes and actionable advice:
- Culture fit and emotional intelligence are more important than ability.
- Write out beforehand what you're looking for, phrase it in terms of goals instead of skills, and be wary of your own emotional first impression when evaluating against these qualities.
- Interview questions should focus on how they handled past situations.
- Recruiting should be a core part of your culture: it's better to constantly source and recruit than to wait until you need it.
- A great brand can really help - ask current employees what they like most, and rebrand yourself around those qualities.
- "The best people rarely take jobs for the money... they take them because they want to fulfill their personal goals and ambitions"
Who
Culture fit is more important than being impressive. Understand exactly what you're looking for and design questions accordingly. A four-step interview process: screen (30 minutes), WHO (detailed questions about past tasks, what went well, what could've gone better, and relationships), focused interview (go through specific tasks that job entails, evaluate fit), references interview. Sell the candidate with as much effort as you spent recruiting them: make them feel welcome/chosen, make their families part of the culture (invite them to events, give them tours). Make recruiting core part of culture: always be recruiting, hold workshops to train team on recruiting skills. 4/5
Great People Decisions
Know what you're looking for: EQ is more important than IQ, higher ICs based on potential and managers based on experience. Source by asking your network for recommendations. The best interview questions are behavioral (how'd you handle a past situation). Be on guard for our biases in evaluating people and try to focus on the content of what they're saying. Go the extra mile to sell candidates. 2/5
Hire With Your Head
Most people give too much weight to the interpersonal interaction - use evidence-based assessments, or try panel interviewing (warn them first). Don't list skills in job descriptions - good people (and high-potential people) will respond better to goals (e.g., good candidates will ship ___ within 2 months). Two great interview questions: most significant accomplishment question ("can you describe a project/task you were involved in that made you feel proud?") and the how would you question (which tells you how they think). "The best people rarely take jobs for the money... they take them because they want to fulfill their personal goals and ambitions". 3/5
Misplaced Talent
A great brand is good for attracting talent. A good way to identify what's good about your workplace is to ask your current employees what they like the most. 2/5
Investing in People
"It's time to end the underappreciation of human resources!" Nope. 0/5
How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less
Best conversation topics: shared interests. Use who/when/what/where/why/how questions instead of yes/no questions. Don't interrupt people, and respond enthusiastically to what they say. 1/5
A grand experiment: Google is building an MVP smart city from first principles in Toronto, and are projecting a 14% decrease in the cost of living and many small amenities. "When you can expect [self-driving] cars to drive at the speed limit and down the middle of the road, you can redesign how roads work". Locals seem to be most worried about data privacy.
Interesting: Dubai is a smart city rife with sensors, trying to make everyone happy.
Critics don't like the lack of privacy from so many sensors, and they're suspicious of tech people's efficiency mindset: that it'll kill the spontaneous interactions that make cities magical.
Canadians view privacy as a fundamental right. Americans see it as a nice-to-have (true).
Data privacy seems core to the messaging success of this smart city, and for that, housing data in servers colocated with the city is a critical PR win. Housing them on AWS or at a Google datacenter, regardless of the actual privacy of that data, would be vulnerable to bad PR. Suggests that smart city teams will need good devops and ops folks.
Wouldn't be surprised if techies systematically underestimate the general hysteria around data privacy. Just look at how derisive that sentence came out! Ha, meta.
Original: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/29/google-city-technology-toronto-canada-218841
My highlights: https://www.highly.co/hl/iNm4GzjFGI1K88
MIT's Media Lab produces "Ori" robotic modular furniture July 1st, 2018
Reformat your space and furniture, and you transform a bedroom into a common space. Love this concept. The 80/20 of this is Murphy beds.