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An introductory film exploring one way in which one company could become part of the Elysia Commons.

Not For Profit in the Elysia Commons

How Charities Engage

The Elysia Commons is an association of organisations. It was created to solve a number of common problems that organisations often face, and also to support health in organisational life by promoting development, collaboration and discernment.

Anthroposophy is a source of inspiration and guidance for the Elysia Commons, and through the Elysia Commons it makes a contribution, along with other modern perspectives, to the renewal of capitalism.

For Profit in the Elysia Commons (For Profit in the Elysia Commons) explores the flow of money from the perspective of Rudolf Steiner's Three Fold Social Commonwealth. This paper explores organisational life from the insights that Rudolf Steiner brought of freedom and the Spiritual Hierarchies...  Not for profit in the Elysia Commons

Participative, Michaelic Leadership

The basic idea is to work through groups based discussion processes.  There is a simple dynamic: agree -> act -> review.

The meeting establishes the evidence and makes decisions.  The key task is always prioritisation.  List are maintained.  These are "Project" and "Action" Lists for ongoing work and "Safe Spaces" lists for projects and ideas that can not be done yet.

It's all inspired by Anthroposophy, and built up from Thinking Feeling Willing.  We might call it Participative, Michaelic Leadership.

Michaelic implies accountability.  Participative implies collaboration.  On the one hand everything is decided together, or in different but appropriate togethernesses.  On the other hand the management is authorised to make sure the agreements are carried out.

Here is another thought movement diagram.

Modern leadership requires thinking, feeling and willing.  The thinking aspect is what people usually mean by the narrower meaning of "Leadership".  Think of a group of people on a hike.  Across the bog is a mountain.  The leadership is to say "let us cross the bog to the mountain", the management is the job of getting everyone across the bog together, then up the mountain.  On the way different obstacles will call forth leadership moments.

We have a new thought, supported by research out of practical Anthroposophy, that there is a middle task, Facilitation.  In order for the leadership - management axis to be effective, a facilitation process is required.

So the groups meet in layers of increasing executive duty. Starting with the board or ownership container and ending with the executive or departmental meetings.

All the time facilitated discussion is working towards agreements that, once made, are then held to account for being carried out as agreed.

Facilitation Techniques:

1. Gather evidence first and carry on gathering until you can't bear it any longer.
2. Then ask what the solution might be.
3. Give everyone a voice, and unless they are inputting data, an equal voice.
4. Check in how people feel at the start, end and in between if it is a big process.
5. Try to write it up as you go. At key points, read back for agreement.
6. Every decision is made when everyone feels it is right. Not thinks it is right.  If a majority decision, then it is because a majority felt it was right.  Decision making is "Founding with our Hearts" and has to be feeling based, after thoughtful deliberation.
7. When checking if actions are carried out (accountability), it is all about what was done.  This step is "what we would direct with our heads".

Steps 1-3 were inspired by The Philosophy of Freedom, R.Steiner.
Steps 4 and 5 were inspired by Edward de Bono and many other business gurus.

Steps 6 and 7 are inspired by The Foundation Stone Meditation, R.Steiner.

The Foundation Stone Meditation 

The Foundation Stone Meditation is a practical guide that encompasses the whole of Anthroposophy.  Many have taken it in to their lives and have found it helpful in many ways. 

In terms of working together in organisations we might experience the first verse, Spirit Recollection, to be about reviewing.  The third, Spirit Meditation about decision making, and the fifth, Spirit Vision about planning.  

The middle verse, decision making / Spirit Meditation is also the place where our meetings are managed.  In that regard, the emotions that well up and have to be contained in order that good work is achieved, can be thought of in terms of glimpses of the "surging deeds of world evolution...", and the result is: "Unite thine own I with the I of the world". In other words, our planning is woven, through the decision, in to the carrying out of the Will, thus the world is transformed, or made.

For Profit in the Elysia Commons

This paper provides Anthroposophical insights into how commercial, for profit, organisations belong to the Elysia Commons.

The Elysia Commons brings organisations who share a common purpose in to association so that they can gain competitive advantage.  The types of organisations and the way in which they associate are many and varied, from charities to not-for-profit businesses, from commercial organisations to educational institutions.

This document explores the particular way "for profit" organisations can be knitted in to the Elysia Commons and explains the reasoning behind the method.

For the full paper, click here: For Profit in the Elysia Commons

Thinking, feeling, willing in action

I have, over recent months, been much struck by three themes that my colleague Bruce Irvine of the Grubb Institute has been working with. Recently I wondered how they might be connected.

The first theme I noticed was the spirit of enquiry, and I particularly noticed this in the context of whether or not one felt curious. The loss of curiosity being a sign of having given up. I like to think of the phrase in terms of a spiritual "Spirit" called "Enquiry". A member of the family of Spirits whose most exalted member, the Holy Spirit, leads and contains all the others. The task of the Holy Spirit to be the relationship between, to be the flow of love and of grace. The task of the Spirit of Enquiry being the discernment of all that is, right here, right now, including, what is present of the future, emergent in this moment. Of spirit substance, the Spirit of Enquiry is thinking in action, it is Goethean observation.

The second theme is co-creation. Distinct from creation, co-creation highlights the deeper reality that all that is, is, because together we have made it so. The concept of co-creation precludes the possibility that we are victims of the other and insists that we have it in our gift to change our own behaviour in order that what is co-created becomes truer to our purpose. This concept struggles to be comprehensible, or even seem fair, until the concepts of pre-birth intention, karma and freedom are brought to bear. Co-creation is mobilised Will.

The third theme is self-authorisation. Just as co-creation reframes creation to include others, so self-authorisation reframes authority, once again frustrating attempts to attach blame for consequences to anyone else but oneself. I act because I choose to, because I authorise myself to act. The moment of commitment, of taking up ones own authority, is a threshold, and we only cross when it feels right. Self-authorisation is achieved through feeling mobilised in freedom.

Thus we se that, in freedom, our thinking, feeling and willing are put to work, enquiring, judging the rightness of decisions, and accepting responsibility for our part in all that comes about.

Meetings

I have noticed something that I find interesting about meetings. There are two sorts of productive and work related activities that occur during most work based meetings, making decisions and hearing reports. The observation is really very simple and it is a connection between the Foundation Stone Meditation (FSM) and these two aspects of meetings.

Tom Ravetz has written about the FSM and brought to my attention that it bounces back and forth between the human and the cosmic, the micro and the macro. This continues for the first six verses and then in the 7th the human being is brought in to focus in a new way, through the naming of roles: shepherd and king, two polar positions in society that encompass everything in between.

Then in the 8th verse it is back out to the cosmos with an appeal to Christ to warm our hearts and enlighten out heads so that good may become. This is a development from the 7th verse with the human beings being brought in to motion, to carry out action such that good will be brought in to the world.

However, it is the last 3 lines that really show the way:

What with our hearts we would found

What with our heads we would direct

With single purpose

When human beings work together they have the opportunity to let good become together and it is in social sphere in which we engage and work together. The social sphere is the creation of the human beings, we create it ourselves, and it the mesosphere or middle sphere, between the micro and macro. This is the location of our activity and to a very great extent it is through meetings that our activity comes about.

It was thinking about this that I realised I could understand these last three lines as a simple guide to how to run meetings:

Well made decisions will feel right for everyone

Attentive listening and penetrating questions will deliver healthy accountability

And use the organisation purpose to judge decisions and performance

Which makes a lot of sense and corresponds to my experience.