This is a CTP of initiative: Hackspace 1 (North of England, UK)
This CTP describes the decision of the hackspace co-founders to continue to instil the ethos of ‘do-ocracy’ into the organization, even after it was formally founded as a CIC (as described in previous CTPs). Instilling do-ocracy principles has also resulted a slower growth of the hackspace than might otherwise have happened.
“Do-ocracy” refers to forms of participative self-management within organisations, operating in systems which encourage decision-making by the initiators and implementers of a project, reached through a consensus process. The ethos has been popular and prevalent in the wider hackspace community; and was seen by the co-founders as a particularly useful and radical way to conceive of the transformative aims of the organization. It was also useful for enabling the set-up of the larger workshop space which the organization moved into in early 2016:
“When we got here we said look, it’s a do-ocracy. What that means is that if you find a room that looks about the size of a darkroom and you want to make a darkroom, then make a darkroom!”
As described in previous CTPs, this offer had been taken up by members who had taken the lead on developing the electronics and film studio part of the workshop. The decision to keep “do-ocracy” principles in place after the hackspace was incorporated as a business was seen by the co-founders as a means of balancing the structural needs of the enterprise with the non-hierarchical, self-organising ethos of the wider hackspace community
“We wanted to keep some of the best bits that we’d been talking about from the beginning. You can’t really have a top-down hierarchical tight grip structure, and also have a do-ocracy. You have to balance those two things. At some stage, we knew we needed a structure to do things – if you want to get a grant, the people with the money want to see the articles of association and the constitution, they want to know who the trustees are, and so on. But it’s still a hackspace.”
As the co-founders identified, the business structure permitted some of the hazards of do-ocracies, such as tyrannies of structurelessness, to be mediated; whilst the do-ocracy continuing to encourage a community dynamic that the co-founders felt would not have been possible in a more commercially oriented or individualistic environment: “People are very good at looking after each other here. It’s good community, now, not just people turning up each week”.
This CTP was shaped by the evolution of the organizational principles of “do-ocracy” and their prevalence in other hackspace organisations. As described above, “do-ocracy” systems encourage self-management of organisations and systems over hierarchies. In these spaces, the system is driven forward through spontaneous engagement with jobs and projects – rather than waiting for group discussion and the selection of the most qualified person for the job to do the task (and associated time-delays). Because of its focus on action and doing, the systems are broadly seen to have emerged from libertarian management principles, finding favour with intentional communities such as open source software development communities, California festivals such as Burning Man, and the hackspace network.
As the co-founders recognized (and have been mirrored in other studies), the “do-ocracy” principles are popular in spaces which have traditionally held with a volunteer culture in spaces where there are always lots of jobs to do; and have often been set up in opposition to hierarchical systems. The Noisebridge hackspace in San Francisco, California, is broadly acknowledged to have popularized the concept in the hackspace community by dint of being one of the earliest and most influential spaces, through its principle: “Doing excellent stuff at Noisebridge does not require permission or an official consensus decision. If you're uncertain about the excellence of something you want to do, you should ask someone else what they think.” In additional to this hackspace, a number of other UK hackspaces also deliberately deploy do-ocracy principles, and is a common subject of discussion on hackspace forums.
This CTP was shaped by the evolution of the organizational principles of “do-ocracy” and their prevalence in other hackspace organisations.
The co-founders described how they were extremely careful to reduce use the do-ocacy ethos, in combination with the CIC structure described in previous CTPs, to minimize conflict and tension around decision-making in the organization, by bringing everything onto an equal playing field. To do this, engagements between the directors and other members was set up conversations through regular meetings, rather than edicts and instruction which had (at the time of interview) been working well, as one of the directors described:
“By and large, everyone’s been in agreement. We have a monthly meeting – as I do the vast majority of the admin stuff, the monthly meetings are often just me updating everyone: ‘This is what’s been happening, this is our cash flow situation, and so on’. I do try and make it a conversation, like ‘This is an opportunity for you to tell me what to do!’ But everyone always seems happy with me steering. I do always preface things with ‘This is a suggestion, not a decision that I’m making so please let me know any thoughts you have’, and everyone’s like ‘No, we’re quite happy with that. Carry on’”.
As this quote illustrates, although the aim of a do-ocracy is for horizontal forms of self-organisation, some of the hackspace members are more self-organising than others, with other members happy to fall in line behind them. Whilst the hackspace inhabited physical premises (as described in previous CTPs), the organisation’s founders made use of online forums to continue to distil and encourage do-ocracy principles:
“On the discussion forums, people can start threads and discuss anything they want. Like the workshop, we’re aiming for a largely self-governing thing for members to make it their thing so they can steer it – if they have any particular idea or path, they can run with that. Mostly it’s working”.
This CTP was understood to be critical for the operations of the hackspace – both in terms of the construction and kitting out of the workshop space in the larger premises at the converted mill; and for the sustainability of the community itself. As described in previous CTPs, the co-directors had deliberately created financial membership structures which encourage egalitarian access to the space, but also recognized that a financial bond alone to a hackspace wasn’t enough to create the collective community bonds needed for co-learning and respect to manifest, As one of the co-founders described:
“Everyone’s paid to be a member, but everyone’s also really grafted to make sure this space happens. They don’t want anything to happen to the space. Instead of a them-and-us philosophy, where members think of themselves as customers, our members think of themselves as members, part of a co-operative. So it’s in everyone’s best interests to make sure the workshop is in the best possible shape, that nothing’s broken or leaky. If you’re just someone’s employee, you just do what gets handed to you”.
As described in previous CTPs, the co-directors came to realize that employing a part-time member of staff would enable the operations of the hackspace to run more smoothly. However, it would also create a specific power dynamic and relationship within the organization that ran counter to the horizontal ethos; and potentially set up a divide between regular members and the employee. This unexpected friction between business structure and philosophical ethos was not anticipated nor, at the time of interview, resolved.
“Do-ocracy” principles have allowed the organisation to meet its transformational aims of encouraging education and self-actualisation through making, particularly to the local community where low-skill, low-control forms of work were common. By offering the freedoms of self-governance and initiated lead-taking, the co-founders described how their members were not only able to learn new technical skills, but also new organisational skills and the confidence to undertake them; things that in themselves were quite challenging to come to after time in more traditional forms of labour:
“I think people do take some time to get used to this hacker trust, this do-ocracy. They’ve never had that type of freedom before. They maybe work in a job with low levels of trust and high levels of micromanagement. They think if they would like to do something differently, they’ve almost got used to the idea of abandoning that improvement – it’s too hard to ask their manager to do something. ‘That’s just how we do things around here’. But then you come here and you want to do something and – if it sounds like a good idea, and it probably is a good idea, and there are no objections, then it’s perfectly sensible to get on and do it. But its perfectly sensible for people to be nervous about that because they’re scared of making a mistake, that they’ll screw up in the face of their line manager. And these are all reflections of their working lives that they’ve picked up and have to get over when they come to a hackspace. Just say yes”.
Instilling ‘do-ocracy’ principles has also resulted in the co-founders deliberately choosing to not to actively recruit and increase the membership of the organisation – even potentially against its own financial interests - in order to allow for cultural learning about the hackspace culture and community development. As one of the co-founders described:
“It’s true – we’d like more members. That would ease the financial worries in terms of running the space. But, at the same I’m happy for the community to grow steadily and organically because it gives time for each of the new members to get assimilated into the team. If I had 30 new members join tomorrow, that would change the feel, It might make new members feel pushed out, and it might mean new members would take a little time to understand how we do things, the ethos”.
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