Voluntaryism is a philosophy that believes 'Will' to be the highest principle of being. Members of SMG have agreed to be ‘At Will’ with the Steinbart Media Group. ‘At Will' means by consent. If you do something ‘At Will’, you do it when you want, as much as you want and with whom you want.
This belief, that Will is the highest principle, stems from the principles of self-ownership and nonaggression. Relations among people should be by mutual consent or not at all. Voluntaryism opposes the initiation of coercion.
Over the last 20 odd years, I’ve been involved with many ‘At Will’ organizations:
• farmers markets co-ops
• community supported agriculture
• community gardens
• energy cooperatives & housing cooperatives
• parents & teachers groups
• political activist groups, including occupations
All of these groups were a varying degree of voluntaryist. Below are my observations.
In our world, money is the report card we usually refer to for a measure of our success. Money is the way organizations coerce their employees into laboring toward their goals. However, when the coercion of money is not involved in the group agreement, it doesn't mean that we stop coercing. We bring along whatever coercion programs we have learned in our childhood and working life. It takes awareness to identify and dissolve coercion.
Here is a list of coercion tactics that I've noticed people use, programs that people run, when they're in an ‘At Will’ environment:
• seniority (age or length of time in the organization)
• access to information (gate-keeping & manipulation)
• expertism (excessive focus on credentials)
• proximity to decision-makers (mistaking friendship for power)
• who speaks the most in meetings
• some people join a voluntary organization expecting to receive emotional support or fulfillment in return for their efforts and will sabotage those who don't comply.
This is just a small list of coercion programs I've witnessed. What I have found combats these coercion programs most effectively, is what I will call Manage By Objectives.
This means a project can have interchangeable roles. Very important to the ethos of Voluntaryism is the fact that members of the group can come and go without affecting the outcome.
Many of the people attracted to SMG are creatives who have experience in working collaboratively. They would agree with me that arguing about how to do something when you’re halfway through a project is a lot better than arguing about what you’re doing when you're halfway through. Getting the objective clear at the beginning of the project and continually returning to it, makes it more likely it will be achieved.
We are The Q Hoard. We are doing distributed research and distributed marketing. Q+ has shown us how to do this and it's feasible that we can continue to expand our operation with very little focus on leaders. Managing By Objectives is how we do that.
Here is a list of organization styles that I have witnessed cause low productivity, chaos & failure in voluntary organizations:
The most damaging organization style I’ve seen is Manage By Personality. This is when a voluntary organization devolves into a cult with narcissistic behaviors that everyone has no choice but to partake in. The person who rises to the top is the one with the most charm and personality, flanked by the most Machiavellian. A hallmark of Manage By Personality is gossip. Not only does the organization fail, the people involved suffer greatly.
An example of a voluntary organization that successfully met its objective was an occupation action in Bentley, New South Wales in Australia, in 2014. Our objective was to stop encroachment by a fracking company into lush farmland and native forest in one of the very few ‘food bowls’ in Australia. The occupation was four months long, it was ‘At Will’ - all voluntary. There were hundreds of people camped on the land, and thousands came and went to support the occupation. The people from the towns around, would bring food and donate money and we held concerts to raise funds for legal injunctions and political activism.
The police were constantly on the verge of invading the space and kicking everyone out, much like Zuccotti Park. We had an agreement, a deeply held collective agreement that nobody broke: there would be no alcohol in the encampment; the reason being the police were so close, and we needed to know that everyone was safe and the cops had no excuse to enter.
That agreement was kept, everything else was ‘At Will’ and we managed to succeed at saving that farmland and the surrounding environment.
The campaign consisted of many groups focussed on their objective: kitchen duty, health & safety, creative team, lock-on team (who locked their bodies to a pole, driven into the Earth), police liaison, petition collection, legal team etc. At the morning fire, we'd stand around, sipping chai, and catching up with the latest campaign news. Then each group would invite contribution by stating, clearly, their objective and what needed to be done that day to achieve it. People would then go toward the objective they felt they could best help. If an objective was suggested and no one saw its value or how it aligned with the objective of the occupation, it didn't happen.
Managing By Objectives requires a deeply held fundamental agreement to connect the group, a habit to install that everyone agrees to uphold. We don't have a morning fire, but we do have a practice that Q taught us: The Socratic Method.
My suggestion is that whenever one of these coercion programs comes online (and everyone has them, it's just part of our makeup) and it seems the project is waning, immediately the question is asked, "How does this meet the objective?"
Of course, the question is asked with ears open. It is not rhetorical. The answer may lead to more clarity and depth. Sometimes we perceive coercion where there is none (Define Projection - Q). That's why we ask a question.
Objective is met how?
If we agree that it is acceptable - and even welcomed - to ask someone how what they just said meets the objective, then we will regularly return focus to the objective and avoid managing by role, personality, chaos etc.
Pitch All Day means we're constantly pitching. We are in a sales environment, that is, we're selling our ideas to our fellows. Selling your idea and getting your projects off the ground requires a few steps:
If you've pitched an idea, you're fun to work with, and you've pulled off your objective, the next time you pitch an idea, the group will know you're the one who makes things happen and jump at the opportunity to join.
A pitch is an invitation. It tells of the benefits of the project. It includes a statement of the objective which has:
Crowd-source the gathering of clips from Q content and curate a collection on qclips.org so that all content producers can find footage to use without having to spend hours looking.
The group who are working on this project regularly check in with the objective as we move toward our goals.
Since Voluntaryism means relations among people is by mutual consent or not at all, you have full choice who you associate with - you are 'At Will'. This is not usually the case in everyday life, so this is the part of Voluntaryism that is most difficult to come to terms with. Managing By Objectives, we can more easily disregard personality issues and coercion attempts and express our personal sovereignty. This is true meritocracy; when we are transparent and circumvent coercion, merit is made obvious by our results. The works of a truly free individual are by far more beautiful. By their fruits, you will know them.
In almost 25 years of activism, it's the Manage By Objectives organization style I have seen be most effective in delivering true meritocracy, attracting and retaining talent, and creating long term success.
Since relations among people is by mutual consent, I will state now that Manage By Objectives is my condition for my consent. I will always join a project that specifies it will be Managed By Objectives. I will never join a project that is not.
Where We Go One We Go All.
