Super Principles

First, there are three main "super" principles which constitutes the philosophical foundation for our way of working together.

Artful Participation

Artful participation is an important part of self-leadership: How do you choose to participate when we work together? For self-governance to work, everyone of us need to look ourselves in the mirror, reflect on and adapt our behaviour more consciously so that we can contribute in the most authentic and full way possible. Sometimes we need to go out of our comfort zones and speak up or hold back. Sometimes we need to challenge norms and assumptions or learn to accept previous agreements. It's about playing a balancing act and knowing when to do either. A kind of art.

Good enough for now and safe enough to try

At its core, this is an agile principle. It's about prototyping and building on top of small experiments. It's also about not being afraid to make decisions. If it's good enough for now and safe enough to try – i.e. there are no better proposals on the table, or it's not likely to harm us significantly – we just go ahead and do it. There will always be pros and cons and it's easy to get stuck in argument forever. So, let's just do it, evaluate the effects, and build from there.

It's not "either or", it's "both and more"

The brain loves to break down this complex and mysterious reality into small little manageable boxes. We like to think about things as either black or white, when, in reality, the picture is vivid with all kinds of colours and perspectives. It might feel better or easier to categorise solutions into these boxes, saying that one thing is more real or desirable than another, but in practice this limits our perception. If we want to collaborate more effectively, we need to practice our individual and collective ability to consider more possibilities than one. A "both-and" perspective forces us to look behind the corner of our own limitations. Maybe we'll discover more than we thought possible.