democracy beginning with you
Most of us who care about democracy feel stuck, powerless and frustrated. Politics is distant: it tries to keep everyone happy but never commits. The call to take action comes from every side. In real life, when decisions eventually get taken, it's by whoever shouts the loudest or stays the longest.
And democracy gets the blame.
Democracy is more than a vote we cast now and then. What matters is the decisions and how we make them: clearly, in the open and answerable to the people they affect. That happens in parliaments. It should also happen in the residents' association, the union branch, the parents' group and your team at work. If it doesn't happen for the small things, it won't happen in the big ones.
Most of us were never taught how to make decisions together. So we keep falling into the same patterns: conversations go round in circles, never getting anywhere. Or decisions are taken over by the most persistent voices. In the end everyone probably remembers things differently too.
This happens wherever we need to decide something together and live with the result.
Simple, no-nonsense guides on decision making any group can put into practice in minutes. Free. No sign-up required.
Small democracy, groups making decisions together, is nothing new. These practices have been around for centuries. They work.
Download the first guide.Print a copy for everyone in your meeting.Get started in 5 minutes.
Learn to record a decisionRecording decisions well is just the beginning.Each guide is a single A4.Keep learning.
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Join the communityIf you have been in a meeting recently, anywhere, can you say what was actually decided?
If we avoid the difficult work of finding clarity on the words and we can't say why we chose one option over the others, we haven't really made a decision.
A real decision is accountable, those who made it are willing to stand by it, and it can be revisited. A good one is also falsifiable: we have accepted that we might be wrong, and worked out what that would look like. Getting the words right takes practice.
Four questions. No transcript, no software. A record your group can read in thirty seconds and still trust in a year.
In Athens, decisions were cut in stone with the name of the person who proposed them. Over the last few centuries, co-ops, unions and friendly societies kept minute books, and taught their members to keep them. Collective decision making has been learned through participation, but now, so few of us participate.
There's a reason why many groups have worked very hard to write down the decisions made. Power that is written down can be held to its word. If it's not written, it's surprisingly easy to bend our memories.
Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science…
Good decision making won't give your group power it doesn't have, or fix the institutions that decide over us. A decision isn't fair just because it is written down. And getting a group of people to decide anything stays hard.
Being democratic isn't voting on everything. The point of transparent decision making is to hold power well and learn to honour the decisions made, even when we disagree. Every group that learns that is a small piece of democracy.
μ (mu) means small. That is where we start: a few people, one decision, made as clearly as possible. Pick the next decision a group you belong to has to make, and record it in four questions. You don't need permission or a platform to begin.
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