Learnings around Governance

by Matilde Zadig
Subgroups - local and small operational decisions
Subgroups should be empowered and trusted to make the decisions they see fit, as long as this serves the purpose and fits within the resources of the programme (time, capacity, money etc.).
One of the main learnings (not unsurprisingly) from BIP is to have a system that allows for as locally made decisions as possible whenever possible. It took a long time before we had clear subgroups that consisted of _at least _a couple or more people doing work together regularly around a specific role or area of the programme on an ongoing basis. There are some basic guidelines in Sociocracy, where people and groups - those “doing the work” - are “mandated” or as a “domain” have autonomy over the decisions that affect their work. 
An added important value of Belong in Plymouth was to also consider who is being impacted, because we saw the people who have life experience as experts, and therefore made sure they had a say whenever possible and reasonable. 
The Core Team - the Supercircle of Stewards & Links
Delegate whenever possible/feasible. For that you need clear roles or responsibilities, a shared understanding of who is doing what.
The Core Team was kind of the ‘Supercircle’ of BIP and mainly made the decisions that needed to involve people from various subgroups, stewards and links as part of the programme. But ideally only those decisions, too many decisions can easily lead to decision-making fatigue. 
We also needed to make sure there is trust, meaning that people involved know and agree they are responsible for, and do their best to:

• Make decisions according to their roles
• Engage with the decision-making system best they can
• Willingly seek input from relevant others
• Engage with feedback
• Share decisions transparently and openly
• Integrate feedback
• Share learnings, and
• Seek support
  Support needed for governance & decision-making
  I think support is crucial in a project like Belong in Plymouth .
  A system of support which means we know who to go to (and how) when we need advice or input.
  But also, that there is support available to take on new responsibilities (of eg. for a certain budget) and _not _revert to the old system where we implicitly give away the power to change things, or hand over the responsibility away to whoever will take it (either willingly or by default). 
  In emergent projects, difficult decisions can easily become a hot potato. Reasons for this might be:
• Sometimes no one wants to/has enough support/skills to hold it, so we pretend it doesn’t exist, or try to make it go away, or blame it on somebody else (insert any local problem blamed on the council?).
• It sometimes might seem easier to relinquish power than to channel or steward it perhaps. If we’re driven by the purpose to make things better for others (and not just to make a personal career) then rightly so, that’s a big responsibility.
• Maybe we have also been told that power is scary and bad, that it turns good people into bad apples. There definitely needs to be some mechanisms and processes that support people to become responsible people.