Extinction Rebellion Belgium constitution

Extinction Rebellion Belgium CONSTITUTION v1.1

Contents

• Foreword

• Introduction to the XR Belgium Constitution; a Self-Organising System (SOS)

• Foundations

• Training & Support for how to use the system

• Parts of the System:
  1. XR Organism Structure
  2. Roles within teams
  3. Four Options for Decision-making
  4. Defining Mandates for Roles within a team
  5. Defining Mandates for Sub-teams within a team
  6. Policies: to create constraints which limit the authority given to roles/circles by mandates
  7. Meetings
  8. Documentation for Teams

• Appendices:
  A: Criteria & Conditions for Membership of an XR BE Working Group as an example other countries can consider when planning their own system.
  B: Mandate of the XR UK Anchor Circle as an example to consider when planning own system.
  C: A Manifesto for Self-Organisation

Foreword

The XRBE constitution document was drafted in 2019. Since then it has remained unchanged. The links that no longer worked were updated. Version 1.0 of the constitution document is still available here.

Introduction

• Building on the XR UK Constitution, this document defines the constitution for XR Belgium, which defines the self-organising system for XR Belgium teams. Its objective and characteristics:

  • interfaces support/coordinates/aligns with local/affinity groups in Belgium.

  • interfaces to align and coordinate with other XR initiatives at an International level.

  • is fractal and has the capacity to grow organically.

• The following 3 features of this SOS mean that power is shifted out of people and into the processes of the system itself because:

  • the SOS is defined by a written down rule-set: this Constitution.

  • the rules in this constitution apply to everyone in the same way, there are no privileged classes, no exceptions.

  • no single person has power/authority over another person or the system itself.

• To ensure coherence, coordination and consistency of the XR Belgium Organism, membership in any XR Belgium Team (Glassfrog link is removed because no longer used or up to date) requires an agreement to work within this system.

• It’s not complete or perfect, it’s always a work in progress, from which feedback can be gathered so that the system can evolve as needed.

• If you have feedback to give then please add comments to this document.

• There are multiple parts of this system, which can be used as individual parts, and when used together create a whole, integrated system that is greater than the sum of the parts.

• There are 2 ways of using this system:

  • Teams in the XR Organism which are more stable/core will likely use more of this system as a whole because it probably applies to them more.

  • More fluid/looser groups such as affinity/local groups/other groups in the ecosystem might use a simpler/lighter version of this called Recommendations on how to run your group.

  • Watch “How Local Groups Work in XR UK”- for how local groups can copy the XR UK structure. This helps communication and decentralisation.

• This system is inspired by and uses some features of Holacracy® practice, and is also influenced by other methods of self-organisation. It is important to understand that this is not Holacracy and that XR is not practicing Holacracy; and to clearly and consistently communicate this message.

• The last page gives some of the rationale for this system.

• If you’d like to understand more about the background principles and thinking behind this system there’s a whole range of learning resources about Self-Management, Self-Organisation and Self-Organising Systems on this Learning Platform for Self-Organisation.

• Major changes to this document need to be approved by the Anchor Circle

Foundations

• The system is founded on the principle of distributed authority where decisions are decentralised to individuals in roles with clear mandates for those decisions. When someone has a mandate in a role it means that they have the authority to make a decision/do something; and at the same time it sets an expectation which others can have of that role-holder.

• Only use group decision-making when it’s necessary and not by default! It’s perhaps the most expensive (in terms of time, and if not done well can also expend motivation too) way of making decisions and can slow things down a lot. While it’s important at times to tap into the collective intelligence of a team and/or get buy-in for decisions, it’s not always the best way to be making decisions, and there are other ways to achieve those things.

• Transparency- the clearer you can be about:
  - the work you are doing
  - your mandate
  - the mandates of other roles and all teams;
• then the easier it will be to collaborate at scale.
• This system is designed to manage the polarity between two different ways of operating, as needed in different situations:
  - being able to act quickly and be responsive to fast-changing situations when needed
  - integrating wisdom of multiple perspectives and harnessing collective intelligence when needed

• 2Information Sharing: the organisation’s structure and other parts of this system means that information is shared in team meetings at appropriate levels of scale, plus can travel between different levels of scale as needed.

Training & Support for how to use the system

• Don’t be put off by all of this text! It’s not actually that complicated and is easy enough to get the hang of it once you start to actually use it. If you’d rather have someone talk it through with you to help you understand it or support with how to make it work in your team you can ask the Self-Organising System team via [email protected] .

• This video introduces how the structure of the system looks and works- 6 mins

• Other training videos and resources are to follow; email [email protected] with any specific requests

Parts of the System

1. XR Belgium Organism Structure

• The structure of XR Belgium is in units of teams, which are clustered into Circles of multiple teams.

• Teams are autonomous & self-governing. This means that it’s up to the teams how they do the work to achieve their mandate.

• Each team has its own mandate which needs to have at least one, or any combination of the following:

  • purpose- the reason the team exists/what it is working towards, as a smaller part of the purpose of the whole organism

  • accountabilities which define the ongoing work that needs to be done by a team, what that team is accountable for, and expectations others can have of a team

  • domain- which conveys ownership. So for example, if a team owns the domain of the website, it means no other person or team can change the website without owning team’s permission. Could also apply to things like a Social Media account, contact list, bank account, script for a talk.

• The teams are in a structure where larger teams have sub-teams within them, and sub-teams can have their own sub-teams and so on, like Russian dolls. A sub-team is a whole, autonomous team in its own right, while also being a part of a larger team (this is the same structure as found in natural systems and is called a holarchy). Here’s a way to see the teams/circles in the current structure and this spreadsheet shows the mandates of each Circle and SubCircles + contact emails for teams.

• Each team should have one or two named Coordinators (internal & external) with mandates as described here, and:

  • If a team is a sub-team of a larger team, the external Coordinator is a member of both the broader team and sub-team.

  • The external Coordinator can nominate someone to attend the larger team in their place, in order to represent the sub team as the external coordinator.

  • This means that information and tensions can flow in both ways, both into and out of all teams and be addressed at the appropriate level of scale.

• The XR Belgium structure should be published & updated so that everyone can see:

  • the structure and how the teams fit together

  • mandates for each team

  • the 2 Coordinators of each team

  • a contact email address for each team

  • any mandates for roles in a team, plus who is filling those roles

• Projects emerge which don’t seem to fit into the structure: the circles aren’t boxes to be boxed in by! If a project arises which involves work of people from multiple circles, one person should take the lead on the project (ideally with a mandate which covers it) and then create an ad-hoc project team to do the work with people from wherever relevant. This team can autonomously self-organise and doesn’t need to be represented in the structure.

• By default, all resources and strategies are owned and defined by the Anchor Circle unless specifically delegated to another role/team/circle.

• This 6-min video introduces how the structure of the system looks and works.

2. Roles within teams

• Creating Internal Roles: it is recommended that teams define their own internal roles inside their teams with clear mandates for all ongoing work within a team. This increases clarity and reduces potential confusion about who is doing what. This template shows an example and can be downloaded to create internal roles for a team

• When a team defines roles with mandates, the authority for what is included in the mandates is then devolved from the team level into a role. This means that whatever is in those mandates no longer gets decided at a team level, instead it gets decided by the role-holder

• Or teams may choose to not define any roles. This is the least preferable option since it reduces clarity about who will do what and has the potential for more confusion

• Filling Roles: Here’s 2 options to decide who fills which roles. It’s recommended to do them in this order:

  • people volunteer for the roles they want to fill (authority is earned by taking action)

  • if there are more volunteers than opportunities to fill roles there are two options for electing someone into a role:

    • The Integrative election process which is used in Holacracy

    • A simple majority vote

• In some cases it’s appropriate for a single role to be filled by multiple people (e.g. meeting facilitator). In others it may not be

• In this system authority is earned; people earn the right to be a member of a team and attend meetings if they are actively filling a role and working on at least one project for that team as seen on a team’s project board (if using a project board). This prevents meetings being clogged up by people attending and sharing their views about how things should happen if they aren’t actually involved in any work

• Anyone can call for re-election of any coordinator role at any time.

3. Four Options for Decision-making

Different issues require different ways of making decisions; the following ways of making decisions are to be used for the following situations:

• Decisions to define mandates for roles within a team or for a sub-team use the process below in #4, because multiple perspectives need to be integrated when distributing authority within a team into roles

• When a role has a mandate, the role holder makes the decision about any issues covered by the mandate because the mandate conveys authority to take actions and make decisions. A role-holder may choose to get no input at all/or lots of input/or anywhere in between. One tried, tested and recommended method of a role-holder getting input into a decision they need to make is to use the Advice Process

• For any other decisions- the person facilitating the meeting decides which decision-making process to use for each point. Here’s some of the most common options:

  • simply seek agreement from team members

  • if agreement can’t be reached, take a vote (either simple majority or require a specific majority like 2/3)

  • Formal Consensus

  • Gradients of Agreement

  • consent-based decision-making from Sociocracy.

• For any of the above options, if a decision gets stuck and can’t be made any other way and there is either:

  • a reason the decision needs to be made in the current meeting

  • or if an item is being processed in its third meeting without a decision having been able to be made;

then the decision can be made by simple majority vote. If the vote is tied, then the casting vote is made by the External Coordinator. If the External Coordinator isn’t present then the casting vote passes to the Internal Coordinator. If neither coordinators are present then one person is chosen at random to give the casting vote.

• For more support with facilitating decision-making, ask [email protected] .

4. Defining Mandates for Roles within a team

• A 'team Mandate' can be broken down into smaller 'Role Mandates', so that decisions can be made by individual role-holders rather than at a team level

• Mandates for any defined roles should be included in the XR structure document so there’s visibility about which roles exist in all teams

• For this type of collective decision this adaptation of Integrative Decision Making from Holacracy must be used. Collective decisions can be made at any formal meeting of a circle. There are no attendee/quorum restrictions. It requires a Facilitator to facilitate the following process:

• A person Presents a Proposal for a new role or new sub-team, or change to an existing one

• Whoever wants to can ask Clarifying Questions; only questions to better understand the proposal should be allowed. No reactions

• Reaction Round: each person, one at a time gives their reaction to the proposal. No discussion or cross talk. Proposer does not react

• Amend & Clarify: proposer can amend the proposal if they want to be based on questions/reactions. They can also clarify their intent if they want to. Both of these are optional. Only proposer speaks at this step; no other discussion or feedback

• Objection Round: the facilitator asks each person if they have any objection to the proposal (which is different to if they like it/agree to it/are happy with it). If someone has an objection the facilitator writes it down where everyone can see and then tests it. For an objection to be valid, all of the following conditions must apply:

  • The objection must be a reason that the proposal causes harm; where harm is defined as degrading the capacity of the circle to achieve its mandate

  • The objection must be created by the proposal and not exist already

  • The objector must be certain the harm will happen and give a reason how they know this, or if they aren’t certain, they must give a reason why it’s not safe enough to try

  • The objector must be able to explain how the proposal will limit them from achieving the mandate of one of their roles.

• If there are no objections, or if there are objections but they are not valid, then the proposal is accepted and recorded in the record of mandates

• If there are valid objections which meet the criteria above, then you move to Integration where the proposal gets adapted so that the objection no longer exists and the original intention of the proposer is still met

• After Integration you move back to another Objection Round for the integrated proposal.

• Once there are no further objections the proposal is accepted and it is recorded in the record of mandates for that circle.

• If any changes are being made to mandates, all circle members need to be given reasonable notice of meeting time & date of the meeting.

5. Defining Mandates for Sub-teams within a team

• There needs to be a clear process for new sub-teams to get created, or the mandates of existing teams to be changed

• To create/amend mandates for sub-teams the same process described above for creating roles should be used.

6. Policies: to create constraints which limit the authority given to roles/circles by mandates

• A system which only has authority distributed into roles/circles could easily create chaos and fragmentation if there is nothing to constrain the distributed authority with and which creates alignment when needed; to prevent everyone just going off doing their own thing. A Policy is a specific expectation which either grants or restricts authority outside of the mandates of roles/circles

  • For example, if someone is giving the XR talk in a community, there needs to be something in place which restricts how much they can change the talk, if at all, while still keeping it as an XR talk. This restriction could be done by this policy: 'XR talks may only be given as XR talks if they follow the format as defined by x role'

• A policy that is created within a circle applies to all people/work/roles within that circle and any sub-circles within it, but not outside of that circle. For it to apply outside of the circle that created it, it would need to be agreed in the broader circle/s.

• A policy can only be decided in a circle using the same decision-making process as to create/amend roles in Section 4 (together the mandates of roles/circles and policies is called Governance).

7. Meetings

• Format: It is recommended that meetings happen using this format or something like it, with a Facilitator (which is an adaptation of the Holacracy Tactical Meeting). Either build the agenda before the meeting or very quickly at the start- like in 1-2 mins.

  • Check-in

  • Information sharing: just for sharing information, no discussion in these steps, and if anyone wants to discuss anything from this information then add an item to the agenda

  • review of action points from last meeting; if any person wants to follow up on any action point from a previous meeting (whether it has been completed or not), it is up to them to do so, either adding an agenda item or following up outside of a meeting

  • project updates

  • Process each agenda point one at a time, don’t mix them up

  • Closing round

• Minutes: it is recommended to keep minutes and meeting outputs of each team as a google doc, recording any Action Points all in one place so they can be reviewed if needed

• Project Board: it is recommended to have a table at the top of your team’s Minutes which shows all the projects that team members are working on, like this example (outdated). These can be used for project updates, and people can update this at any time, either inside or outside of a meeting

• Attendance:

  • All circle members are entitled to attend meetings of that circle, but there’s no obligation for them to do so

  • There is no required quorum or number of people for a circle meeting to happen, it happens with whoever shows up unless otherwise specified in a policy that a certain number or mix of people are required to be there for a meeting to be quorate. However, reasonable notice is required to be given to all team/circle members before a meeting happens by whoever schedules the meeting

  • A circle member may invite someone who isn’t a member of the circle to attend a meeting to process a specific tension and the guest may only participate for the processing of that specific tension.

8. Documentation for Teams

Each XR Belgium Team should publish and maintain a single, short, key overview document which:

• outlines key information about the group (example from Communities group in the UK)

• is regularly updated

• links to further documentation such as:

  • current projects & meeting minutes (template which can be copied)

  • a short intro video to explain the work of the group (example from Communities group in the UK)

Still to figure out- add any requests for things to add here (from UK Constitution)

• Should add something about how to process tensions across multiple circles

• How do regional groups fit in - it would be useful to consider how the ‘main’ XR Belgium working groups at least keep those regional working groups updated about stuff to avoid duplication at a minimum but also just share what is going on - all we see at moment is basically the XR main newsletter

• How does this translate into Local Groups? Do we adopt as much of this as we have capacity for? What is the vision - for all XR groups, including local groups, to be eventually operating in line with this constitution?

• It might be useful to highlight a few key techniques/methods that Local Groups could adopt if they are short on resources/time to implement the full system/feel overwhelmed by the idea of looking into or implementing the full system - but which can really help with improving self-organising dynamics. I did some (participatory action style) research into it and the key take away points were easier for some quick changes despite low capacity… would be happy at looking at writing up my research (was for a journal submission originally) for XR in late summer if that’s of interest!

Appendices

Appendix A

Criteria & Conditions for Membership of an XR Belgium Working Group

CRITERIA FOR MEMBERSHIP OF AN XR WORKING GROUP

1. Any extinction rebel is eligible to join an XR BE working group, independent of their personal, social or cultural background, unless they have a past of repeatedly violating Extinction Rebellion’s Principles and Values and/or resisting the implementation of a conflict resilience process

2. For a person to join, and maintain membership of a working group, they need to agree to and act in alignment with Extinction Rebellion’s Principles and Values, the Rebellion’s aims, and its constitution. They will need to have read and agreed with our Ways of Working.

PROCESS FOR BECOMING A MEMBER OF AN XR WORKING GROUP

3. For someone to join a working group they need to be invited by the Internal Coordinator of the group; on the basis of there being an identified fit between:

a) work that is needed to be done in that group- normally through either a role with a mandate or a specific project

b) a person's skills/abilities to do that work that is needed

c )To support identifying fit, a potential member may be invited to a Working Group meeting to observe

4. Any working group member can pitch/recommend/request that the Internal Coordinator considers a specific person to join their working group

5. On joining a working group, a new member’s induction should include:

a) Extinction Rebellion’s Principles and Values

b) The Rebellion’s aims

c) The XR Belgium constitution and how to work with the Self-Organising System

d) The XR Belgium conflict resilience process

e) How to process tensions across multiple circles

f) The circumstances in which they may be asked to leave the group.

PROCESS FOR BEING ASKED TO LEAVE AN XR WORKING GROUP

6. If a working group member believes that another member is not properly fulfilling their role/mandate, or is not keeping their agreement to act in alignment with Extinction Rebellion’s Principles and Values, the Rebellion’s aims, and its constitution, they can:

a) Raise it directly with the person to see if it can be resolved that way

b) And/or raise it with the internal coordinator of the group and to engage the conflict resilience process if needed

7. Depending on the outcome of the above, the Internal Coordinator may ask a member of their working groups to leave.

Appendix B

Mandate of the XR UK Anchor Circle

Offered as an example other countries may want to copy from/adapt:

• Defining the purpose & strategy of XR UK, or defining the processes by which these are decided


• Defining mandates of all roles/teams/circles in the XR UK Anchor Circle and policies

• Deciding on the use of resources between roles/teams/circles in the XR UK Anchor Circle where not decided elsewhere

Appendix C

A Manifesto for Self-Organisation

These are notes from Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (the sequel to Sapiens), which have informed the development of this constitution and may be relevant to other social change movements.

• He says that the main factor that makes Homo Sapiens the most powerful species on the planet is our capacity for large-scale, flexible cooperation, which other species apparently don’t have

• We behave and cooperate differently at different levels of scale:
  • At smaller scales

    • where people have direct relationships with each other, how people organise, structure the social hierarchy and cooperate is mediated through these relationships

    • group sizes of around 150 people is the upper limit of a human’s ability for intimate, direct relationships with others

    • research shows that a moral sense of equality is important in these relationships, even in chimps

  • And at larger levels of scale

    • beyond around 150, something beyond direct relationships has to be the foundation of how people organise, structure themselves and cooperate

    • one of the key influencing factors about how people organise at these larger levels of scale is shared beliefs in an imagined order- the shared stories/myths/assumptions we hold about ‘how things work in the world and how we organise to get stuff done together’

• Historically

  • large groups of people have been ruled by small elite groups because the elite groups have been able to organise themselves well enough so that they can rule and dominate the larger groups, which haven’t been able to organise themselves at the larger scale

  • and small groups who can organise have stepped into the power vacuums left after revolutions to replace the ousted elite with another small dominating group

• (Personal) conclusions

  • if people can develop the capacity for self-organisation at larger scales, this is the thing that could shift the power dynamic and overturn the dominating rule of elites

  • self-organisation at levels of scale beyond group sizes of 150 needs to have some kind of system to create order and the conditions where people can self-organise and work together towards shared purposes.