Weeknotes #195

Roger on 24/04/2020

A week of working, walking and writing

Working

Work has been really busy this week. I’ve been doing quite a lot of what feels like ‘translation’ work, digging into configuration settings of various products and then writing recommendations and guidance on setting up and using the products. I’ve actually really enjoyed it (which is good as I have lots more to do) as I get to build mental models about how a product works, which is something I’m really interested in , and I get to write for other people to understand, which is a skill I want to improve.

We’ve also been building a new website, which will probably launch next week. It would be good to get a BCW (that’s Big Chunk of Work. I saw it on a presentation and it amused me) done before we move to reduced hours.

I’m beginning to recognise some of the differences and effects of our completely distributed way of working. Working in an office has more distractions but those distractions often mean getting up from the chair and going to see people, but working remotely means far more time sitting down. This takes a bit of a physical toll but I find its easier to do more focused deeper thinking work, which on turn has a mental toll. The context-switching and social interactions that used to occur in an office environment actually seem quite refreshing now, but back then I longed for more focused time. Basically, human beings are never satisfied.

Walking

I’ve been getting out for short walks each evening, often in time to see the sun set.

Writing

I’ve been working on my essay about the team of the future. I’m not sure how to explain what it actually is I’m doing, which is why I call it an essay, but it’s kind of an imagining of how a really good team would work effectively in a future where they aren’t constrained by our current outdated thinking. I’ve restructured it a few times, but at the moment there are four sections: practices, policies, principles and philosophies, and each has sub-sections that contrast the outdated thinking with new thoughts in deliberately adversarial ways. The section I’ve been researching and writing about this week is called ‘Distributed, decentralised & diverse vs. Command and control’, and talks about how management and leadership thinking that developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century worked for manufacturing but isn’t effective for managing knowledge work. So the team of the future will utilise thinking of management in distributed, decentralised & diverse ways.

And some other stuff

I haven’t had a much time for Twitter, or reading and post links in the Reading section of my website.

I received a grade of 74 for my case study about Amazon’s approach to innovation, my highest grade so far, and definitely helping me keep my average in the merit range.

Posthumanism

Roger on 24/04/2020

Posthumanism is a philosophical perspective of how change is enacted in the world. As a conceptualization and historicization of both agency and the “human,” it is different from those conceived through humanism. Whereas a humanist perspective frequently assumes the human is autonomous, conscious, intentional, and exceptional in acts of change, a posthumanist perspective assumes agency is distributed through dynamic forces of which the human participates but does not completely intend or control. Posthumanist philosophy constitutes the human as: (a) physically, chemically, and biologically enmeshed and dependent on the environment; (b) moved to action through interactions that generate affects, habits, and reason; and (c) possessing no attribute that is uniquely human but is instead made up of a larger evolving ecosystem. There is little consensus in posthumanist scholarship about the degree to which a conscious human subject can actively create change, but the human does participate in change.

As distinguished from posthumanism, humanism is credited with attributing the conscious and intentional human subject as the dominant source of agency most worthy of scholarly attention. Since its inception during the Renaissance, humanism has been constituted in various ways throughout history, but as a collective body of literature, the human is typically constituted through humanism as: (a) autonomous from nature given the intellectual faculties of the mind that controls the body, (b) uniquely capable of and motivated by speech and reason, and (c) an exceptional animal that is superior to other creatures. Humanist assumptions concerning the human are infused throughout Western philosophy and reinforce a nature/culture dualism where human culture is distinct from nature. In contrast, a posthumanist scholar rejects this dichotomy through understanding the human as entangled with its environment. A posthumanist scholar of communication typically integrates scholarship from a variety of other disciplines including, but not limited to: art, architeTurn into@ColorMore

Choosing a type of charity structure for future.charity

Roger on 18/04/2020

I spent a few hours reading about how to set up a registered charity. It is a long and complicated process. The step-by-step guidance on the gov website makes it look like seven easy steps, but actually even getting a charity set up takes a lot of work, and maintaining the administrative side is even more work. This type of legal structure wouldn’t work for future.charity. Being this type of charity wouldn’t give it the agility and flexibility it’ll need to be cause-agnostic, iterate on purpose, experiment, and develop a workable model for a charity of the 21st century that inspires a paradigm shift across the sector in decades to come.

Luckily, there are other types of legal structures charities can use that carry less governance, administration, and operating effort.

There are four main types of charity structure to choose from:

  • charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
  • charitable company (limited by guarantee)
  • unincorporated association
  • trust

The deciding differences between these four types are ‘wider membership’ and ‘corporate body’.

A charitable incorporated organisation has a corporate body, meaning the charity exists as a legal entity that can enter into contracts with individuals and organisations, and has wider membership, meaning more people have voting rights than just the trustees. It has to be registered with and report to the Charity Commission, have a constitution, and maintain a register of members. It seems the closest to the traditional charity legal structure, offers legal protection to its trustees and would mean that a wider group of people would be involved, which I think would be really good for encouraging diversity of thought.

A charitable company (limited by guarantee) has a corporate body but doesn’t have a wider membership. It is administered in a similar way to a commercial company (it has to provide financial returns to Companies House as well as reporting to the Charity Commission) but its assets can only be used to achieve its charitable purposes and it doesn’t have shareholders to distribute profits to. If future.charity intended to sell services as the primary means of achieving its charitable purpose than perhaps this would be the best structure.

A unincorporated association has no corporate body but has a wider membership. Having no corporate body means that the organisation can’t enter into contracts and so individual trustees would have to do that and be legally responsible. Requiring a wider membership requires particular governance of the organisation, but I think there are some interesting governance models other than the usual ‘one member, one vote’ model that usually gets low engagement.

A trust has no corporate body and no wider membership. It is made of a group of people, usually selected by the founder of the trust, and usually to perform quite a specific charitable role, such as giving grants.

So, which is the right type for future.charity? I feel like that needs to be a decision all of the trustees make together (so I’d better get on and recruit them).