Healthy Power ManifestoIt can be done. It must be done. It is our future. -- We face a profound choice: to continue with the ways of toxic power which we inherited, or to build a world together where power is healthy for all. We all love power. We all suffer from toxic power. Healthy Power is not an alternative. It is our future. Healthy Power is the ability to do work over time in a way that is good for all the people and systems involved: the ecosystems, the human communities, the customers, the workers, the investors, the leaders, all of us. Healthy Power is circular, not linear or flat. Healthy Power is fluid, not frozen. Healthy Power is consensual, not coercive. The Future is here. We Have numerous models of Healthy Power. If you are committed to bringing healthy power to your workplace or your community, you are already leading the shift to a world where power works for everyone. It can be done. It must be done. We are doing it. We invite you to join us. We face a profound choice: to continue with the ways of toxic power which we inherited, or to build a world together where power is healthy for all.Healthy Power AllianceHPA_de71ded6-07e2-11e6-8e80-49f545c7ae33Healthy Power OrganizationsWe Have Numerous Models of Healthy Power. The beautiful thing, the profoundly inspiring thing, is that if you want to make the power you live by into Healthy Power, you do not have to invent it yourself. You have years, decades, in some cases centuries of experience to draw on. If you want to bring Healthy Power to your workplace, community institutions, or family, the options are numerous.NonprofitsSociocracy and its various offshoots -- Circle Forward, Dynamic Governance, Sociocracy 3.0, Holacracy, etc -- have gained a great deal of attention from both the business press and networks of nonprofits for the organizational effectiveness and employee well-being they deliver.Cohousing CommunitiesThey have become the gold standard for organizing cohousing communities, have been applied to schools, to families, to all kinds of business -- especially those using other elements of Healthy Power such as cooperatives, employee-owned businesses, and businesses using agile practices.SchoolsFamiliesBusinessesCooperativesWhile state-born communism came and went, the cooperative movement grew and continues to grow; more recently while the global economy staggered, the employee-owned business sectors of the UK and US continued to steadily growEmployee-Owned BusinessesSelf-Managing TeamsThe Agile Revolution in software development has completely transformed standard practice in the world's core technical disciplines; self-managing teams and lots of small experiments are clearly the best way to address complex challenges. Lean ManufacturersLean Manufacturing practices changed auto industries and continue to spill into other sectors a radical respect for people and attention for eliminating waste. Auto MakersSocial SectorIn the social sector, the Collective Impact framework is changing the way we organize for large-scale systems change by providing the tools that are needed to address complex systems, ones that integrate diverse sectors and multiple viewpoints.Healthy Power Allied DisciplinariansNumerous allied disciplines have taken root that support Healthy Power: Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space Technology, Dynamic Facilitation, World Cafe, Technology of Participation, Nonviolent Communication, Conscious Leadership, Conscious Business, Peer-to-Peer (P2P), the Sharing Economy, the various Socially Responsible Business networks, the Ecovillage Networks, and the Fellowship for Intentional Communities. There are too many to name.Appreciative Inquiry PractitionersOpen Space TechnologistsDynamic FacilitatorsWorld CafeNonviolent Communication PractitionersConscious Leadership PractitionersConscious Business PractitionersPeer-to-Peer (P2P) NetworksSharing EconomySocially Responsible Business NetworksEcovillage NetworksFellowship for Intentional CommunitiesWork is done over time in a way that is good for all the people and systems involved: the ecosystems, the human communities, the customers, the workers, the investors, the leaders, all of us._f8e42030-0995-11e6-a62b-aee645c7ae33To build a world together where power is healthy for all._f8e421d4-0995-11e6-a62b-aee645c7ae33PowerWe all love power. Whether it is the power to grow vegetables or to launch space ships, the power to inspire others with our words or comfort them with our hands, the power to fund new startups or to send out a thousand people to plant trees, the power to declare someone innocent or to discover a new subatomic particle, we all want power... Power is toxic when it is organized around the myths of divine kingship or egalitarian utopia.RelationshipsPower comes from our relationships -- with tools, with natural systems, with other people, and with the larger human systems of community, company, and state. It also comes from our relationships with ourselves. The way we relate determines the nature of our power, and power influences the quality of our lives and relationships.InfluencePower determines how ownership works, how decisions are made, who makes them, how resources are used, how people influence one another, what roles we take on, and how we respond to those who are vulnerable. BiosphereOur biosphere is struggling, with global warming, rising and increasingly acidic seas, and the sixth great extinction event in our planet's history clearly under way. SocietyOur global society has created immense wealth for so many people, but politics are controlled by oligarchs (in both totalitarian and democratic states), the gulf between haves and have-nots has widened, and the commons (of culture, of DNA, of technology) is being fenced into walled gardens where innovation is tightly controlled.WorkplacesOur workplaces, where the future is built, are riddled with waste, burnout, and alienation. Corporations are sociopathic by design. Investors and leaders who care about long term results are just as disenfranchised as the workers who are squeezed for every minute and every penny.KinshipThe myth of divine kingship creates toxic results by: * Disenfranchising people, * Framing their creativity as resistance, * And making it harder for leaders to listen.EnfranchisementCreativityListeningEgalitarianismThe myth of egalitarian utopia creates toxic results by: * Preventing forward movement, * Denying the value of individual leadership, * And wasting everyone's time.ProgressLeadershipFluidityThe most extreme absence of fluid power can be found in places where people are born into debt slavery (or into an aristocracy or hereditary oligarchy). When the color of your skin determines how you are treated, the structure of power is fixed, not fluid. When generation after generation is born into poverty, the structure of power is stuck. When people are treated as less than human because of the shape or abilities of their bodies, and are not given a chance to develop their abilities fully, the power is stuck. In our society as a whole, and in every organization, team, or relationship, when power is fixed it becomes toxic. CharacterPeople misapprehend the temporary differences of power as a matter of character; people wish desperately to avoid being seen as one of the untouchables, the polluted.InclusionIt is horrible to be despised and excluded for a day; to be despised and excluded for a lifetime is a burden that only those who have lived it can fully understand. When power gets stuck in this way, even the very privileged suffer from the subconscious terror of showing some undesirable characteristic that will result in their exclusion. Our culture becomes a procrustean bed that torments us all.ConsentMost power these days does not run on consent. Majority rule voting ignores the consequences for the minority (and, for that matter, the consequences for the majority). Autocratic decisions may cost less in the short run, but far more in the long run. Problems that could have been prevented become expensive to repair, and people resist carrying out plans that don’t make sense to them, wasting time and resources.Healthy PowerThere is another form of power emerging. Not only does it work, it is growing and transforming everything in its path like a great wave. You have already been lifted on this immense swell, but like so many vast changes it can be hard to see its contour as it raises the very horizon. Healthy Power is the ability to do work over time in a way that is good for all the people and systems involved: the ecosystems, the human communities, the customers, the workers, the investors, the leaders, all of us.WorkThere are many kinds of work, and many kinds of power: whether we are building things, persuading or caring for one another, making decisions on behalf of large organizations, or defining (through science for example) what people see as true, our work is the exercise of power... Whatever the kind of work or the kind of power, we believe there are at least three necessary conditions for power to be healthy: it must be circular, it must be fluid, and it must be consensual.HealthThere are also many ways of understanding health: the personal experience of wellbeing or meaning, the observable health of the body, the shared meaning of serving a great purpose such as space exploration or social justice, or the health of communities, workplaces, and ecosystems that can be measured in terms of resilience, (bio)diversity, productivity, or capacity to learn.WellbeingSocial JusticeBiodiversityProductivityCapacity to LearnCircularityHealthy Power is circular, not linear or flat. The first condition for power to be healthy is that it must be circular. Circular power is power where people are both guiding others and being guided. In a two-person conversation, this means that both people talk and both people listen. In an organization over longer periods of time, there will be feedback loops that allow every person or group to influence every other person or group in a useful way. Every living system runs on circular power. FluidityHealthy Power is fluid, not frozen. The second condition for power to be healthy is that it must be fluid. Fluid power means that people can move into and out of powerful roles as appropriate for the work and the people at hand. In a conversation, one person may speak more and be particularly influential when the topic is in their area of expertise, and then defer when another person’s experience is more relevant. The same kind of fluidity is essential in any healthy relationship or organization.ConsensusHealthy Power is consensual, not coercive. The third condition for healthy power is that it must be consensual. This goes beyond verbal consent: it is not just permission, agreement, or compliance, which might be bought like a vote or "manufactured" like enthusiasm for a politician or brand. Consent means that we check for danger; we know we can afford to take the risk of moving forward. If anyone sees that a person will be harmed, or that our organization's ability to accomplish its purpose will be harmed, we can speak up without penalty, know that we will be heard, and know the harm will not go forward. This principle is fundamental to both sociocratic organizations and lean manufacturing; it should be seen as fundamental in every organization.Listening & LearningListen and be open to learning._f8e42292-0995-11e6-a62b-aee645c7ae331LeadersThe truth is that great leaders are great listeners; they are profoundly open to learning. Reporters and biographers often focus only on their ability to persuade rather than also on their ability to be guided by others.The myth of the heroic ruler -- The myth of the heroic ruler (the saint, the genius, the CEO, the monarch) tells us that there is one person who is the source of wisdom and knows what should be done. That person should somehow get everyone to comply with his or her great vision, crushing resistance and manufacturing consent. Of course nobody has all the answers, and this approach produces great suffering and spectacular failures. It is hard on those leaders who try to have all the answers -- almost as hard as it is on those they bend to their will._f8e42364-0995-11e6-a62b-aee645c7ae33Authority & ResponsibilityClearly delegate authority and responsibility._f8e42440-0995-11e6-a62b-aee645c7ae332Egalitarian GroupsThe truth is that effective egalitarian groups do clearly delegate authority and responsibility; differences become a source of power for all, not a fault to be erased.The myth of the equal community - the myth of flat power -- The myth of the egalitarian utopia tells us that everyone’s insights are just as valid as anyone else’s at all times, and nobody should tell anyone what to do. A group should somehow come to a universal agreement about how to move forward, without undue influence. Of course we are all different, with different degrees of knowledge, skill, passion, and endurance in different circumstances. Without leaders and clear agreements about power, pseudo-egalitarian groups collapse into a do-nothing mush or they are ruled by informal politics in the shadows._f8e42508-0995-11e6-a62b-aee645c7ae332016-04-23http://healthypoweralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/04/HealthyPowerManifesto_v.1.1_r-1.pdfOwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net