The Radical Foundation House

By Matt Perez

Discomfort is good for you. Not pleasant, especially at the moment, but good.

 

Yesterday we had a discussion about a way of reframing the Radical model. After having slept over it, I woke up with an image of a building where,

The floor of the Foundation house, it shows the words MEANING and BELONGING as its two axis.

The words Meaning and Belonging are the two axes of the “ground floor” (actually, I had them as the top floor, but Jose called it the “ground floor”). It represents the people fundamentals,

The roof of the Foundation house, it shows the words DECENTRALIZATION and TRANSPARENCY as its two axis.

Decentralization and Transparenccy are the axes of the “roof” meaning that 1) the house has no boss in it and 2) everything is transparent. By having all information available to everybody, it makes sure that any potential “gaming” of the system is apparent to everybody and it gets dealt with.

The word EXPERIMENTATION sits in between the floor and the roof and holds up the house.

Finally, experimentation, underlying all practices, holds up the house. This means that whether an experiment worked as you expected it or not, you always learn from it. Knowledge holds up the house.

Altogether Now

Altogether, they make up the Radical Foundation house,

The words MEANING and BELONGING form a plane at the top and the words DECENTRALIZATION and TRANSPARENCY form a plane at the bottom. The word EXPERIMENTATION sits in between them.

Explicit Alignment

Explicit Alignment goes inside each house, depicted here as floors between the ground floor and to the roof.

The words MEANING and BELONGING form a plane at the top and the words DECENTRALIZATION and TRANSPARENCY form a plane at the bottom. The word EXPERIMENTATION sits in between them. Also in between roof and floor, Explicit Alignment are the three floors between roof and floor.
  • There is one Impact. Changing the impact is major: it is the equivalent of making up a new company.
  • There is one Purpose, although it may change (the gray translucent color under Purpose represents a past Purpose).
  • There are many Missions, one after another and many in parallel.

Everything else is a Practice,

  • Practices change from company to company.
  • They change over time.
  • They are not integral to the Radical model.

Examples of practices,

  • The RADs! mobile app.
  • Explicit Relationships.
  • Parboiled legal structure.
  • etc.

Many Houses

What the uncomfortable discussion made me see is that there may be many houses, some of them based on the template model. The important thing is the effect it has on people’s lives and on our world.

A Template House

For example, a template house would be like this,

The words MEANING and BELONGING form a plane at the top, the roof, and the words DECENTRALIZATION and TRANSPARENCY form a plane at the bottom, the ground floor. The word EXPERIMENTATION sits in between them. Between roof and floor, there are three floors labeled IMPACT, PURPOSE, and MISSION, as before, but this time with list of specific PRACTICES attached to each.

A Framing

Our intention is that this “framing” of the Radical model be appealing enough to build specific houses where what changes is the inside stuff, but not its floor, columns, or roof.

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