our principles

swarmrise uses simple words and concepts. No esoteric vocabulary or neologisms, no ceremonies, no circles, no personal development gibberish. It's a tool, not a religion.

To draw the organization's big picture is not enough to give someone confidence and direction. swarmrise is centered on you as a member of that organization, highlighting your roles, your teams, your relations, and your decisions. On a daily basis, you just want to know what others expect from you, and how you can help and act.

swarmrise is driven by purpose. The organization must have a global purpose, but every team and every role should start with a clear purpose. People are smart, they can figure out what to do and how to do it when they know why they're doing it.

One big difference with hierarchy is the possibility to get rid of full-time decision-makers. Everybody makes decisions all the time, thus this talent is not that rare. By enabling a decide/commit/execute self-owned scheme for every role, you highlight the much rarer ability of good execution. People who could actually do stuff should feel more empowered and appreciated.

Bad behaviors flourish when either you're not aware of them or you can't do anything about them. Of course, a governance model can't guarantee ethical conduct by itself, but it can encourage it by letting the members know what is happening, and by letting them make decisions accordingly. swarmrise uses transparency, traceability, and memory of information as default mode (when it doesn't contradict personal data rights or sensitive intelligence info), and proposes a decision model which is open to any role.

Org charts and job descriptions are often outdated, partly because modifying them is a pain. swarmrise allows easy modification, by every member, of every piece of the organization. It's not risky because, by letting everybody know who did what, swarmrise forces members to think before they act. And by the way, if you don't trust people, you shouldn't hire them in the first place.

swarmrise proposes a public copyleft template library for teams, roles, and policies, so the innovations from some can be reused freely by others. By authoring and maintaining public templates, you can help other organizations and get useful feedback for you, one stone two birds.

Hierarchy is a very simple concept. That's why it's dominant despite not being the most efficient system. swarmrise tries hard to add as little complexity as possible and to keep things easy to explain and operate. There's a limited set of concepts and rules from which you can grow your governance to fit your organization.

swarmrise is and will stay a work in progress. Feedback and contributions are more than welcome. These principles are just a backbone, let's see where the whole thing will go.