This book wants to help change the ways we organise for good
in the world.
For too long, voluntary sector, NGO, community organisations and social enterprises have unquestioningly adopted the organising structures of industrialism, even when these approaches are directly at odds with the values they are
trying to create in the world.
As the 21st Century rolled-around, this incompatability become all-the-more stark, as not only were our organisational structures at odds with our values, they were also not very effective at navigating the networked, social world
we have found ourselves in.
Anarchists in the Boardroom looks to the organising patterns found on social media, and the practices of so many recent social movements (from Occupy, to Idle No More) and lays the foundations for a journey from the past to the
future of organising for good.
This book aims to be the start of a global conversation about finding ways to organise ourselves for social change that manifest the values we are trying to create in the world at every step. It will be accompanied by a website,
morelikepeople.com, where contributors can share thoughts, ideas and experiences directly with one another, as they explore the unknown terrain beyond our old industrial structures, using the book as a compass to guide, but not predetermine, their individual
journeys.
If we can change how we organise, we can change the world.
You can read a snippet of the book
here.
Liam's path to writing the book:
'Having spent the last few years working with voluntary and non-profit organisations, I've seen, time-and-again, workplaces full of people who want to do good in the world, but who feel handcuffed when they go into
work each day, unable to put their passion and understandings of the issues into action for the causes they believe in.
Before I started doing this work, I was in the same position myself. As a long-time activist, I never imagined that I would have anything to do with the world of management, until I started to explore how organisations
filled with so many good people, often left those people feeling deeply demoralised, while inadvertently alienating those beyond their walls. Through a cold and distant breed of professionalism that so many people feel pressured to adopt, and organising structures
that strip away our senses of autonomy to make change happen, too many social change organisations have ended up undermining their own reasons for being.
Since I began to realise these patterns, playing out in varying degrees in almost all of the organisations I have worked with, I've been doing what I can encourage new ways of working together, and help others who are
frustrated with the ways things are to explore alternatives.
This books is my fullest contribution to that process, and I hope, along with the website, we can support one another to change the ways we organise for good, opening up possibilities our old organisations can only
dream of.
I hope you'll be a part of the journey!
Liam'
