Through a jigsaw methodology, we explored three models—En’owkin, Quaker group discernment, and holacracy—and considered how the component structures, processes, or underlying values of these examples might be applied in a governance structure for a learner-centered ecosystem.¹

Far from prescriptive, this vignette is intended to spark ideas for governance designs that better align with the principles of learner-centered ecosystems. Jennifer Davis Poon served as the lead author of this vignette.

Scenario: Lacking Green Spaces in Harperstown

David moved to Harperstown a year ago. It has taken him a while to get used to the change, but he’s beginning to feel comfortable and now has a few people he can connect with. He’s always loved gardening and helps out at his neighborhood’s community garden. At one of the garden meetings, he was talking with his neighbor Malinda, who happens to be a child wellness specialist. Malinda wished there were more green spaces around. More trees and green spaces, she told him, really improve the air quality and the health of children. They are also great spaces for playing and learning. There are two parks in the neighborhoods, but they’re not accessible to the children who don’t live in those neighborhoods. David asked why they didn’t try a tree planting campaign, but Malinda explained that they had partnered with a national nonprofit a few years ago to do just that, but many residents rejected the idea when volunteers knocked on their doors offering to plant trees in their neighborhood. This left David perplexed, and he felt there could be more to the story. He asked Malinda whether it would be a good idea to talk to those neighbors to understand what happened.²

David is sitting with his neighbor Malinda, preparing a proposal to construct a new green learning space on their side of Harperstown. David, a learner who recently moved to the area, finds comfort in nature. He is concerned that there aren’t more trees or parks that are accessible to families on his side of town. Malinda is a child wellness specialist whose functions in the ecosystem include safeguarding wellness and safety. She believes more green spaces would improve the overall health of families in the area and would provide excellent spaces for play and hands-on learning.

David’s learning advisor, Jason, joins them. Jason’s key functions include navigating & facilitating learning in support of David and others’ learning, as well as story catching, meaning he is listening and collecting artifacts of David’s growth as he participates in this effort.

Together, David, Malinda, and Jason craft a proposal to convert an undeveloped stretch of land into a multi-use park and outdoor learning space. And because Harperstown has recent history of a failed tree-planting campaign, they will take steps to ensure that all viewpoints will be heard and learned from as they plan to convene the Harperstown Ecosystem Governance System (HEGS) around their proposal.

As Malinda explains to David, the HEGS is not a static governing body organized around a set of people, like a typical board of representatives. Rather, the HEGS is a flat structure for self-governance organized around the work being done in the learner-centered ecosystem. As such, all of the individuals that contribute to Harperstown’s learner-centered ecosystem are likely to be involved in a HEGS process at one point or another. Malinda has participated in several, but this will be David’s first opportunity.

Malinda continues in her tutorial: a comprehensive HEGS Charter identifies distinct areas of work called “somas,” she tells David, meaning “bodies,” organized around specific goals or purposes that, together, contribute to shared goals for the success and wellness of the Harperstown learner-centered ecosystem. Individuals may take membership in one or more somas according to how the individual is contributing to the ecosystem at a given time. For example, Malinda is a member of the Child Wellness soma, which is accountable for elevating the physical, emotional, and developmental care of all children in the Harperstown ecosystem. As a younger learner, David’s involvement in somas is more in flux, but he has recently gotten involved in meetings with the Family Nutrition soma.

Somas have authority to carry out activities and make decisions within their work domains, which they do through regular tactical meetings. But when decisions are large enough that they implicate several somas or when tensions arise that suggest one or more somas should carry out their work differently, a HEGS governance meeting is convened.

Indeed, David and Malinda’s proposal for a multi-use park implicates multiple somas that deliberate together: Child Wellness, Land Use, Construction, Facilities Management, Facilities Maintenance, Peaceful Homesteads, Transportation Flow, and Learning Opportunities, to name a few. To help facilitate a meeting with members of these somas and the broader community, Malinda and David approach the HEGS Clerk, a position that is held by a highly-trained individual who is elected by the community and who facilitates HEGS governance meetings as their sole contribution to the ecosystem.

The Clerk sets a meeting date and location and works with others whose key functions include inviting, welcoming, and orienting to encourage members of the impacted somas to participate. They also issue an open invitation to anyone who might feel affected by the proposal, and conduct targeted outreach to individuals whose voices have been historically left out or who may feel uncomfortable attending for reasons of mistrust. Finally, to support all those who would participate but are unable to physically attend on the date and time of the meeting, the Clerk prepares the town’s civic participation platform, vHarperstown,³ to integrate participation by those attending physically, virtually, and asynchronously.

During the meeting, David and Malinda present their concerns and then share their proposal for the multi-use park. After a brief round of clarifying questions, David and Malinda step back to allow space for everyone else to react. Every person who wants to offer a reaction is given space to do, and there is no discussion, side chatter, or attempt to convince anyone else. This is a phase for listening.

When providing a reaction, participants are encouraged to identify and speak from the vantage point of the Harperstown core value(s) or promise(s) that they are protecting through their comments. Those core values or promises are

• security,
• sustainability,
• innovation, and
• legacy.

By being explicit about which core values or promises animate their reactions, participants are better able to sift past differences in details and uncover common motivations and understanding.

Once everyone attending in-person and virtually has had an opportunity to offer a reaction, the meeting is paused for the rest of the day to allow anyone else to add reactions asynchronously through vHarperstown.

The next morning, after hearing reactions from all who want to offer them, David and Malinda have an opportunity to revise their proposal. Once revised, they present it back to the group for a second round of refinement through objections.

When inviting objections, the Clerk poses the question to the participants, “Will this proposal create harm?” The question is phrased this way for two important reasons. First, it bypasses ego-driven responses of liking or disliking of a proposal, instead compelling objectors to articulate concrete reasons why the proposal would negatively impact them, their soma, or the ecosystem. Additionally, the question signals a disposition toward innovation and experimentation: unless we know a proposal is worse than what we have now, we’ll try it. This also helps skirt the trap of groupthink.⁴

Some participants do raise objections. Two longtime residents of Harperstown voice concerns that Harperstown wouldn’t be able to properly care for the park’s upkeep, eventually causing harm by exposing children to dilapidated playground equipment, destroying nearby properties with invasive weeds, and damaging underground pipes due to uncontrolled tree roots. They point to dying trees nearby their houses as evidence of the town’s broken promises. Other participants raise objections related to traffic and budgetary concerns.

Once all objections are gathered, the Clerk moves through the objections one by one and asks David, Malinda, and anyone else with an idea to contribute, to reconcile the objection by further iterating on their proposal in ways that satisfy both the objection and the needs that brought David and Malinda to create their proposal in the first place.

At last, David, Malinda, and the entire group arrive at a proposal that will satisfy their underlying concerns about the lack of green spaces on their side of the town. It looks different than the proposal they walked in with: the park will be a little smaller than they originally imagined in order to reduce the burden of upkeep, but because it will now be jointly planned with the Learning Opportunities soma to house two nearby Home Bases, park developers will be able to leverage the town budget for learning space design in order to bring in and maintain top-of-the-line equipment. Importantly for those two long-time residents, the budget approved for the park will also include set-aside funding for an arborist to maintain the new park, while also removing and replacing dead or diseased trees in the area.

The meeting took a total of eight hours over two days: three hours the first day to present the proposal and garner reactions; an overnight pause to allow anyone else to register reactions asynchronously through vHarperstown; and five hours on the second day for David and Malinda to revise their proposal, collect objections, and work with the group to integrate each objection into a new proposal that everyone can stand behind.

But while the process took much longer than merely seeking a show-of-hands vote, it generated a plan that was much stronger than what David and Malinda had conceived on their own. More significantly, the process forged a sense of solidarity around the plan and shared commitment to carrying it forward, with new roles and responsibilities clearly defined for each person, and each soma, impacted by the plan. Rather than splintering the group through a divisive vote, relationships formed and solidified.

And David has learned a lot. He will spend the next several weeks story catching with his learning advisor, Jason, in order to consolidate and communicate the knowledge and skills he has gained. Together with David’s family, he and Jason will begin charting his next series of learning objectives as he joins the Land Use and Construction somas to oversee park development in the months ahead.

A governance process like HEGS (or the examples of En’owkin, Quaker group discernment, and holacracy that inspired it) requires commitment and ongoing investment.

Importantly, such a process exists within a community culture that appreciates the interconnectedness of all people. While human nature may compel individuals to act toward self-preservation and individual gain, communities simultaneously uphold the belief that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts; or that we are only as strong as our weakest link; or, as Jeanette Armstrong writes, that the “community-mind can be developed as a way to magnify the creativity of an individual mind and thus increase an individual’s overall potential.”⁵

Further, a community or ecosystem will not succeed at a process like HEGS unless it promotes a culture of seeing past differences and recognizing that, in the words of Valarie Kaur, a stranger is just “a part of me I do not yet know.”⁶

Materially, a consensus-based decision-making process like HEGS requires the investment of time (since the process takes much longer than simply casting a vote) and resources. These resources might include a welltrained neutral facilitator (the Clerk in the vignette) and physical and technological spaces that support democratic participation and discourse. In our study of these kinds of systems, failure rates seem highest when groups or organizations poorly facilitate governance meetings, causing them to perpetuate misunderstandings and preexisting power hierarchies; or when there is insufficient investment in spaces and technologies to manage them, causing groups to spend more time in governance meetings than on actions that deliver on their goals.

But systems like the HEGS example also create efficiencies and produce value in ways that are particularly relevant in the case of a learner-centered ecosystem. They create solidarity and commitment to a decision—the coveted buy-in that often eludes more hierarchical governance systems. In fact, lacking widespread commitment to a decision, one can argue that other models of governance take more time to get to successful implementation, if they ever reach it at all.

Moreover, systems like the HEGS example are designed to create trusting relationships between individuals, and between individuals and governance itself. Such relationships are paramount if every learner and member of the ecosystem is to be seen, known, supported, and have agency over their learning and future.