How We Navigate 

An Introduction to How We Work at the Lifeboat Academy 

The concepts

We think of Lifeboat Academy as a living experiment to maximize quality of life within a sustainable footprint. We see it as a living organism cultivating resilience at the personal/individual, physical/farm/place, and cultural/community level. Our vision is a farm that produces a healthy, complete diet for 16 people - our “fair share footprint” - and does so in a way that increases the health and vitality of both our ecosystem and the farmers and community that grow in that soil. We elaborate that vision here. 

Sociocracy 3.0 Principles and Practices

We rely on Sociocracy 3.0 to provide the basic framework and tools for how we organize our work. It provides a set of principles that we have found invaluable in guaranteeing smooth operations that allow for both innovation, flexibility, clarity and coordination in balance. 

Key to that are the 7 Guiding Principles

Empiricism - show, don’t tell. We avoid most conflicts by talking in practical “what would that look like” conversations. 

Equivalence - everyone affected by a decision should have a chance to shape that decision. 

Consent - We seek out objections and document agreements to clarify shared expectations and avoid wasted effort. 

Effectiveness - Focus on the 20 that gets you 80. 

Continuous Improvement -We always start where we are, celebrate successes and grow what works then look for ways to tweak things so we are more effective moving forward. 

Transparency - Trust is the key to everything and there can be no trust without transparency and demonstrated competence. Plus it also avoids wasted effort. 

Accountability - The foundation to it all - we hold ourselves accountable. Do what you say you will do and if you can’t - for whatever reason - it’s up to you to let those affected know ASAP and offer to make things right if possible. 

Functional Areas 

In order to pursue this purpose, the farm has to perform a set of interdependent functions, the organs of the organism. Conceptually, we break down the big goal of providing for the equivalent of 16 people into a set of goals and roles of each of the organs - or functional areas as we call them. So, for example, we anticipate that we will need 40 laying hens to produce the eggs required to feed 16 people, so we set up “Chickens” as one of our functional areas. 

Each functional area has a set of resources and responsibilities associated with it, which is called a domain. This is spelled out in its driver statement which lays out the purpose of the functional area (why it exists), along with its regular responsibilities (which turn into regular chores), the resources it has available to use, and any interdependencies or connections with other functional areas where it is expected to keep open communications to navigate the overlapping areas.  

Using the Chickens as an example, its domain includes the chickens, chicken houses, chicken food and necessary tools and supplies to keep the chickens healthy and productive along with a space dedicated to storing those supplies. Likewise, the Chickens guild has a responsibility to coordinate the movement of the chicken tractor with the gardens and fields as well as working with the kitchen to provide eggs for farm use.  

Caretakers and Guilds

Each functional area is “animated” by one or more people who are delegated the responsibility of making sure that the domain serves its function on the farm as effectively as possible, known as the caretaker(s) of the domain. It also has a guild of peers, apprentices, and helpers to help get the work done. The caretakers act as the guild facilitators and organizers - a point person to go to to get information. 

Chores and Projects

We divide our work into chores (ongoing responsibilities necessary to keep each functional area and the farm as a whole going) and projects (specific one-time activities that allow us to improve how we do things). Projects create something new that allows us to get more done with less effort or resources. Sometimes, these things are material like a new garden shed - which we call infrastructure. Sometimes, they are a process - like a better way to communicate where tools in use are currently located that avoids wasted effort searching for them.  

Strategies

Each guild is responsible for developing a nested strategy to get from where we are to where we want to be. At the highest level, the strategy is simply a series of concrete milestones that get us from where we are to where we want to be. To continue the Chickens example, we currently have 15 hens in one mobile chicken house and anticipate that we want to have 40 hens in 2 houses. So, the “Chicken strategy” includes “Increase flock to 20 layers” and “Establish second mobile chicken house with 10 hens.” These milestones then are broken down into more specific action plans and projects that get us to that result. 

All of the functional area strategies are harmonized, prioritized and sequenced in our road map by the Stewardship Council. The road map includes more detailed information for the next 3 months (our seasonal plan), schematic information about the next year, and sketchy information about longer-term ideas. We revisit and refine our road map seasonally, and use the seasonal plan (the next 3 months) as the guide for our biweekly sprint planning priorities.  

Navigating via Tensions

Ideas for improvements (projects) or refinements to how we work (agreements) come out of tensions. There are many synonyms for tension. It could be a frustration, a sense of anxiety about a situation, or a hope or sense of excitement about a new possibility. A tension is a felt sensation that indicates a gap between expectations (or preferences) and experience. 

ID Tension > Explore Drivers > Form Proposals > Seek Consent > Write Agreement > Run Experiment > Adapt

Sometimes, tensions emerge (an emergency) and sometimes we proactively seek out tensions through scheduled reviews, reflection exercises or planning (seasonal planning, sprint planning, and huddles). 

Regardless of the source, we use a S3.0 process called navigating via tensions to help us fast-forward our learning and responsiveness. That means we actively surface tensions as a way of better understanding our expectations and our experiences so that we can continually improve our effectiveness. 

The first step is going beyond the surface tension to explore the drivers - the forces that are animating the situation. Why is it happening? What’s going on under the surface?

Once we understand the various drivers, we gather our considerations, including our own success criteria, preferences, and concerns. 

After considerations have been gathered and we have a better idea of what we are trying to accomplish, we brainstorm, prioritize and refine actions that we think have the highest potential ROE (return on effort) of moving us towards our goals or (re)solving our tensions. 

Tensions progress from tension (a vague sense that something deserves attention), to idea (a shared understanding of the driver or problem statement), to RFP (request for proposals - a clear list of success criteria and considerations to guide any specific responses), to proposal (a clear enough action plan that it can support a detailed discussion of pros and cons), thru to agreement (a clear action plan that all concerned functional areas can sign off as “good enough for now; safe enough to try.”)

A flow chart of the Navigating via Tensions process. Click here to see the full version. 

We treat all these agreements as experiments with a specific end or review date. We make sure the written agreement has enough information to know if our actions were effective or not (which require metrics and a logbook) and to be able to get some sense of the relative ROE in the end so that we have better information when we face a similar challenge in the future.