"Values, not rules"

[Lee]

The other day @alberto wrote a reply to a question about inviting people in our units (in a post in the sensitive content category - so not visible to non-Reeflings) that in my view captured really well one of the key principles of The Reef’s culture and working methods.

With his permission, I am copy/pasting it to the public side of the forum, so that we can also list it under the “reef-workingmethods” tag.

@alberto

Guys, I would like to remind all of us that the Reef’s culture is to invest in good process and mutual understanding as the main way to address conflicts and disagreement. In this spirit, I strongly encourage you to resist the temptation of making rules. In The Reef, we rely mainly on values and dialogue to inspire our behavior, not on rules.

Consider our founding documents, that are very light on rules. Off the top of my head, I can only remember three: “private spaces and choices are private”; “no pets in the common areas”; and “no emails”. Everything else is values: we don’t say “you need to do two hours of work a week”, but “every adult is expected to take up some responsibility towards the common good, and participation is power”. We don’t say “you must write everything down in the forum”, but “we uphold a culture of knowledge-sharing and accountability”.

This is not a coincidence. When we started The Reef, we observed that rules are a very inefficient way of doing things. They are insufficiently flexible; hence, they tend to proliferate; and, above all, they favour box-ticking behaviour: “I followed the rules, so I am OK whatever happens” instead of “I have a responsibility to bring about a good outcome”. Sometimes rules are necessary or efficient (we do have three!). I don’t believe this is one of those times: we are not dealing with an actual conflict, only a potential one.

Of course who does the work calls the shots, and anyone who wants a helping circle is welcome to start one. I will not join it, because I don’t see how it can do anything else but discuss hypotheticals (“and what if a guest comes back home drunk and falls off the balcony?”). I would prefer to test it out, leaving the testing to the people want to do it, and see if the rest of us can live with it or not; and if not, what specific policy to implement.

For now, a provisional policy could fall back on our culture and allow freedom and trust in exchange for taking responsibility. Something like

Each of us welcomes in The Reef any guests that we like, paying or not. When we do that, we also take responsibility for said guests not annoying other Reeflings or otherwise interfering with their lives (which covers safety issues).

Thoughts?