In this age of remote work and complex times, organizations must develop the ability to continuously adapt to change in order to make better and quicker decisions. We believe that collective intelligence allows for better decision making.

Holaspirit offers transparency on the asynchronous decision process and, we believe, is a game changer to helping teams define how they work and get organized together, faster and more inclusively.

Proposals & consent decision making

On Holaspirit, the responsibility for shaping the way a team or organization works is no longer relegated to leaders only. Instead, every organization member takes ownership and accountability for fixing problems and acting upon opportunities. The idea being to have people take ownership and responsibility for roles and tasks, take initiative to advance the organization and improve its outcomes.

Any circle member can suggest to:

• Make changes to the circles and roles they're part of
• Move circles or roles in the organization
• Add, change or delete a policy
• Reduce a circle to a role, or expand a role into a circle
• Elect a member to an elected role

Holaspirit applies the principles of consent based decision making. Unlike consensus, consent requires the absence of objection. With consensus everyone says 'yes', with consent no one says 'no'. As a result, your organization continually evolves in response to its environment as a decentralized, constantly learning organization.

Proposals can be processed in two ways:

• Asynchronously, by inviting circle members to vote on the proposal.
• During meetings, by importing the proposal to a circle meeting.

Navigating the Proposals app

The Proposals app is designed to guide a team on following and voting on a proposal. This interface allows any user to look proposals up and participate in the decision making process.

It consists of three tabs:

• My proposals: Once you create a proposal to edit your organization, roles or policies, it ends up in this tab. You can amend them and send your proposal to circle members.
• Submitted proposals: This tab allow collaborators to access the submitted proposals and comment on the changes proposed in your circle, approve the evolution(s), or request further changes before change is applied. Any circle member can react and share inputs directly in the proposal to make sure they make the right decision.
• Proposals history:  You can see details about any previous changes that have been applied within your organization.

Proposals & Governance meetings

The most common channel to address this kind of issues are governance meetings.

These meetings are designed to answer questions that on the way the organization works. In these meetings you can update, articulate or remove rules, processes, roles, decision rights that require your team's consent.  

A user can import proposal that are listed in the My proposal section into any meeting. The meeting secretary can import ongoing proposal. That means, if a proposal has been submitted asynchronously, it is possible for the proposal owner and the meeting secretary to import it to the meeting.

Once a proposal is sent asynchronously, it can be brought up in the meeting.

All participants of the meeting can take part in the decision making process during the meeting according to your organization decision making process.

Proposals outside meetings

Proposals can also be processed outside meetings, fully asynchronously.

• Any circle member can suggest a change in the organization from the page of the circle or role in question or directly from the Proposals app.

• If a proposal is ready, it can be submitted to other team members asynchronously or imported to the next circle meeting.

• As soon as a new proposal is submitted, all circle members are notified. They can  vote on the proposal as well as comment or ask clarifying questions if necessary.

• If there is no objection within the voting timeframe, the proposal will be adopted straight away and circle members notified by email. If there is an objection, the proposal can be tweaked until everybody consent to trying it out.

• Ongoing proposals for a role or circle will show directly on the role or the circle page. Clicking on the link will get you to the proposal so you can vote on it.

Tip ⭐ : Don’t sweat the small decisions (in a meeting vs. outside)

Not every decision requires to be discussed in a meeting. Some organizations disproportionately spend time on minor decisions, instead of focusing on significant ones. Figuring out which decisions to deliberate over as a group versus which ones to make quickly, will free up precious time and resources. There might be some evolutions that you can submit quickly to your team for review, some others you might want to discuss during meetings.