Inspiral is a lossely defined, de-centralised and mostly online organisation of people. It’s primary industry is, but not limited to, Information Technology. It’s communication and decision making systems are mostly online, e.g. Loomio. Physical meetings happen periodically in the form of retreats, gatherings and other concepts.
“With the application of the modern, industrial lens onto a complex and complete human life, somewhere along the way we have agreed that we cannot or should not share the authentic stories of our lives within our organisations.”
Authentic stories
Emotional connection, scale and friendship in distributed organisations
In a podcast Nick Tucker and Michal Korzonek discuss the social-emotional aspects of distance and de-centralised working. Physical meetings between members are only occasional and thus friendship, happiness and healing have a particular dynamic. Online communication systems like Slack can lack general consciousness.
“You don’t see the other people so often.”
Nick Tucker suggests that Node size (scale and locality of organisation) is related to health of community and friendship.
Leadership
From The Dark Side of Leadership, Enspiral discusses several categories / characteristics / skills of Leadership.
“The goal isn’t to eliminate shadows, but to understand and even embrace them.”
Enspiral handbook
Ensiral also has a handbook for further reading.
Purpose agnostic
Nick explains that he was surprised when he first joined the network:
“I couldn’t work out why the lights were left on.”
But as he began to understand the culture over the course of 2 years working with Enspiral, he saw that there is a strong culture of welcoming multiple and varied purposes. He uses the term “Broadly acceptable” to the Network when discussing the purpose.
The Teal Diary 