3/19/10 Michael Moore website dialog

Collectives are nothing but another form of corporation. So, maybe we
need to agree upon terms. I don't use the term collective or
cooperative because I believe they more often than not come from a
tradition of consensus decision making. This is limiting concept and
does not lead to economies of scale and division of labor, which is why
I believe that they have never become more that a small percentage of
the overall economic output despite their clear social advantages.

The problem with consensus decision making, with everyone making every
decision, is that it quickly runs up against the Movie Picking Paradox.
That is to say one person can easily pick what movie to go to, two
people have a simple negotiation, three people is actually 300% more
difficult (not 33% like you would assume), so by the time you get to 10
people deciding on a movie it is approaching the impossible. What
usually happens in that case is that one person gets fed up and says "I
am going to X movie and Y time, who ever wants to join me can".

I prefer the concept of collaborative corporation because I think that
we need something that is capable of processing more complexity in
decision making and can take tactical action more easily when a general
consensus exists on goals and objectives. In a collaborative
corporation you initially start out with a pretty standard corporate
structure with the sole addition of elected CEO, an elected Board of
Directors that is more like a legislature, and a form of Judiciary (I
personally like the idea of a Grandmother's Council because I assume the
Executive and Legislative Branches will be weighted to the Masculine and
I think the nurturing, loving, Matriarchal is important regardless of
the actual gender of the Grandmothers).

But then, the Collaborative Corporation has the general Olstrum"design
parameter" of driving decision making to the finger tips of the
corporate body. We know that corporations that resist top down planning
are more in touch with their markets, customers, more efficient, and
just better places to work.

In the Collaborative Corporation the "leaders" really make very few
decisions (the CEO of Southwest Air was proud to say he made only two
decisions in the company -- who to hire and where to have the Christmas
Party). The role of CEO in this "leaderless" Collaborative Corporation
is to be the Catalyst, the Champion, the Visionary and to encourage
everyone to work together, and most importantly to give voice to the
unifying identity of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I believe that a Collaborative Corporation can be this "third" way.
And, yes, this is not clearly spelled out in her work but I believe it
can be inferred from it.

Thank you for the intelligent and provocative dialectic.

Sparkplug Mike
www.sumpeople.org