Agreement-based Organization

Of course, at one level, all organizations are based on an agreement of one sort or another, if only, "You agree to do what I say or you get fired!"

However, what I am hoping to explore here are organizations based on agreements:

• Among fundamental equals, either individuals, other organizations, or both; are
• Entered into voluntarily, and relatively easy to exit; which
• Protect a maximum degree of autonomy of action and decision-making for each participant; are
• Likely to release enormous value to the participants; and are
• Enforceable, although largely self-regulating.

My sense is that relatively few organizations are structured this way, and even fewer have been a result of intentional design. Major examples do, however, exist in all sectors of society, perhaps most visibly:

• The Internet.
• The U.S. Constitution.
• Visa International.

There are undoubtedly numerous more examples. I choose these three as a reference because they all have a highly principled set of agreements at their core and have also released an undeniable amount of value into society at large.

Of course, all three also had their notable flaws. The Internet's TCP/IP protocol is an agreement among computers. There has yet to be created as elegant a human system for its governance. The Constitution has led to a more centralized federal system than many of its drafters had hoped, certainly. In Visa's case, despite its initial radical corporate structure and its success in creating the first truly international currency, it is now barely distinguishable in form and function from just about any other major multi-national corporation.

The next generation of agreement-based organization can do much, much better...