Many-to-Many Journey

The Proof of Possibility

How was this developed?

The Many-to-Many team worked with a set of diverse partners to create a "proof of possibility”. This demonstrated how a collaboration can hold and strategically deploy varied resources towards a systemic mission, using an approach that shifts deep codes. We describe this process briefly below. The insights from this proof of possibility and related work were then distilled into the Many-to-Many System (and many other elements!) in an attempt to create something that was navigable and useful for others to use.

Stage One:
Creating a Learning Network & Initial Prototype

Our proof of possibility began by establishing a learning network of organisations with deep expertise in collaborative governance. This network was given £122k and a mission: "How do we collectively steward—with responsibility and care—a pool of assets to build the system's capacity for many-to-many governance?"

The core challenge was to develop a legally robust way to move money from multiple funders to multiple actors collaborating on a shared mission. The learning network then live-prototyped an initial many-to-many governance and organising structure to allocate the £122k, designed for future use by other collaborations. This first prototype included a methodology, governance model, organising structure, practices, funding methods, and a many-to-many contract.

Stage Two:
Live Testing and Iteration

Next, we tested this prototype in real-world contexts. Learning network participants experimented with components of the prototype, identifying what worked and what didn't, allowing us to learn by doing. Key insights were continuously woven back into the prototype, refining it through iteration. This live testing is ongoing, meaning the Many-to-Many System will continue to evolve.

History and Broader Context

Beyond the Rules is an initiative that is interested in the deep, thoughtful and highly creative work required to rewrite, reinvent or reimagine rules, norms and laws that hold us in the current system.

• When orchestrating a collaboration, balancing energy, resources and attention between infrastructure and progressing the intended work is critical – it needs to be proportionate.
• In a ‘ripe’ environment, a group can collaboratively set the design of their governance infrastructures, deeply coded to the futures they want. Done well, this can build relationships, shared context and mutual demand that enables the work; done badly, it can create friction and group breakdown that undermines it.
• That said, the act of ‘deeply coding’ infrastructures is made difficult and often limited by “system blockers” in the wider environment. The condition of this wider environment and the conditions within the collaborators largely determine if conditions for deeply coding are ‘ripe’ or ‘unripe’ to try and how far.

• Governing, organising, learning, ecosystem strategy and legal architecture systems heavily interaffect – if they aren’t developed to work effectively together they can undermine each other’s purposes.
• It was possible to establish a deeply coded legal contract aligned with wider governance infrastructures in the particular sandbox context, albeit this created legal grey areas and risks. 
• The specific multi-party contractual approach that we used is unlikely to be appropriate in most complex collaborations, or may only be relevant for particular parts of it.