Is small beautiful?

Increasingly, people are embracing the idea that ‘small is beautiful’, a departure from the hierarchies of large organisations. The allure of local communities as a more effective way of organising than national or transnational entities is gaining traction, primarily due to the benefits of small, self-managing organisations.

In his book Reinventing Organisations, Laloux charts how communities have organised themselves to produce or distribute resources — from shamanic tribes to self-managing teams, via bureaucracies, shareholders and other networks.

It’s crucial to break free from the cultural frames we’ve internalised based on transactional thinking rather than relational, hunter-gatherer over sharer-carer, or hierarchical over networked forms of governance.

The pushback to these inbuilt norms has surfaced through people valuing emotion over rationality and rebels over the elites, even if the desire for charismatic leaders is even more pronounced.

What steps can local government take to transition towards a more self-managing and relational structure? This question is not just a theoretical pondering, but a practical call to action for all of us to contribute to the growth and success of self-managing organizations.

How can local governments support the organisations they commission and their supply chains? This is not just a question but a call to action for all of us, including you, to contribute to the growth and success of self-managing organisations.