The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does

What is enkel?

According to one of our members, Elaine, our collective enkel is;

“an organic, loose incubation space for ideas to become real. A flexible, creative platform for people to discover who they are and what they can do. A connecting network of diverse people who are encouraging and supportive. enkel is NOT your usual, run-of-the-mill organisation; is NOT structured; is NOT led by anyone in particular.”

Since our beginning we’ve tried to define enkel and according to that definition, create an appropriate organisational structure.

We’ve always tried to make sense of what we are with other models we’ve seen, or other organisations in mind. As illustrated in our various models in this figure we’ve tried different ways to present this to understand who and what we are.

We started out in 2014 with a pie slice model with enkel in the centre having its fingers in all projects. They were divided into four categories; working, making, learning and eating&drinking. We had “ambassadors” for each of these areas who co-ordinated activities within each.

These four themes became obsolete as we did much more than that. Instead we attempted a classic project-based management structure in early 2016, where the project teams that had emerged over the last year or so, were formalised in different “arms”: Enkel business, our Naval Store space, the social projects team, the school for changemakers and the member engagement team. enkel was still at the centre as a controlling entity and we created a “core team” which would be responsible for that centre.

In late 2016 we thought of ourselves more as a network as we started seeing more and more links between the various arms and projects. We thought it would be better if these links were made visible, and that all info didn’t have to go via a centralised enkel core. This looked fine in theory, but didn’t really work in practice.

The next iteration (early 2017) was more vague, as seen in the last image. Here, enkel is no longer a hub or a node in a network, but more of a field, in which all projects and people are operating. enkel is more of a holder of values, vision and mission and about the “meta”, i.e. making sure that the collective of people and organisations over the long term is something more than just the sum of its parts. Most formal structures like finances, admin and governance would in this model be separated out to projects.

This decentralised approach was based on Frederic Laloux’ book Reinventing Organizations’ among others.

But in the last few months we have again taken another approach; we started to look at what we are rather than what we should be.

Instead of trying to push this complex dynamic system of people and projects that enkel is into something which can be described by a model, we now begin to accept that the system is what it is. As the great cybernetician, Stafford Beer said; “the purpose of a system is what it does.”

At our strategy day last month, the image of an amoeba came up in the discussion. A formless creature, which is impossible to control; “a type of cell or organism which has the ability to alter its shape”

Yes, there are boundaries, but they always move.

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So right now, this is an idea that’s thrown around in the collective. There are surely more to come. enkel seems to be constantly morphing into something else. And that’s probably good.