Growing Without Breaking

There are two patterns in groups that reach this stage. Some grow deliberately — they choose people carefully, bring them in slowly, update their agreements as the group changes. Some grow desperately — they’re anxious about numbers, recruit fast, skip the conversations that build trust because those conversations take time they feel they don’t have.

The first kind survives. The second kind doesn’t. Not because the people are wrong. Because the process is.

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You’re three people who’ve held meetings, made decisions, navigated disagreement, migrated platforms, and built a set of agreements you wrote yourselves. That’s not common. Most groups that start never get this far. You did, and the reason you did is that you moved at the speed of trust rather than the speed of urgency.

Now you’re going to five. Same principle. Slower than you’d like. More deliberate than feels necessary. Worth it.

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Think about information in concentric circles. The outer circle is public — your group exists, you care about your community, you meet regularly. The middle circle is operational — when and where you meet, what you’re working on, how you make decisions. The inner circle is sensitive — your security practices, your internal disagreements, the specific concerns that brought each person here.

A printable reference card for the concentric circles model — including ring descriptions and a full onboarding sequence — is available in the companion materials.

New people start at the outer circle. They learn what the group is. They move inward as trust develops — through shared experience, not through disclosure on a timeline. The pace isn’t yours to set. It’s relational. Some people will move inward quickly because the fit is obvious. Some will stay at the outer circle for a while, and that’s fine. The circles aren’t a test. They’re a description of how trust actually works.

This is how Ender built his jeesh. If you’ve read Ender’s Game, you know the Battle School assigns soldiers to armies by rank and performance metrics — and those armies are mediocre. Ender’s jeesh, the team that actually wins, is built differently. He chooses people he’s watched, people he’s trained alongside, people whose capabilities he knows from shared experience rather than from a roster. Bean, Petra, Dink, Alai — each one enters through demonstrated trust, not assigned placement. The jeesh works because everyone in it arrived through relationship, not recruitment. That’s the concentric circles in action. The outer circle is the Battle School itself — everyone’s there. The inner circle is the jeesh — and you earn your way in by being known.

Your existing group went through its own version of this. You had a one-to-one conversation before you ever planned a meeting. You shared security practices before you shared sensitive concerns. The process was organic then because there were only two of you. Now that you’re structured, you can be intentional about it.

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Each new person should come through an existing member — someone who already knows them, who can vouch for them, who takes personal responsibility for the introduction. This is how SNCC’s field secretaries entered communities in Mississippi. Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon didn’t arrive in Albany cold — they came through established NAACP contacts. Bob Moses in McComb was invited by a local NAACP leader, C.C. Bryant. Every entry followed the same pattern: existing relationship, personal vouching, gradual trust-building, full integration. The process was slow by design. That slowness was the security.

After the vouching conversation, the new person has a one-to-one with at least one other existing member — the same format you used at the beginning. Not an interview. A conversation. Who are you? What do you care about? What brought you here? The goal is the same as it was when you started: to understand what moves another person before you ask them to do anything.

Before their first meeting, they review your group’s documents — the purpose statement, ground rules, security agreements, group agreements. Not as a contract to sign. As context for what they’re walking into. They should know the norms before they experience them.

Their first meeting, they participate. The existing members model the format, the roles, the rhythm. The new person sees how you start on time, how the facilitator follows the script, how the process-checker names what’s happening, how the note-taker captures decisions. They see it working before anyone explains why it works.

Then a low-stakes activity together — whatever fits. Attend a community event. Work on a small project. Share a meal. Something where the new person contributes without the pressure of high-stakes coordination.

After that, full membership.

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Common Ground Collective grew from three founders to thousands of volunteers in post-Katrina New Orleans — over twenty-three thousand by some counts. They didn’t lose coherence. The reason was structural: clear roles, explicit orientation for incoming volunteers, and an organizing philosophy — “Solidarity Not Charity” — that was communicated before anyone picked up a gutting tool. Nobody was dropped into the work without context. Nobody was expected to absorb the culture by osmosis. The organization grew because it invested in the process of bringing people in — not despite that investment, but because of it.

Your scale is different. You’re going from three to five, not three to thousands. But the principle is the same. Growth that skips onboarding produces a group where half the members don’t share the norms the other half takes for granted. That’s how groups fracture — not from external pressure, but from internal incoherence.

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After each new person joins, debrief as a group. Three questions:

How did the onboarding go? What needed more explanation? What in your agreements needs updating now that you’re five?

Your operating document is a living document. It was written by three people. It should be revised by five. The new members didn’t just join your group — they changed it. Acknowledge that. Let the agreements evolve.

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One more thing. You’ll be tempted to rush this. Two people in a week. Done.

Don’t. Bring one person in. Let the group settle. See what shifts. Then bring in the second. The group of four is a real configuration — it has dynamics the triad didn’t have, and you’ll learn something from it that informs how you bring in the fifth person.

Groups that pause between additions are more stable at five than groups that add two people simultaneously. The pause is the practice.

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Write in your field journal: Who did you bring in? Who vouched for them? What changed when the group went from three to four? What do you expect to change at five?

You’re building something that most people in this country don’t have. Take your time with it.

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