Decisions Without a Boss

Your joint debrief surfaced it. Maybe not in those words, but the question was there — in the moment someone asked “So do we just… keep doing things together?” and nobody had an answer for how that works. Or in the friction point about who decided the action’s scope without checking with the other group first. Or in the honest admission that one group felt like it was following the other’s lead and wasn’t sure how that happened.

The question underneath all of it: who decides?

Inside your group, you have an answer. You built a consensus spectrum, ground rules, a rotating facilitator. You know how decisions work among five people who trust each other. Between groups, you have none of that — yet. And the stakes here are unambiguous, because the documented record is clear: the wrong answer to “who decides?” has destroyed more coalitions than any external threat. Not infiltration. Not opposition. Not lack of resources. Governance.

This chapter is the dense. It delivers three tools — a decision-making model, a framework for sorting which decisions belong where, and a template for a coalition agreement. They’re practical. They’re designed to be pulled off the shelf and brought to a meeting.

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Consent Is Not Consensus

Your group uses a consensus spectrum — agree, reservations, stand aside, block. It works for five people who’ve built trust and share ground rules. It works less well the moment you add a second group, and it fails catastrophically at the scale of a coalition.

Consensus asks: does everyone actively agree? At Occupy Wall Street, that meant any single person in a general assembly of hundreds could block any proposal for any reason. The assemblies consumed months. Proposals were modified until they were meaningless. Process devoured action — political scientist John Ehrenberg’s postmortem in Palgrave Communications concluded that OWS treated deliberation as equivalent to doing something, and the movement paid for that confusion with its life. Zuccotti Park was cleared on November 15, 2011, and with no organizational structure independent of the physical occupation, OWS could not reconstitute.

You saw this dynamic in miniature inside your own group — the groan zone, the difficulty of moving from divergence to resolution. Now multiply that across groups that don’t share ground rules, don’t have the same facilitator, and may not even use the same decision-making vocabulary. Consensus across groups isn’t slow. It’s paralysis.

Consent asks a different question: does anyone have a reasoned, paramount objection?

The distinction was formalized by Gerard Endenburg in the Netherlands in the 1970s, building on cybernetics and Quaker governance traditions, and refined into what’s now called sociocratic practice. John Buck and Sharon Villines documented the framework in We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy — the most practical guide to consent governance for non-specialists. The core insight is that consent doesn’t require agreement. It requires the absence of argued objections based on the group’s shared purpose. “I’d prefer something different” is not an objection. “I’m not sure about this” is not an objection. “This would cause my group concrete harm, and here’s why” is an objection.

The threshold matters. Consent preserves every voice — anyone can raise a concern, and every concern gets heard. But it prevents any single voice from freezing the system. A paramount objection means the proposal is modified or tabled. Everything else moves forward. The result is governance that’s slower than unilateral decision-making and faster than consensus. For coordinating autonomous groups, that’s the operative range.

The pattern is consistent enough in the documented record to treat as a finding, not a preference: every durable multi-group coordination structure I found in the research uses some version of consent, whether or not they call it that. The International Association for Facilitators’ delegates assemblies. Mondragon’s cooperative congress. The Quaker practice of “sense of the meeting.” The spokes councils that emerged from the 1999 WTO protests. None of them require unanimity. All of them require that objections be reasoned and grounded in shared purpose.

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The Spokes Council

The practical structure for consent-based governance between groups is a spokes council. The concept originated in anarcho-syndicalist organizing during the Spanish Civil War and was refined during the anti-globalization movement. Occupy Sandy improved the model by organizing around projects rather than identity groups — a pragmatic adaptation that made the structure functional for coordinating hundreds of volunteers and managing substantial resources through consent.

Here’s how it works for your coordination:

---
title: The Spokes Council Model
---
flowchart TD
    subgraph GA["GROUP A"]
        GA_members["MEMBERS"]
        GA_spoke["SPOKE  A  ·  ROTATING"]
    end

    subgraph GB["GROUP B"]
        GB_members["MEMBERS"]
        GB_spoke["SPOKE  B  ·  ROTATING"]
    end

    subgraph GC["GROUP C"]
        GC_members["MEMBERS"]
        GC_spoke["SPOKE  C  ·  ROTATING"]
    end

    CM["COORDINATION MEETING"]

    GA_spoke -- "Brief" --> CM
    GB_spoke -- "Brief" --> CM
    GC_spoke -- "Brief" --> CM

    CM -- "Debrief" --> GA_spoke
    CM -- "Debrief" --> GB_spoke
    CM -- "Debrief" --> GC_spoke

    GA_members --- GA_spoke
    GB_members --- GB_spoke
    GC_members --- GC_spoke

Each group designates one rotating delegate — the spoke. The spoke attends joint coordination meetings, carries their group’s input, and has a defined mandate: what they can agree to on behalf of their group during the meeting, and what requires bringing back for discussion. The mandate is specific, not general. “You can agree to meeting times and logistics” is a mandate. “Use your best judgment” is not — it’s a blank check, and blank checks are how informal hierarchy forms between groups.

The spokes meet regularly — every two weeks is a reasonable starting cadence, adjusted to what your coordination actually requires. Decisions are made by consent among the spokes: a proposal is presented, concerns are heard, and if no spoke raises a paramount objection, the proposal moves forward. If an objection is raised, the proposal is modified to address it. If it can’t be modified to everyone’s satisfaction, it’s tabled — which means the groups don’t coordinate on that specific thing, not that the coordination fails.

The rotation matters. The spoke role shifts — monthly or quarterly, whatever the groups agree — so that no one person becomes the permanent representative, and so that multiple group members develop the skill of inter-group coordination. This is the same principle as rotating facilitation inside your group, applied at network scale. The person who represents you this month isn’t your leader. They’re your current communication node.

Two practical details that seem minor and aren’t. First: spokes should brief their group before each coordination meeting (what’s on the agenda, what positions the group holds, what the spoke’s mandate covers) and debrief afterward (what was decided, what’s pending, what’s coming next). The brief-and-debrief cycle is what keeps the spoke accountable to the group rather than becoming an autonomous actor. Second: when possible, groups should sit together during coordination meetings so the spoke can consult in real time — a quick “Can I agree to this on our behalf?” during a meeting is faster than tabling everything for consultation.

Spokes Council Protocol

Before the meeting: Each group’s spoke confirms the agenda with their group, clarifies the mandate (what they can agree to, what requires group consultation), and gathers input on known agenda items.

Opening: Confirm who’s present, review the agenda, note any time constraints. Rotating facilitation between groups — the facilitator should not be a spoke for this meeting if possible.

For each proposal: Present the proposal clearly. Round of reactions — each spoke shares their group’s perspective. Identify concerns. Modify the proposal if needed. Test for consent: “Does any spoke have a paramount objection — a reasoned concern that this would cause your group harm?” If no objections, the proposal is adopted. If an objection is raised, address it — modify, table, or separate the issue from the broader coordination.

Closing: Review decisions made. Identify what each spoke needs to bring back to their group. Set the next meeting. Each spoke debriefs their group within 48 hours.

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Decision Domains

The spokes council handles joint decisions. But not every decision is joint, and one of the fastest ways to create friction between autonomous groups is to treat internal decisions as if they require inter-group consent — or to treat joint decisions as if one group can make them alone.

Decision domains are the concept that different decisions belong at different levels. This sounds obvious. It isn’t — or rather, it’s obvious in principle and remarkably easy to get wrong in practice. The Democratic Socialists of America’s 200-plus chapters discovered this the hard way.

DSA’s federated model enabled extraordinary growth — over 100,000 members, anyone could start a chapter, and chapters became centers of political engagement that produced real electoral victories. But the model produced what internal analysts described as disconnected pools: no visibility between chapters, no two chapters’ bylaws particularly similar, and chapters interacting on what one DSA publication described as “a very haphazard basis.” The most visible fracture came in 2024, when NYC-DSA — the largest chapter, operating as a legally distinct entity that raises its own funds and runs its own campaigns — voted to reendorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after the national leadership withdrew DSA’s endorsement over a policy dispute.

The lesson isn’t that DSA’s federalism failed. It’s that federalism without explicit decision domains — without a shared understanding of what belongs to chapters and what belongs to the whole — creates friction that becomes structural. Nobody defined the boundaries, so the boundaries were discovered through conflict. By the time the friction surfaced, the patterns were entrenched.

Contrast that with Mondragon.

The Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain — currently 81 cooperatives employing over 70,000 worker-members, generating roughly €11 billion in annual revenue, governed through nested democratic assemblies from individual cooperatives up through divisional groupings to a Congress of 650 delegates. The structure has sustained since its founding in 1956. It is the most successful large-scale democratic governance model in the documented record.

Mondragon works because decision domains are explicit at every level. Each cooperative governs itself — its internal operations, hiring, production decisions. The divisional groupings coordinate shared services — purchasing, R&D, finance. The Congress sets broad strategic direction and manages the shared principles that hold the federation together. A decision about a single cooperative’s work schedule doesn’t go to the Congress. A decision about the federation’s strategic investments doesn’t get made by a single cooperative. Everyone knows what’s decided where, which means the energy goes into the decision itself rather than into arguing about who has the authority to make it.

Your coordination doesn’t need Mondragon’s complexity. But it needs the same clarity. Here’s a framework for mapping your decision domains:

---
title: Decision Domains — What Goes Where
---
flowchart TD
    subgraph INTERNAL["INTERNAL"]
        I1["Meeting format"]
        I2["Membership decisions"]
        I3["Internal agreements"]
        I4["Group resources"]
        I5["Internal communications"]
    end

    subgraph JOINT["JOINT"]
        J1["Coordinated actions"]
        J2["Cross-group communication"]
        J3["Shared resources"]
        J4["Public-facing coordination"]
        J5["Coalition agreement changes"]
    end

    subgraph INDIVIDUAL["INDIVIDUAL"]
        P1["Personal political engagement"]
        P2["Public discussion of the network"]
        P3["Personal institutional engagement"]
    end

Decision Domain Mapping Template

Internal to each group (decided by each group independently — the other group has no vote):

• How you run your own meetings
• Who you admit as members
• Your group’s internal agreements and ground rules
• How you spend your own resources
• Your group’s internal communication practices
• (Add your own — what else is yours alone?)

Joint decisions (decided together through the spokes council — neither group acts unilaterally):

• What actions you coordinate on together
• How you communicate across groups (liaison protocol, shared channels)
• Shared resources — what you pool and how it’s managed
• Public-facing coordination — anything that represents both groups to the outside world
• Changes to the coalition agreement
• (Add your own — what else requires both groups?)

Individual decisions (belonging to each person — neither the group nor the coordination governs these):

• Each member’s personal political engagement
• How individuals talk about the network publicly, within the bounds of security agreements
• Whether and how individuals engage with institutions in their personal capacity
• (Add your own — what else is personal?)

Gray areas (not yet sorted — discuss and assign):

• (This is where the conversation gets productive. What decisions don’t clearly fit? Name them, discuss them, assign them.)

Work through this together at a joint meeting. The conversation is the point. You’ll discover that most items sort easily — you’ll know immediately that your group’s meeting time is internal and that a joint public action is joint. The interesting moments are the gray areas: Is social media posting about the coordination a joint decision or individual? If one group wants to engage with a local institution, does the other group get a voice? These edge cases are where the real governance lives, and they’re far better sorted in a calm conversation now than discovered during a conflict later.

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When the Spokes Council Disagrees

The three tools above — consent, the spokes council, and decision domains — handle most coordination governance. But there’s a harder version of the problem: what happens when the groups disagree not on a specific proposal but on direction?

Amanda Tattersall’s research on coalition durability, documented in Power in Coalition, offers the clearest framework. Her three-step approach, adapted here for your context:

Step one: Clarify whether the disagreement is about goals or methods. Most disagreements between coordinating groups are about methods — how to do something, not whether to do it. One group wants to attend the city council meeting. The other wants to organize a community forum first. Both groups want civic engagement. They disagree on the approach. When the shared goal is restated clearly, method disagreements often dissolve — or become a productive “both/and” rather than “either/or.” One group attends the council meeting while the other organizes the forum. The coordination supports both.

Step two: If the disagreement is about goals, surface whether the interests are genuinely incompatible or just differently prioritized. Your groups came together because of overlapping concerns — but your priorities may not be identical. One group is focused on housing. The other is focused on school board accountability. These aren’t incompatible. They’re different facets of the same civic engagement. A coalition doesn’t require unanimous priorities. It requires enough shared ground to act on something together. Tattersall’s research found that the strongest coalitions have “both common and separate interests” — pure overlap leads to competition for the same resources and recognition, while complementary interests create mutual need.

Step three: If interests are genuinely incompatible on a specific issue, agree to disagree — and keep coordinating on everything else. This is the step most coalitions skip, and it’s why they fracture. The assumption is that a disagreement on one issue means the coordination has failed. It hasn’t. It means the coordination has found a boundary. Your groups don’t coordinate on that issue. You continue coordinating on everything you do share. The coalition agreement reflects this: the boundary is named, documented, and respected. No one pretends the disagreement doesn’t exist. No one treats it as a betrayal.

The Women’s March is the cautionary tale for what happens without this framework. A coalition of over 550 partner organizations, the largest single-day protest in U.S. history — undone not by opposition but by an internal accountability crisis that the coalition had no mechanism to resolve. No escalation protocol. No decision domains. No way for the broader coalition to force action when four co-chairs held concentrated, unaccountable authority. When co-chair Tamika Mallory’s association with Louis Farrakhan and the ensuing antisemitism controversy surfaced, the coalition had no governance to process it. Co-founder Teresa Shook had to resort to a Facebook post to call for resignations. By the time three of the four co-chairs departed in September 2019, partner organizations had dropped from 550 to roughly 200. State chapters had dissolved. The coalition that mobilized millions of people couldn’t sustain itself through one unresolved internal conflict.

The lesson isn’t that the underlying disagreement was too hard. It’s that no structure existed to process it. You have the tools to do better. Use them before you need them.

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In David Fincher’s Fight Club, the rules were the governance. “The first rule of Fight Club” wasn’t about secrecy — it was about establishing a shared framework that every member understood. The rules created something remarkable: a distributed, leaderless structure where anyone could start a new chapter and the rules held the thing together without a central authority.

Then Tyler Durden started Project Mayhem. The rules changed. Suddenly decisions were made unilaterally — by one person, for everyone, without consent. Members were told not to ask questions. The distributed governance collapsed into hidden hierarchy, and by the time anyone noticed, the structure had become the opposite of what the rules promised.

The film is a cautionary tale about the gap between stated governance and actual governance. Fight Club’s rules said “distributed.” Tyler’s behavior said “centralized.” The people following the rules didn’t notice the shift because the rules were still technically in place — they just weren’t the actual decision-making structure anymore. Jo Freeman diagnosed this pattern decades before the film: in “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” first published in The Second Wave in 1972, she argued that eliminating formal hierarchy doesn’t eliminate hierarchy. It makes hierarchy invisible, unaccountable, and harder to challenge.

The spokes council, the decision domains, and the coalition agreement exist precisely to prevent that shift. Not because anyone in your coordination is Tyler Durden — but because the drift from distributed governance to informal centralization happens so gradually that you don’t notice it until someone’s making decisions for everyone and nobody agreed to that.

Name the structure. Write it down. And when someone acts outside it, the documentation makes the conversation possible.

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Challenge

At a joint meeting of both groups — all members, not just liaisons — establish your coordination governance:

1. Adopt consent-based decision-making through a spokes council. Each group designates its first spoke. Define the spoke’s mandate explicitly: what can they agree to in a coordination meeting, and what requires bringing back to the group? Set a rotation schedule. Agree on a meeting cadence for the spokes council — start with every two weeks and adjust.

2. Map your decision domains together. Using the template above, sort decisions into internal, joint, individual, and gray areas. Spend real time on the gray areas — they’re where the governance earns its value. Both groups keep a copy of the completed map.

3. Practice a real consent decision. Pick something concrete — the next joint action, a shared resource allocation, a communication protocol adjustment. Run the consent process through the spokes council. Present, react, modify, test for objections. The practice matters more than the outcome. If the consent process feels clunky the first time, that’s expected. The second time is faster.

4. Write a coalition agreement. Not a constitution — a one-page document that states:

Coalition Agreement Template

Who’s in this coordination: (Name the groups. Identify their current spokes.)

How decisions are made: (Consent-based, through the spokes council. Define the objection threshold. Note the rotation schedule.)

What’s shared and what’s autonomous: (Attach or reference the decision domain map.)

How disagreements are handled: (The three-step escalation: goals vs. methods → compatible vs. incompatible interests → agree to disagree and continue coordinating on shared ground.)

How this agreement changes: (Changes to the agreement itself are joint decisions requiring consent from all groups. Review the agreement at an agreed interval — quarterly is reasonable.)

Signed by: (Spokes on behalf of their groups, with the understanding that each group ratified the agreement through their own decision-making process.)

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This is the entry fee for sustained coordination. It’s not the exciting part. It’s not the joint action or the community impact or the growing network. It’s the structural foundation that makes those things possible without one group dominating, without decisions happening in hallways instead of meetings, without the slow drift toward informal hierarchy that has killed movements with far more resources and energy than yours.

You’ve paid entry fees before. Inside your group — the ground rules, the consensus spectrum, the facilitator role, the agreements that felt bureaucratic until the first conflict proved they were essential. This is the same thing, at a different scale. The groan zone between groups feels different from the groan zone inside one. It’s less personal and more structural. The friction is about pace and priority and process, not about whether people like each other. And the tools that resolve it are structural too — not deeper relationships (though those help), but clearer agreements about how the coordination works.

Write the coalition agreement. Practice the consent decision. Map the domains. And file all of it in your field journal, because the next time you need to reference what you agreed to — and you will — it should be findable.

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Field journal: Record the completed decision domain map, the coalition agreement, and your group’s internal notes on how the consent process felt. What was easier than expected? What was harder? Where did the gray areas in the decision domain mapping surprise you? And — this one matters for what comes next — what came up during the governance conversation that connects to the world outside your coordination? An institution one group mentioned. A local issue that both groups’ decision domains touch. A realization that some of the decisions you’re mapping don’t just involve your two groups — they involve the civic landscape you’re both part of. Note that. The next chapter is about that landscape.

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