CB.13 - Establish a Workable Mandate for Shared Decisions

Type: Community-building method pattern Status: Stable

CB.13:1 - Problem frame

Use this pattern when people need decisions about a common activity but have not established who may make them, or when the mandate of an existing decision-maker is disputed or has expired. Several local groups want a joint event. A founder asks for comments and participants believe they are voting. A moderator’s decision is challenged, but every appeal returns to that same moderator.

The governed object is the arrangement that makes specified shared decisions possible: their subjects, participants, source of authority, decision method, limits and means of reconsideration. This is one branch of community governance. Performing an already assigned organising task belongs to CB.7; applying an established participation rule to an incident belongs to CB.8.

First useful result: the people who can establish the arrangement have made a usable mandate effective for the named questions, with its limits and challenge route understood. If they cannot do so, the result is the exact unresolved authority or agreement question and the work that may still proceed under existing conditions.

Start with an actual shared decision and the people or organisations whose contributions and rights it would change.

Ordinary non-use: independent carriers of a practice can continue using it without a common governing body. A single activity owner may already have adequate authority and consultation arrangements. Keep that basis; use this pattern only for the missing or contested shared decision arrangement. A legally constituted body or regulated decision requires its applicable institutional and professional basis.

CB.13:2 - Problem

Discussion, influence, ownership and a right to decide are different. A popular contributor can understand participants’ needs without representing them. A sponsor can control the use of its room without being entitled to decide every question of the group. An elected representative can have a narrower mandate than their title suggests.

A proposed governance form can also omit the work that makes it effective. Representatives may have no way to obtain views or return reasons. A vote may have no defined electorate or result rule. Local groups may be called autonomous while every useful exception requires central permission. A challenge to the decision-makers may have no recipient.

The problem is to construct enough shared authority and procedure for the actual work, make it effective through the people entitled to do so, and preserve a workable way to correct or end it.

CB.13:3 - Forces

CB.13:4 - Solution

Construct the arrangement around a few real questions, compare forms that could settle them, test their ordinary and disputed use, then obtain the acts and conditions that make the selected mandate effective. Keep the constitution of authority separate from each later decision made under it.

CB.13:4.1 - Separate the shared questions and affected parties

Name the intended common result and decisions needed to obtain it. For a joint event, these may concern its programme, common spending and use of a shared name. A local club’s recurring schedule can remain outside that common subject.

Identify whose work, resources, access or accepted commitments each decision would change. Include people who supply upkeep or bear an effect without attending the central meeting. Ask what their participation can change: providing facts, proposing an option, consenting to use of their resource or making the shared choice.

Distinguish a community preference from a separate permission or professional judgement. A group can prefer a venue while its owner determines whether it is available. Members can choose a service aim while a qualified provider determines whether a particular promised performance is supportable. Obtain each result through its actual holder.

Make the smallest useful boundary explicit. State which questions the proposed arrangement can decide, which remain local and which must return elsewhere. If there is no common decision after that separation, use direct agreements or the existing activity owner rather than creating a general governing body.

CB.13:4.2 - Recover the authority that already exists

Obtain the current basis for relevant decision rights: an applicable agreement, an appointment under an established rule, members’ adopted constitution, a resource owner’s permission or an institutional decision. Check the subject, scope, holder and effective term against the proposed use. A former office holder may still have knowledge while lacking a current decision right.

Compare the stated arrangement with what people actually do and can obtain. OCE.2 supplies that recovery where the formal account is inadequate. Separate missing authority from missing access, an unavailable executor or disagreement with an otherwise valid decision.

Where no common mandate exists, identify who can enter a limited agreement about their own participation and contributions. Invite them to construct that agreement, stating who is included and what it will govern. A founding group can organise the activity of those who join on that basis; it cannot bind a wider population merely by claiming to speak for it.

Retain separate external conditions. If the proposed arrangement uses an organisation’s assets, employees, name or statutory role, obtain the corresponding permission or professional result. The community’s preferred rule cannot create that external authority. Return the specific unresolved permission or professional question to its holder.

CB.13:4.3 - Compare forms against the actual decision work

Compare workable alternatives, including an adequate existing arrangement. Choose the form for the subject, consequences, local knowledge, number of participants and effort people can sustain.

These forms can be combined. For example, local groups may select representatives for a joint event, while the event organiser consults participants about the programme within an already approved budget. Keep the basis of each decision understandable when moving between forms.

For each serious option, follow one ordinary question from proposal through information, discussion, decision, execution and return. Then follow a dispute, including a dispute involving the decision-maker. Identify the person or body performing each move, the time and support it needs, and what happens if it cannot act.

Compare the costs of the complete alternatives. Broad participation may improve the available account but require time and accessible preparation. Delegation can reduce repeated decision work while requiring explanation and a way to replace the delegate. Select these trade-offs from the local question; neither concentration nor distribution has a universal advantage.

CB.13:4.4 - Make representation and local autonomy usable

For a representative arrangement, define the represented constituency in terms participants can verify. State who may nominate, stand, select and challenge the selection, using the current governing basis. Make the opportunity accessible to eligible people who cannot attend the central meeting. Explain how vacancies are filled.

Specify the mandate’s subject, limits and term. A representative may have discretion within a defined aim, be instructed on a particular proposal or need to return a materially different proposal to the constituency. Choose which applies before the consequential decision.

Give representatives a feasible way to obtain concerns and return reasons. Ask for relevant differences and minority positions. Where people decline to share a view or cannot be reached, preserve that limitation. Being affected and being represented through the established arrangement remain different facts.

Provide a means to replace or recall the representative under an intelligible rule. State who can initiate it, who decides, how the person can respond and what happens to current work during a vacancy. A recall procedure that no eligible person can reach adds little practical control.

For local autonomy, state the decisions retained by each group and the specific matters delegated to the common body. Provide a route for overlapping effects: a shared resource, a claim made in all groups’ names or an activity that changes another group’s commitments. Bring the affected groups into that question without requiring central approval of every unrelated local choice.

CB.13:4.5 - Define a decision and challenge method people can perform

For the named class of decisions, make the following working questions answerable:

• Who can propose a matter and receive the relevant information?
• Who must have a chance to contribute before the choice, and through what accessible route?
• Who decides, under which result rule and with what required participation?
• Who records and explains the result, and who makes it effective?
• Who receives a challenge or a proposed amendment, including one against the decision-makers?

Choose the result rule explicitly. An authorised person may decide after consultation; a group may use an agreed voting threshold; another group may seek agreement and have a defined way to handle a remaining objection. State what happens when required participation is absent, the result is tied or agreement is not reached. Delay, a further proposal, a limited interim action and referral are different outcomes.

Make the decision period realistic. Give affected participants the information and time needed for the consequential choice, and define a smaller route for genuinely urgent matters. Any interim authority needs a subject, limits and review point. Obtain that authority before relying on the shorter route.

Separate disagreement with the result from a challenge to its basis or conduct. A review may examine relevant new facts, failure to follow the adopted rule, a conflict of interest or a decision beyond the mandate. Identify a recipient capable of changing the affected decision. If the deciding body itself is implicated, provide the agreed alternate, appointing constituency or outside arrangement.

Plan what happens when no qualified or independent reviewer is available. Obtain one by agreement, limit or pause the dependent decision where the applicable arrangements permit it, or return the unresolved dispute to the body that can establish a valid route. Do not advertise independent appeal while relying on the same challenged decision-maker.

Use ECO.7 when the decisions concern a resource whose availability or condition is limited by use or maintenance. It supplies the combination of access, use, upkeep, observation and adaptation rules. Keep those resource facts separate from the source of the right to adopt the rules.

CB.13:4.5.1 - An optional decision method for a small team

An existing small team can consider the Core Protocols’ Decider together with Resolution for its own authorised action proposals. Its members must first adopt the Core Commitments and the protocols’ full obligations. These include staying for the decision, constrained discussion, no Pass during Decider, and responsibility for carrying out Decider commitments made in one’s absence. Joining a community or volunteering for an activity does not by itself adopt those terms.

Use the complete primary instructions when performing the method. One action proposal receives simultaneous yes, no or support responses. An absolute refusal requires the proposer to withdraw the proposal. Resolution addresses a small remaining dissent when the effort is worthwhile. The proposer asks each dissenter for the precise change needed, adopts it or withdraws the proposal. A simple amendment requires checking that everyone is still in; accepting a complex amendment requires withdrawal and a new proposal containing the change. This supplies a concrete way to handle agreement on an action. The team’s mandate, resource permissions and challenge route remain necessary.

Select this option only where those participation terms and limits on discussion fit the decision. If people need to abstain from individual votes, explain their reasons during the vote or avoid obligations for decisions made while absent, choose another agreed method under :4.5. Do not remove such source conditions while claiming to use unchanged Decider. People can decline this arrangement before adopting it without losing their wider community participation.

CB.13:4.6 - Adopt the arrangement and make it effective

Test the proposed arrangement before adoption with an ordinary case and a consequential dispute. Check whether the named participants can actually perform it with available time, information, access and support. Repair a missing contribution or revise the option.

Present the resulting proposal and its consequences to the people who can adopt it under the existing basis. Show the scope of the proposed authority, what remains with participants or local groups, the commitment required and how it can change or end. Obtain the required agreement or decision through the applicable procedure.

If this is the first limited voluntary agreement, make acceptance and its boundary explicit. Provide a way to decline. Record whose activity and contributions it governs and what happens to a person who leaves. Leave external obligations with their actual holders. A discussion of a proposal is not its adoption.

Make the mandates and conditions effective: complete the required appointment or acceptance, provide access, obtain the promised resource contribution and tell participants where decisions and challenges go. Use OCE.6 for assignments and enabling relations when needed. A person can be selected while an essential condition remains unavailable; retain that distinction and reduce the dependent promise.

Keep the usable rule and current appointments discoverable. A short agreement can suffice for a small joint activity. A larger association may need its established constitutional and decision records. Use the existing form that preserves the needed scope, term, result and amendment route.

CB.13:4.7 - Use, reassess and end the mandate deliberately

Follow the first actual decisions. Could participants offer relevant information? Did the authorised people decide within scope? Could the recipients carry the decision out? Did an affected local group or contributor discover a commitment they had never made?

Return the observed difficulty to its proper question. CB.7 repairs preparation or support for the organising work. CB.8 handles an incident under a valid rule. OCE.14 compares and implements a bounded revision of an established organisation when its current owner and decision rule are available. A defective or expired mandate returns here.

Review the arrangement when the activity, affected parties, resource conditions or scale of consequences changes. Use the agreed amendment method; do not treat an informal practice that drifted beyond the mandate as its automatic renewal.

At expiry, obtain renewal, replace the holder, reduce the subject or end the mandate through the applicable arrangement. Settle pending decisions and continuing commitments. Explain which ordinary work can continue under its own conditions and which must wait for a new mandate.

Close with an effective arrangement usable for its declared subjects, or with the specific missing authority question returned to the people who can resolve it. Evidence from its later use can justify keeping or revising it; adoption alone establishes no general claim about community trust or effectiveness.

CB.13:5 - Archetypal Grounding

CB.13:5.1 - Three clubs authorise a joint conference

In a constructed case, three repair clubs want a one-day conference. Each club can commit its own contribution under its existing rules. They agree that local schedules, membership and regular fees remain with the individual clubs.

Six programme and purchasing decisions are expected over the next six weeks. A booking can be held for five days. Each club can run an accessible member ballot within four days, with a volunteer distributing proposals and returning results. Alternatively, each can appoint a representative who has agreed to two hours of weekly preparation and response. The clubs can authorise either form within the same spending limits.

Under direct club decisions, each club’s eligible members would receive the programme options, costs and explanation, discuss them and return their choice through the club’s stated ballot rule. Agreement by at least two clubs on the same option would authorise the event organiser to book and report it. Members would retain a binding choice on each question, at the cost of reading and deciding six successive proposals. Under representation, the three delegates would obtain their clubs’ initial priorities, compare the proposals and return decisions and reasons. Members would surrender a ballot on each in-scope choice and need to rely on their representative’s judgement and reports.

For either form, the clubs agree a reachable contact for challenges to scope or procedure. An experienced organiser from a fourth club accepts that bounded review task. Their agreement empowers this person to suspend or reverse an out-of-scope conference decision and return the new question to the clubs. A challenge to an endorsement hidden in a venue offer can therefore reach the same authorised reviewer whether member ballots or delegates approved it.

Both forms fit the booking window. The clubs choose representation because their members prefer to use the repeated decision time to prepare demonstrations, while the willing representatives can sustain the stated weekly work. They accept the loss of a separate member ballot on each programme choice. If representatives cannot obtain affected members’ views or return intelligible reasons, the clubs will reconsider the form; direct club ballots remain feasible.

Each club selects its representative and supplies a spending limit. The three clubs adopt the limited arrangement: programme and common purchases require at least two of three votes, with all three given the proposal and a reasonable opportunity to respond. A proposal increasing a club’s commitment beyond its agreed limit returns to that club. Each retains its own procedure for replacing its representative. The mandate ends after the conference’s accounts and outstanding commitments are settled.

For an ordinary programme question, all three representatives receive two feasible options and their costs. Two prefer an afternoon of case sessions. The result falls within the limits; the organiser books the sessions and returns the programme and reason to the clubs.

A sponsor then offers a room on condition that the network endorse its repair product. Two representatives approve the offer as a venue choice. The third club challenges the added endorsement through the agreed contact. The reviewer obtains the event mandate and proposed announcement, hears the representatives’ accounts and finds that the endorsement exceeds the agreed subject. The approval is reversed; the clubs receive the reason and the separate endorsement question. A feasible alternative venue remains available.

The sponsor can decide whether to provide its room, while the clubs decide whether to grant a new endorsement mandate. If the reviewer becomes unavailable or conflicted, the dependent joint decision waits for the clubs to obtain a replacement under their agreement. Local club meetings continue under their own arrangements.

CB.13:5.2 - Consultation does not turn into a ballot

The owner of a small discussion venue is authorised to choose its opening hours within a funded staffing arrangement. They invite regular users to explain which of two schedules supported by the available staffing they can use, stating the decision-maker, closing date for input and the need to preserve accepted access commitments.

Most replies favour the later schedule. An affected group’s response shows that it would exclude them despite a separately accepted access commitment. The owner chooses the earlier schedule, explains the constraint and arranges a review when staffing changes. The consultation returned useful information and an intelligible decision; it did not promise that the most popular reply would bind the owner.

If the owner had announced a binding vote under a valid member decision rule, the same unilateral choice would need a different disposition. The declared and effective arrangement changes what counts as a proper decision.

CB.13:5.3 - Local autonomy has an interface for shared effects

Two local volunteer groups independently schedule their own case meetings. They share a limited pool of mentor time. Their common arrangement governs only allocation of that time and how unmet requests return; ECO.7 helps construct the feasible use and upkeep rules.

One group can change its meeting format locally. It cannot reserve all mentor time merely because it needs more sessions. That request goes through the common allocation and its actual capacity limits. Free copying of the groups’ reference notes is not restricted by the same rule: the constrained contribution is mentor time.

If the common body begins directing unrelated local topics, either group can challenge that expansion through the adopted route. A new common subject requires the appropriate amendment, not merely repeated practice.

CB.13:5.4 - An expired mandate leaves a proposal, not an effective decision

An association’s coordinator has prepared a useful revision to its moderation appeal route, but their term has expired. No applicable interim rule permits them to appoint the new appeal reviewer.

The proposal and its reasons remain available. The current authorised member body can consider it and establish the appointment. Existing incident protection continues only under the rules and holders whose authority remains valid. OCE.14 can help implement the later approved revision; it cannot renew the former coordinator’s term.

CB.13:5.5 - Shared practice without shared government

Independent repairers use the same published technique and send occasional corrections to its maintainer. They have no joint budget, common service promise or need for decisions binding the users. The maintainer controls the publication under its actual arrangements; each repairer controls their own practice.

Creating a council of all users would add a representational claim and decision work that the present use does not require. They keep the explanation, correction and learning routes from CB.1/5. A later proposal for a joint service would create a new, bounded governance question.

CB.13:5.6 - A small team selects the protocol, a wider forum does not

Five volunteer organisers have adopted the Core Commitments and the full Decider and Resolution instructions for decisions within their session-planning mandate. They have authority over their own preparation and the allotted room time. Other community members have made no such commitment.

One organiser proposes using the next forty-five-minute session for two prepared cases. Four vote yes and one votes no. Asked for the needed change, the dissenter requests the material a day beforehand. The case author agrees to supply it. The proposer accepts this simple amendment, checks that all five remain in, and returns the decision and preparation responsibility. The material arrives as agreed; the session can use it. The protocol has helped this team settle one actionable proposal without creating a community-wide mandate.

On a later proposal, a requested amendment adds a separate paid workshop, changes the available time and needs funding that has not been obtained. The proposer withdraws it; the team must obtain the missing contributions before offering a new feasible proposal. The previous assent cannot authorise the expanded undertaking.

A subsequent forum includes volunteers who want to decide separately which activities they will help with. They do not accept compulsory voting or commitments made in their absence. The organisers use consultation followed by explicit agreement to each person’s own contribution. They retain the small team’s chosen procedure only within its actual membership and mandate.

CB.13:6 - Bias-Annotation

Governance templates often begin from a company, association or online platform whose decision rights are already partly supplied. A voluntary common activity may lack that basis. Start with the participants’ actual contributions, commitments and rights. Visible discussion can also hide people who lack time or access; provide a usable route for their relevant input without claiming that all affected people agree or are represented.

CB.13:7 - Conformance Checklist

For the shared decision arrangement, ask:

• Are its common subjects, affected parties and retained local decisions intelligible?
• Does the authority to adopt it come from an actual agreement or applicable institution?
• Is consultation distinguishable from the procedure that produces a decision?
• Can representatives obtain views, act within a bounded term and return reasons, and can their constituents replace them?
• Can an ordinary question and a dispute pass through proposal, decision, execution and challenge with available people and resources?
• If a named external procedure is selected, have these participants accepted its actual obligations, including its treatment of abstention, absence and amendment?
• Has adoption occurred, and have the appointment, access and support conditions become effective?
• Is there a workable amendment, expiry and challenge route, including a challenge involving the decision-makers?

A small voluntary agreement can answer these questions briefly. A stronger institutional or legal claim needs its own applicable evidence and qualified result.

CB.13:8 - Common Anti-Patterns and How to Avoid Them

CB.13:9 - Consequences

Shared decisions can become both possible and bounded. Participants can understand who decides, supply relevant information, challenge an overreach and keep useful local freedom. Organisers and moderators receive an actual decision basis for their work.

Participation, representation and review consume effort. A limited agreement for one activity can be preferable to a general constitution. Where authority or a necessary contribution cannot be obtained, the method makes the unresolved question visible rather than inventing a collective power.

CB.13:10 - Rationale

A shared decision needs more than discussion: it needs a rule that gives a result force for the specified participants and subject. That rule itself must be established through a valid basis. Starting from the actual common work exposes both the needed mandate and the questions that can remain elsewhere.

Testing ordinary and disputed use reveals omissions that an organisation diagram hides. Making adoption, appointment and provision distinct prevents a selected arrangement from being mistaken for an operating one. Bounded amendment and expiry then allow useful continuity without silently enlarging the original authority.

CB.13:11 - SoTA-Echoing

The practice question is how to establish a decision arrangement for common work where its mandate cannot be assumed. The useful line compares consultation, direct decision, representation and local autonomy against actual subjects; supplies adoption and operating conditions; and tests a challenge as well as an ordinary choice. It accepts the effort of obtaining agreement and maintaining representation where shared commitments justify it.

Decider with Resolution offers a specified proposal-and-amendment procedure for a small team that accepts its commitments. The more general construction in :4.5 remains preferable where participants need different deliberation or withdrawal conditions. Neither option gains authority from its procedure alone.

An existing adequate owner with consultation is a serious alternative to a new representative body. Independent practice without binding common decisions is another. A more elaborate form earns its cost only by supplying a needed shared decision and workable correction.

Reopen when a mandate expires, a common subject or affected constituency changes, an external permission fails, or actual use exposes an unworkable decision or challenge route.

CB.13:12 - Relations

• CB.1 identifies the useful common activity or independent-practice alternative. CB.7 prepares organisers to work within the resulting mandate; CB.8 handles rules and incidents under it.
• CB.4/5 supplies discussion and subject contributions for a decision. Receiving those contributions and authorising the decision remain different acts. The Core Protocols option in :4.5.1 supplies a particular decision procedure only within an adopted arrangement.
• OCE.2:4 recovers actual work and authority conditions. OCE.6 obtains assignments and enabling relations.
• OCE.12:4.3 supplies a working conversation; OCE.14:4 revises an existing organisation under its current decision basis.
• ECO.7:4 supplies common-resource rule construction. Corporate or regulated questions return to their applicable governance and professional authorities.

CB.13:End