The Good Governance Playbook

How to choose a governance system for your organization

Is your nonprofit, small business, or volunteer group looking for a new way to make decisions? Many groups are questioning our mainstream systems — and that includes the systems by which we make decisions. Governance used to be one of the things we’d all take for granted, and now it’s one of the cho

Broken Assumptions of Governance

Before we can really tackle building next generation governance, we may have to shake up some of the assumptions holding us back. After…

A Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance

Ideas for a Changing World.

Steward-ownership is capitalism 2.0

In my previous post, I explained why we need to change incentive structures if we want to build companies that are a force for good in…

Governance models

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Incorruptible

Instant New York Times Bestseller "Incorruptible by Eric Ries is the best and most important business book of the year." —Dan Heath, NYT Bestselling Author & Podcast Host of "What It's Like To Be..." A Thinkers50 Best New Management Book | A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read From Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup, comes a bold and urgently needed rethink of how organizations are built—and why success itself so often turns companies against the people and principles that made them worth building in the first place. For decades, we've explained corporate corruption as a problem of bad actors, moral weakness, or isolated scandals. But that story doesn't match reality. Again and again, companies founded with strong ideals drift toward short-term thinking, extractive behavior, and mission abandonment—often despite the best intentions of the people inside them. Incorruptible argues that this failure is not primarily ethical. It is structural. As organizations grow, the systems that govern them—ownership, incentives, charters, accountability, and decision-making—quietly reshape behavior. When those systems are poorly designed, even principled leaders are pushed toward outcomes they never wanted. Success itself becomes a form of financial gravity, bending companies away from their original purpose. Drawing on two decades of work with founders, CEOs, investors, and institution builders, Ries shows how these failures arise predictably—and how they can be prevented. He reframes corporate governance not as bureaucracy or compliance, but as a creative and strategic act at the heart of building enduring, mission-controlled companies. At a moment when trust in business is eroding, Incorruptible offers a clear-eyed diagnosis and a practical blueprint for change. Success alone will not protect what matters most. Only incorruptible design can. Get more information and bonus materials at incorruptible.co.

Opinion | The New Power Structure (Published 2018)

New organizations are forming and succeeding in an age of distrust.

Is America Encouraging the Wrong Kind of Entrepreneurship?

In a 1990 paper, “Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive,” late economist William Baumol argued that not all entrepreneurs are equal: there are both “productive” and “unproductive” endeavors. Most people think of all entrepreneurship to be what Baumol referred to as the “productive” kind, where the companies that founders launch commercialize something new or better, benefiting society and themselves in the process. Baumol was worried, however, by a very different sort of entrepreneur, the “unproductive” ones who exploit special relationships with the government to construct regulatory moats, secure public spending for their own benefit, or bend specific rules to their will — in the process, stifling competition to create advantage for their firms. Two recent trends indicate that this may be happening in the U.S. today: rising profits, especially those earned by the largest businesses in the economy, and suggestive evidence of an increase in efforts to shape the rules of the game. Baumol may have been ahead of his time. If the U.S. is going to tackle its many problems, we are going to have to find ways to encourage would-be entrepreneurs to start innovative, productive businesses, rather than dedicating their efforts to co-opting government in order to secure economic advantage.

The Yak Online Governance Primer :: The Yak Collective

How do you do online governance? This primer is intended as a guided tour through a curated set of readings — based on a year of study by the Yak Collective1 — that can help groups and organizations navigate this question.

The Future of Governance is not Governments

Living systems on every scale have governance — methods of self-regulation to manage the coherence and continuity of the system. Also, for…

The Four Factors for Organizations - Future Mending Radio

When I pick an organization for the podcast or the map at Futuremending.com, I’m not just picking businesses out of a hat – I have a system for evaluating orgs which I call the Four Factors for Organizations. The Four Factors are Multi-solving, Sharing, Sufficiency and Transparency.This episode is in two parts. The opening minutes are a bit of an emotional check-in to see how people are processing the unprecedented political turmoil in the United States. The second part of the podcast discusses the Four Factors for Organizations and why seeking out certain vectors of change makes more sense than trying to lay out a detailed plan for a better future. Read about the Four Factors: https://www.futuremending.com/whatMatt’s Blue Sky account: https://bsky.app/profile/mattliepaehlke.bsky.socialWired Magazine coverage of the crisis in the U.S. : https://www.wired.com/tag/elon-musk/Rebecca Solnit’s newsletter: https://meditations-in-an-emergency.ghost.io/welcome-to-meditations-in-an-emergency/ Google's AI Policy: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/05/google-owner-drops-promise-not-to-use-ai-for-weapons Future Mending Map: https://www.futuremending.com/toronto    Music Credits:'Epilogue' by The Slow Motions.  Used with permission of the artist.‘Fashion’ by Alex Productions. Creative Commons.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV1miCgT7J4‘Miss you’ by Middle Child. Creative Commons.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dayIKHEIYqY‘Opening’ by Phillip Glass.  Arr. by Karl Michelson.  Performed by The Union Guitar Trio.  Used with permission of the artists.Union Guitar Trio on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/2E0NidLjIzBAO7t0BBPFUDUnion Guitar Trio on Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-union-guitar-trio/1592543833Sound Effects:BBC News November 9th, 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjNz1lvXgzUwood hit low glass bowl 3.mp3 by ascap -- https://freesound.org/s/242388/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0Brightness by sonically_sound -- https://freesound.org/s/632762/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

4 keys to developing your mission or values openly

How can your mission-driven organization develop its mission openly? Chris Grams explains.

PUBLIC POLICY NETWORKS AND ‘WICKED PROBLEMS’: A NASCENT SOLUTION?

The last two decades have seen a shift in public services organizations from hierarchies to networks. Network forms are seen as particularly suited to handling ‘wicked problems'. We make an assessmen...

Jeff Bezos explains the perfect way to make risky business decisions

Bezos plans to keep his 300,000-employee company running like a startup by making faster decisions.

Denizen

What is stakeholder capitalism? What is required to truly instantiate stakeholder decision making in the governance of companies?