Topic · Leadership & Collaboration
Self-organization works —
when form, law, and responsibility fit together.
“We’re going to do this self-organized now” isn’t a plan, it’s a promise. To make it real, three things have to come together: a decision-making structure that actually holds; a legal form that goes along with it; and a clear understanding of how responsibility can be distributed without ending up with no one accountable. I helped shape this path for nine years as Managing Director and Board Chair at Mein Grundeinkommen e.V.
What self-organization really demands
Self-organization is not a flatter hierarchy and not a refusal to lead. It shifts authority from people to roles, and decisions to clear processes. That makes it powerful — and demanding. Anyone who introduces it as a compromise between “grassroots democracy” and “boss-led” ends up with the worst of both worlds: slow decisions without clear accountability.
From practice: nine years of Holacracy at Mein Grundeinkommen
Mein Grundeinkommen e.V. has worked with Holacracy for years — while remaining a registered association (Verein) under German law. I unpacked exactly that combination at the FES conference “Akademie Management und Politik 2023” in a dedicated practice forum: what opportunities and what friction arise when the legal shell sits opposite a participatory operating system?
Workshop · Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn 2023 Practice Forum 2: The legal form “Verein” and the organizational form Holacracy — opportunities and challenges for transparency and participationLeadership without a boss — is that even leadership?
Yes. But it looks different. In self-organized structures, leadership is less about filling a position and more about a practice: noticing tensions, making proposals, enabling others, holding clarity when things get uncomfortable.
In my consulting work I notice that this shift challenges two groups in particular. Existing managers lose the sense of “what they’re actually here for” — and employees are suddenly handed responsibility they didn’t choose. Introducing self-organization therefore always means actively walking both groups through this identity shift.
Finpowerment: when money is no longer taboo
Finpowerment describes the step of transferring financial responsibility from the leadership level out into the breadth of the organization — with knowledge, visibility, and real decision-making authority. It’s the consistent extension of self-organization into the area that stays most centralized in most NGOs: money.
For finpowerment not to become overwhelm, three building blocks are needed:
- Transparency on the inside. Budget, liquidity, fixed costs — out in the open and in language that isn’t only intelligible to the finance team.
- Clear financial roles with authority. Who can decide up to which threshold? Who has to consult? Where does final legal responsibility sit?
- Spaces to learn. People who have never owned a budget don’t become confident overnight — they need occasions where mistakes are allowed.
Finpowerment rarely fails for lack of willingness, but for lack of infrastructure: without up-to-date numbers, without clean role models, and without training, empowerment quickly turns into a diffuse sense of guilt. Anyone serious about finpowerment invests first in visibility — and only then in authority.
Legal form & compliance: what’s actually permitted under “distributed responsibility”
No matter how self-organized you work — the legal system ultimately wants to identify one concrete person or one concrete body that’s liable. The board in a Verein, management in a GmbH, the executive board in a gGmbH or gAG. That ultimate responsibility can’t be dissolved horizontally, but it can be delegated cleverly internally.
The practical questions that keep coming up in consulting:
- How do board liability and holacratic roles fit together? Which decisions can the board delegate to roles or circles — and which must legally stay with it?
- What do bylaws look like that don’t hold self-organization back? Association bylaws have often grown historically and contain reservations that are long outdated in practice.
- Which compliance topics get systematically overlooked in self-organization? Data protection, employment law, tax law — all areas where “decentralized responsibility” isn’t legally sufficient.
- Which legal form actually fits your project? Verein, gGmbH, cooperative, steward-ownership, purpose foundation — each form has its own logic for how responsibility may be distributed.
The honest answer is usually: the legal form alone doesn’t decide it — how you fill it in does. A conservatively designed gGmbH can be more self-organized than a Verein whose board pulls everything to itself.
Who this topic becomes relevant for
- For organizations wanting to introduce self-organization — and needing to check legal viability first.
- For teams working in Holacracy or Sociocracy and hitting the limits of their bylaws.
- For boards and executive teams wanting to distribute responsibility internally without undermining their own legal accountability.
- For founding teams still choosing between Verein, gGmbH, or cooperative.
Let’s talk about your structure.
30 minutes on video — I listen, help you sort the open questions, and tell you honestly where you can move forward on your own and where you can’t.