Self-organised, self-driven, self-reliant, “lead by design”, “systems model” approach. All of these terms are used to describe the member’s level of engagement in an organisation. When applied to coliving these models can decrease operational costs through the acquisition of new residents, less frequent involvement from community facilitators, event creation, maintenance, etc. It can also create a community with higher engagement, ownership, responsibility, collaborations, trust, social value and overall community feeling.The benefits are remarkable if implemented successfully. This article will further explore this model and its benefits.

First, let’s take a look at the research field of industrial and organisational (I/O) psychology. Since the Hawthorne experiment in 1924, we’ve begun to grasp that productivity and overall happiness doesn’t stem from top-down hierarchical management approaches, but rather bottom-up ones. Companies and organisations have since adopted more bottom- up approaches to empower their employees and members (Harper, 2015), hence turning towards “leading by design”, wherein the top management design the framework for “how to play the game”. In other words, incentivise workers to become more self-organised within the designed framework of the organisation so they can take advantage of the effects of higher productivity, overall happiness and social benefits (Sisney, 2016).

Allow me to explain how this correlates to the coliving industry. Right now, the majority of coliving operators are using a top-down approach and are coming to the same realisation: that it isn’t the ideal model, neither cost-wise nor for creating vibrant communities. A turn towards bottom-up approaches (e.g. “systems models) is also argued by thought leaders in coliving to be a more sustainable operational model and is becoming adopted more by operators. In conclusion, the similarities of “lead by design” and “systems model” approach are striking, both in terms of implementation, as well as in the effects on workers or residents. By looking at the history of I/O psychology in the workplace and the current trend of the coliving industry, we might be able to plot the course for future development. These similarities among others will be further explored in this article, but first I am going to define what a self-organised community is.

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What is a self-organised coliving community?

“The term self-organisation refers to the process by which individuals organise their communal behavior to create global order by interactions amongst themselves rather than through external intervention or instruction.” (Willshaw, 2006).

Applying the definition to community and housing, we turn to the literature on cohousing. The cohousing movement, which bears many similarities to coliving, has long been a grassroots movement in which individuals come together to invest, develop and operate land and community. Cohousing in its very basic form can be defined as an “intentional self- organised communities where members live with certain shared values in a cluster of 20-100 people” (Vestbro, 2012). These communities are self-organised to various degrees. In some cases, the members invest, develop and operate most parts of the cohousing community on their own. In other cases, cohousing communities collaborate with a real estate company and other actors. In those cases, with more engagement from the members, the satisfaction levels are higher, according to cohousing researcher Jung Shin Choi.

These learnings can also be applied to coliving communities. In the coliving industry, different community approaches have been defined by founder of Art of Co, Gui Perdrix. At one end of the spectrum is the “do it yourself“ model, where light interventions are offered by the operators in terms of onboarding, events, etc. At the other end, there is the “systems model”. Operators implementing this model service the community by a large investment in onboarding and fostering self-organised community characteristics (Perdrix, 2019). Just as the top management in the “lead by design” approach, a coliving operator using the “systems model” approach will design the framework for how the community members will “play the game” and exhibit self-organising behaviours.

Finally, what are examples of such coliving communities in the world today? K9-Coliving is one of the examples where a coliving space has incorporated a self-organising operational model through the means of large-scale investment into the onboarding of the community. Smena Station is yet another example of a coliving brand that is operationalising self-organisation as a model for its many communities around the globe by following the principles found in the Burning Man community, which is a 1 to 3 week-long participatory festival in the desert. Embassy Network in San Francisco is another example of a self-organised community that has scaled its operations to several locations where the residents are invited to experiment with governance structures and social endeavors for their members and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

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When and why build a self-organised community?

First, we are going to discuss when a self-organised operational model is a smart business decision, and when is it not.

One important parameter to take into consideration when answering this question is the length of residency; is your coliving model short- or long-stay? Another important parameter is the operator’s target demographic. Some business models will cater to individuals that value convenience and do not have a need, or even will, to participate in any type of community-building efforts. Self-organised coliving spaces need individuals who voluntarily want to contribute to the community. Not everyone has to do everything, but the consensus should be that individuals living in the community should participate in some capacity, even if it is just watering the plants. To summarise, long-stay coliving communities are often a better fit for a self-organised model since themembers are more likely to invest time into community- building efforts. Although, short-stay coliving spaces can also adopt some self-organising design features in their operations, for example some of the Burning Man principles.

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Social value

Regardless of the decision on the length of stay or user demographics, the operators need to ask why they should consider a self-organised operational model. To argue for self-organised communities, we turn to the definition of social sustainability. A sociallysustainable lifestyle prohibits systematic obstruction of the individual’s ability to practice meaningful activities, as well as not leaving the subject to impartiality, providing the ability to influence, living a life of health and wellbeing, along with granting individuals access to competence-enriching resources and activities (Broman, 2015).

Living in a self-organised community, the members have more power to influence their environment by design. As a result of the operational model - the need for responsibility and decision making - self-organised communities are prone to more collaborations, which is fundamental for sharing of resources, experiences and competencies between the members. Besides, some of the first decisions self-organised communities have to make are around values, identity and culture which tend to create a foundation of trust, safety and belonging. By performing these activities, along with onboarding new members to practice these abilities, the community also creates a foundation for high levels of wellbeing. According to members at K9-Coliving, this is what residents claim is very meaningful to their lives: the ability to feel trust, safety and belonging, in addition to the ability to influence each other through co-creation. Residents at K9-Coliving also mentioned they have lower levels of overall consumption due to a more meaningful social life when living in a self- organised community.

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Costs

So far, the argument suggests that self-organised communities increase the sense of community and social value for its residents, but how does this affect the costs of operations?

Cost is an important parameter for self-organisation in comparison with other models. When operating as a self-organised community, residents will perform many of the activities that a community manager would otherwise do, such as organising events, ordering supplies for the community, etc. Hence, the costs for managers will decrease. The cost of resident acquisition is yet another aspect of self- organised communities that is significantly lower as the residents are more likely to recruit their friends and refer individuals within their network. A self- organised community can also offload or completely render the role of sales teams unnecessary in cases where the community members will take care of this activity. Another example of cost advantages is the lower degree of wear and tear of the physical space and the furniture. The residents feel ownership for the community and the physical space, thus showing commitment to taking care of it. Finally, members of self-organised communities also tend to stay longer on average which decreases the rate of turnover.

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Concerns

Although self-organised communities sound very promising, there are concerns from coliving operators when it comes to implementation. Self-organisation can prevent the operator from controlling the user experience to the same extent as with a top-down approach. Less control from the operator’s perspective will render the operation more complex and increase the levels of coordination to facilitate the differentiation between coliving spaces in the operator’s portfolio. This is a major concern if the organisation is built on a top-down approach. To cope with the added complexity and coordination, a turn towards “lead by design” can be argued as necessary for the organisation as well.

When discussing “lead by design”, efforts of scalability or economies of scale come into question. As an example, food retailer Whole Foods has used design- centric leadership and given all of their grocery stores the ability to operate autonomously to a large extent. The effectiveness of a highly autonomous
store to adapt to consumers’ local preferences is at the expense of efficiency gains of streamlining the operations and centralising the sourcing of supplies, ultimately challenging economies of scale. Although true for a grocery store chain, the question remains how this would affect a coliving operation’s ability to utilise economics of scale. In this case, there may be a trade-off in terms of short-term efficiency gains for the benefit of productivity, higher SROI and ROI, as well as a better product in the long term and customers’ willingness to pay.

In terms of investments into the onboarding process, as illustrated by Perdrix (2019), the ROI of the self- organised communities / ”systems model” approach is higher than other community models but involves a larger upfront investment in onboarding, which many operators are hesitant to make. Another concern is the level of commitment demanded from members in a self-organised community. The residents should operate the day-to-day operations, which places the responsibility on the members. Nevertheless, my hypothesis is that people are willing to do so for the benefit of community, and social value. In I/O psychology in the workplace this has been proven as something that workers were more willing to do once they were given the option (Harper, 2015).

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How to implement a self-organised community?

Finally, we have come to the most interesting and complex part of operationalising self-organised communities.

Relationship between the operator and the residents

‍The Brazilian conglomerate Semco, and its leader Ricardo Semler, applied a design-centric leadership approach that captivated global imagination with statements like “At Semco, we trust people to do what’s right. That’s why our employees set their own salaries.” (Sinsey, 2016). Indeed, the workers were given the option to set their salaries, but that’s not the whole story. HR teams were providing information on market rates for similar positions outside the company. The employees were also given courses on how to read the company’s financial statements and all information in the company was accessible to everyone. Additionally, the teams were able to set their own targets and benchmark their performance against other teams within the company. “In that context, setting their salaries does make a lot more sense, doesn’t it?” (Sisney 2016).

Semler had designed a framework so that employees could be trusted to manage their salaries, but how can you design such a framework? According to organisation design expert Lex Sisney, the most important part of designing such a framework is the organisation’s ownership and stewarding of the values, strategy, culture and structures of the organisation. When applied to the self-organised coliving community, a framework should be designed by the operator to include the same core principles. Additionally, the focus of the operator’s top management is to listen to feedback from the communities and the facilitators to monitor performance. If adjustments are necessary, the operator should rely on influence and communication, instead of control and command. With the right design, transparency and reinforcement system, the communities will have tremendous authority to build their own communities (Sisney 2016).

Therefore, the relationship between the operator and the residents becomes less of a one-to-one relationship and more of one between the operator and the community. Instead of working solely with 15-30 residents in one location, the community facilitator would be working with many communities. Furthermore, the educational efforts, communication and influence are for the most part focused on the onboarding process, but are also offered to the community and its residents on a routine basis in order to incentivise and guide the community towards more complex and involved ways to become a self- organised entity.

Finally, the need for a reinforcement system is also vital for encouraging the right type of behaviours. For example, at K9-Coliving, the former operator Tech Farm regulated the financial support the community got access to according to how active the members were in the day-to-day operations. The operator also needs to be transparent in order to reinforce and incentivise ownership and authority for the community to build their own culture. Just as Semler entrusted the employees to set their own salary through transparency, education and reinforcements, coliving operators can apply a similar mindset.

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Onboarding

When the design of the organisation and community is set, the first round of recruitments is vital. A self- organised community needs individuals with diverse personalities, backgrounds and hobbies, but who also align on values, needs and the operator’s designed framework. The next step should be the onboarding process. When onboarding a new community into a self-organised model, it is vital to involve the residents in the design process. While it is very important that the community can set its values, structure and culture for the day-to-day operations, it needs to stay aligned with the operator’s designed framework. Therefore, a new community should use the existing structure, guidelines and values from the operator to create stability and gradually evolve as the community builds its own culture. For example, at K9-Coliving the residents moved into a space that wasn’t finished, and became part of physically, socially and culturally designing the space together with the operator.

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Scaling

Finally, when discussing scaling in terms of communities of more than 50 residents, the self- organisational aspects of the community become more complex than a volunteer-based community structure can be expected to handle. Cohousing design principles argue for 15-50 households in a community (Vestbro, 2012). I endorse these guidelines for self-organised coliving communities as well. When building coliving locations for more than 50 residents, and if the operator has the intention of managing self- organised communities, this should be translated into the built environment. Instead of defining one location as one community, I would suggest dividing these into communities of 50 people each. For example, a coliving location with 500 beds should therefore be divided into 10 self-organised communities with clear distinction between community boundaries.

Secondly, applying the same principles of dividing a single location into several communities, scaling to several locations would imply using the same structures, just to another location. Because of the adaptable nature of a self-organised community and added complexity in terms of coordination, a design-centric leadership model - such as the one implemented by Whole Foods - would be more aligned with operating a self-organised community. Particularly if these locations are in different parts of the world, the communities will likely be different from one another, thus adding another level of complexity to the operations. Hence, if the operator uses a design- centric leadership approach, the community facilitator would be better equipped to handle the differentiation between the communities given the higher levels of autonomy and ability to navigate through changing requirements in the environment.

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Conclusion

This article applies a design-centric leadership / ”lead by design” approach to implementing self-organising characteristics in a coliving community. By now, it should be clear that implementing a self-organised coliving community structure (e.g. a “systems model”) is not just about implementing a community model for the coliving space, but a fundamental principle that should align with the operator’s vision and the company’s organisational model as well. Therefore, a self-organised coliving community would fare much better with an operator that applies a design-centric leadership approach, as these two approaches are intrinsically aligned.