Inner Bosses

by Raven Glomus

One of the more famous books on cooperative businesses/horizontal structure is called No Bosses Here.  In a real sense, all commune businesses are cooperative businesses, so that should be true of them as well.  But once you start working collectively, particularly in settings with conscientious people, you will notice (and I think this is true of cooperative enterprises in general, but I have really seen it at work in communal settings), the folks who do the most work are driven by what I will call their inner bosses.  Rather than there being no bosses, there are no external bosses.  And some of those inner bosses can be pretty fierce.

Of course there are those who try to take advantage of the horizontal situation and try to do as little as possible.  Communities like Twin Oaks, Acorn, and East Wind have what they call “labor quotas” where everyone has to work a set number of hours a week.  But here at Glomus (and I’ve seen it in other places) everyone works as much as they want to–and most folks work pretty hard.  (I will write more about quota vs other ways of communal working in the future.)

Still, what I have seen is folks with some pretty harsh inner bosses.  They push themselves because they feel like they have to.  They don’t want to let other folks down. They don’t want to look bad.  They are sometimes very critical of themselves, feeling like they never do enough.

The question, of course, is how to achieve a balance.  How to keep yourself working and getting things done, without being really hard on yourself.  In many ways, the internal bosses aren’t that different from the external bosses.  There are laissez-faire bosses who tolerate lazy workers and there are bosses from hell that never let up.  And there are some fair, compassionate inner bosses that nevertheless motivate workers to get the jobs done–especially the jobs that really need to be done–and also help folks figure out which jobs are essential and which can be done whenever or not at all.

Unfortunately, unlike external bosses, where you can quit or they can be fired, inner bosses are much harder to get rid of.  I watch people in communal business that drive themselves and can’t figure out a way to get out from under their bosses.  Probably the most common difficult inner boss is called Guilt.  That’s a terrible boss who often seems to have a pretty solid, permanent position.

Another difficulty is that those who are able to get rid of their cruel inner bosses (usually after a lot of therapy) often swing to the other extreme.  Even communes that are very compassionate have trouble tolerating someone who isn’t willing to do much work (unless it’s very clear that the person is going through a particularly hard time or has an illness or disability).  Developing a fair but persuasive inner boss is a lifetime of work.

In the meantime, the communes are full of truly demanding bosses.  They are just internal.