Let's talk about organizing, structure, and a survival myth.... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about organizing, structure, and survival myth.

We got this question and it's an interesting one and it's really relevant to those who are community networking and it deals with something that often has to be trained out of the veteran community.

Okay, here's the question. Belle, after everything that's gone on with the disasters here in Washington State, the group I've been pushing for years to form a community network is finally ready and having serious meetings and discussions about it so we can be ready for the next disaster and the vets want to be ready in case of an actual collapse of society. We've already run into our first big issue when it comes to how to structure it. I'm advocating for the kind of structure you have promoted here for years where it's very fluid and leadership is based on the particular situation and who is most experienced in that situation. But the people who were in the Army want a more rigid hierarchy and they say it's more efficient. I have a list of reasons why I think the more fluid reason is better, but I thought I'd go to the source and ask the people who have been running a functioning network for 10 years and as I've recently discovered are mostly vets. So why did you not use the structure most of you are more comfortable with?

Military structure is perfect for following orders to achieve well-defined short-term objectives. The order is, "Sergeant, take that hill." Not, "Sergeant, take that hill, build a rapport with the locals, establish a working relationship with the village on the next hill and take care of anything else that comes up." Some of the vets watching this are going to say, "Well, that kind of happened in conflicts X and Y." First, yes, it did. Did we win any of those conflicts? Second, when the unit ran into something outside the scope of its primary mission, the task was usually handed off to a different unit. That's why the military has MOS's.

If you adopt that structure, by definition, you aren't flexible. You won't be good at disaster relief this month, helping DV shelters next month, then helping a union the next, and then helping mitigate a pandemic the next. Building a more fluid structure allows the expert in the subject to take the lead as needs switch or allows your organization to quickly just act as an arm for another more experienced person in an entirely different organization. The stuff we did for the union in Alabama was 100% listening to the things they said they needed and trusting they knew their needs better than we did. Then we just applied the skills we had that we could leverage.

Allowing that fluid structure keeps the network active. It creates longevity because the network stays busy. If you organize around a single mission, let's say disaster relief, and you don't have any disasters for a while, your group will fade away, then here's the big one that will help you reach the vets in your circle.

Since they're the ones planning for the collapse of society, in every societal collapse scenario, the military is gone. If the military with nearly unlimited funding, resources, training, and personnel is gone in this scenario, what good is it modeling your group after something that failed? If the real military didn't succeed, the team version won't either. Be flexible. Do more good. Stay around longer.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.