# Before we plant anything *A few questions to see if trust is already here * By [On The Hierarchy Of Clouds](https://paragraph.com/@othoc) · 2025-04-24 --- Yesterday we had our second ‘Rooftop Garden Exploration Meeting’ (Sexy name - actually just a ‘hey let’s meet on the rooftop on Wednesday’) We haven’t planted anything yet - nor do I think we will for awhile! ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/29461de73fb1fe5047226e36a8101125.jpg) This is where we convened - I didn’t take any photos during the meeting because I was a sweaty mess already worried about the conversation! If you’ve been following, I’m working with my neighbours to create a rooftop garden in our apartment building. It’s early. Two meetings in. The idea is still a work in progress. The people are kind (and a mix of life-timers, gringos). But like any new project; it’s still unclear how we make decisions together. We just had the second meeting. It felt slower. Not tense, just murky. A few people did most of the talking. One person wasn’t sure if they were meant to be involved. Another had done extra work and felt it wasn’t acknowledged. So I brought a page of questions I’ve been sketching across the last few weeks. Not a method. Not a fix. _Of course - here I am testing my thinking heh._ I hoped it would help us see how governance was already happening (or create it) - even if we hadn’t named it yet. **What happened when we used it** --------------------------------- We picked a few prompts to talk through (also because my Spanish isn’t the best): * **Who decides?** No one was sure. Some assumed I was leading. Others weren’t sure they had a role in making decisions. * **Do we share the same goal?** Some imagined a green rest space. Others wanted food. Some just wanted to meet people. * **Is it fair?** Two of my favourite neighbours had done most of the work (having made a small plan to create shade). One hadn’t been included in early planning (because they didn’t come before). * **Can we change our mind?** People wanted flexibility. One person said: _“I just need to know it’s okay to say no later.”_ Nothing was resolved. But the tone shifted. It became a group conversation. Not just parallel monologues. We didn’t get consensus. But we saw what mattered, and if we could trust each other. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/86946d1991a96276854e26bb33b2e515.png) **The questions I’m sitting with** ---------------------------------- I’ve written a lot about governance as story, care, entanglement and power. But lately, I’ve been trying to work out: * How do you start from trust? * How do you design governance that’s relational from the very beginning and not bolted on later? * How do we help people reflect before they decide. So decisions don’t fracture the group or default to control? * How do we create the sandbox to test all of this? And make the process adaptable? And how do we support different kinds of decisions. Whether someone is: * Starting something (a garden, a campaign, a new service) * Progressing something (revisiting purpose, changing direction) * Ending something (closing a programme or org) _…across strategy, operations, even moments of crisis?_ That’s what I’m trying to shape through this tool. It isn’t really a model - maybe just some basic questions or prompts. A check-in for whether governance is already holding or if it needs redesigning. I am not sure how it would it an institutional context; but I think you could still apply it. **\*Drum Roll\*… The Double-Ring Governance Wheel** --------------------------------------------------- It’s 11 prompts (at the moment… is that too many?): * **8 about real-time dynamics:** trust, voice, feedback, adaptability * **3 about the wider horizon:** care, equity, long-term thinking Used together, they hope to surface whether your group is ready to make a shared decision; or whether something needs tending first. You can run through it in 20 minutes. Or sit with it over weeks. It doesn’t give you a “go.” Or a plan… It helps you ask: _are we ready to go?_ ### **What it helps reveal (the good stuff!)** * **Where decisions are already being made, informally** * **Where expectations are unspoken or misaligned** * **Whether the group has enough relational trust to carry a shared decision forward** * **Whether power and care are in conversation or pulling apart** It’s not perfect. But it’s something that right now seems useful; in a rooftop garden, and hopefully in new / other spaces too. ### **The tensions we (I) keep running into** The tool also helps surface and educate around recurring governance trade-offs: * Speed vs inclusion * Clarity vs creativity * Stability vs adaptability * Participation vs purpose * Control vs care You don’t need to solve them. But we really need to start to name them. Most governance breakdowns don’t come from bad ideas. They come from invisible trade-offs that get decided by default. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/cffc4f76de6a3fb132f289616ddaacee.png) **Want to (maybe) try it with me?** ----------------------------------- I’m (slowly) drafting a simple workbook: * The 11 prompts * A method for group reflection and triangulation * Trade-off playbooks for tension-heavy decisions If you’re working in public services, local projects, digital transformation, care systems or collective impact. I’d love your help to test it. I really don’t think it is about getting it right. It’s about building the conditions for governance to begin with trust; not repair it later (and we have all been there before!) We haven’t planted anything yet. But the way we’re starting. That might be the real garden. Let’s decide together. — **Hit me up if you want to try the workbook, test the prompts, or share your governance experiments. This is very much a work in progress and I’d rather build it with you than finish it alone.** \- ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8a637b6c34012bc70757aad9bd93d8a1.jpg) We did make a collective decision to water this plants together though <3 Which are featured on the steps to the roof. --- *Originally published on [On The Hierarchy Of Clouds](https://paragraph.com/@othoc/before-we-plant-anything)*