Welcome to the GMS page, where we will be sharing updates on the work we are doing, as well as offering reference material on Governance in a Shambhala context.
What is Governance ?
Governance is distinct from Government. If Government is the “What”, Governance is the “How”. At the core, Governance is made up of :
- How we make decisions
- Structure : How we structure an organization & How we coordinate together
- How we select people for roles (a special case of Decision-Making)
- How we resolve differences and conflict (because we are in the Human Realm)
We can think of Governance as the “meta” of Government : What are these decision-making processes, structures, and rules we have agreed to use ?
GMS Updates
Community Engagement Series on Governance (2021.01.15)
At present, the GMS is working with the PT Community Engagement Task Force to offer a series of community conversations about Governance in Shambhala. Governance is among the more difficult conversations we are having right now, and it is taking us some time to craft these activities skilfully. We hope to be able to start them in February.
Governance Models (2021.01.15)
As the name of this PT group implies, one of the things we have been working on is to come up with a few Governance Models to support a community conversation and exploration of what Shambhala Governance could look like going forward. While our mission is to encourage community conversation and insight on this subject, please be aware that any changes to Shambhala USA or Shambhala Canada Governance must be approved by the Sakyong.
We are presently working on a Comparison of the Governance Models as a guide and accompanying documentation to the Models themselves. We plan to share with the community the Models we have developed sometime after the Comparison document is completed.
Supporting Materials (2021.01.15)
We are putting the final touches on a number of documents summarizing the information we have gathered about Governance in Shambhala, past and present. We will be linking to them here as soon as each one is ready.