@PeterC said:
It all works fine until that person eventually gets worn out/fed up/ousted in a coup/gets sick/moves elsewhere, and there is nobody who knows how anything works to continue.
I have a theory that there is a cycle of three phases that most strata schemes move through over a number of years. They are: chaotic … democratic … autocratic … then back to chaotic and so on.
Assuming it starts when a new strata scheme is born, nobody knows what to do, who to trust or what they want. Chaos reigns because no one else knows how.
Eventually someone comes along and calms everyone down and we move from the chaotic to the democratic.
Then the people who have done all the hard work start feeling threatened by newcomers who have no idea how much the incumbents have gone through to get to this state of relative calm. The newcomers try to shake things up and the old hands start to batten down the hatches. Thus we move from the democratic to the autocratic.
This change is gradual but after a few years, those who are excluded from the decision making get agitated and then some disaster happens or a mistake is made and it’s on for one an old. The old guard are driven out and the new guys take over.
However, having been denied access to the levers of power, the new people flounder and we are back to the chaotic, and so the cycle continues.
Of course, not all strata schemes are like this. Some never move from the phase they are in, be it chaotic, democratic or autocratic. Some get to democratic and stay there.
How do you sustain that? I believe a smart EC will encourage non-EC members to participate (rather than shutting them out) and will have an idea of who could take over if their beloved leader fell off the twig, lost interest or sold up and moved away.
Strata schemes are all about human nature and politics, petty or otherwise. As our chairman is fond of saying, you can have too much democracy.