Editing Structuring Teams (section)

=== Distributed leadership: Core and local leadership teams ===
In the snowflake model, decision-making responsibility is decentralized whenever possible. The core leadership team ensures the whole organization or campaign is coherent and effectively moving in the same direction towards Page 52 | Organizing: People, Power, Change long-term goals. Distributed leadership teams ensure the organization or campaign is flexible, effectively delivering on short-term objectives. Everyone is responsible for contributing to strategizing, ongoing learning, and identifying and growing new leaders and resources. The core leadership team devises strategy, while distributed leadership teams test that strategy on the ground. They adapt it locally and provide feedback to improve organization- or campaign-wide strategy.

<div style="background-color:#eee; padding:1em; border:1px solid #ccc;"> Some organizers see team structures as hierarchical and prefer not to establish formal structures in an effort to avoid hierarchies. However, hierarchy develops regardless of whether you create it intentionally or not. Oppression and privilege, pre-existing social relationships, and some people having louder voices and others feeling too shy to speak up all lead to hierarchy within our teams. By intentionally structuring leadership teams, we can create hierarchies that are more effective and equitable, and then change them if they aren’t working. See [http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm Jo Freeman’s work list in ‘Further Reading’ for more on this topic]. </div>