Humans were not designed to work alone. Cooperation is a natural aspect of our humanity. Research comparing children with chimpanzees reveals that children strongly prefer to work together to obtain food, whereas chimpanzees show no such preference.
At scale, humanity’s collaborative instinct is even more powerful. When Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in 2014, three million volunteers around the world joined a crowdsourced effort to search satellite imagery, motivated purely by shared purpose and the possibility of helping. Human beings are actively inclined to collaborate.
When people align around a common goal, cooperation flourishes, knowledge compounds, and everyone benefits. Just look at Wikipedia – and the 36 million answers that people have voluntarily contributed to questions on Stack Overflow.
Collaboration is one of humanity’s great strengths. So why does it feel so hard to accomplish at scale within commons-building movements, where it’s such an obviously critical ingredient?
Nature knows
In nature, nothing works in isolation. Waste from one organism becomes fuel for another. Fungi coordinate nutrient exchange across entire forests. Microbes, plants, animals, and ecosystems co-evolve through constant feedback and interdependence. Nature is productive, resilient, and adaptive because every part operates in its own niche while remaining connected to a wider whole.
If we want our human systems to be effective at dealing with complex, interconnected challenges — like inequality, or ecological collapse — we need to operate in the same way: as autonomous, specialised entities that are deeply connected.
We all know this really, but we struggle to incorporate and act on this knowledge because doing so requires collaboration at a higher level for which we lack effective coordination systems. Plus, the competitive, profit-driven mindset which is foisted upon us by society does not value or reward work at this level, which diminishes personal efforts and undermines and underfunds effective collaboration at scale.
Why wheel reinvention becomes the norm
If you’ve spent time trying to build something meaningful in the collaborative or regenerative space, this probably feels familiar.
You have an idea about something you know should exist – and your first instinct is “I’ll build it!” Today, with AI tools and open-source libraries, it’s easier than ever to start building. What’s much harder, and all too often overlooked, is the unglamorous work that should come before that:
- researching who else is already working on similar or overlapping ideas,
- discovering related projects outside your networks,
- building meaningful relationships with people you don’t know,
- and figuring out how to collaborate with existing efforts.
Part of the problem is structural. Search engines are optimised to surface large brands with thousands of backlinks, not small, obscure, well-meaning projects quietly doing important work. Valuable initiatives disappear into the long tail, rendering them practically invisible unless you already know where to look, or spend time digging really deep.
Even when you do find people and reach out, there’s another common pattern which leads you straight back to the “forget collaboration, I’m going to build this thing” mindset – silence.
The lack of response from, and connection with, other well-intentioned projects doesn’t happen because people don’t care — but because most people are already overwhelmed, heads down, under-resourced, and struggling just to keep their project alive. Replying thoughtfully, let alone coordinating meaningfully, is an unaffordable luxury. The result leads to the inevitable:
- duplication of effort,
- parallel solutions to the same problems,
- wasted time and energy,
- and a growing sense that “we’re all reinventing the wheel”.
Not because we want to — but because it’s so hard to find ways to collaborate effectively at scale.
The gap between potential and reality
We know humans are capable of extraordinary collaboration, even at scale. We’ve seen it happen when the coordination works. But across the myriad of web3 and commons buildings communities and networks and local groups the coordination systems don’t exist, meaning:
- groups are hard to discover,
- visibility is fragmented across platforms,
- and attempts at collaboration get thwarted by higher priorities.
We’re all trying to solve systemic problems with isolated teams, which simply doesn’t work.
Introducing the Collaborative Groups Protocol
The Collaborative Groups Protocol (CGP), which we launched in January 2026, is one small attempt to respond to this gap. It doesn’t try to replace existing projects, platforms, or movements. Instead, it offers a minimal, practical framework — grounded in decades of systems thinking, cybernetics, cooperative practice, thoughts on making groups work, and lived organising experience — for how groups can remain effective and coordinate as part of something larger.
At its core, CGP is about two things: helping small groups stay viable, human, and sustainable over time, and making it easier for those groups to discover, connect, and collaborate with others as part of a larger whole. It starts from a simple premise: if we want collaboration at scale, we need to design for it, not hope it emerges by accident and that means explicitly defining:
- clear roles and responsibilities,
- explicit coordination and stewardship,
- time and space for sensing and strategy,
- shared purpose and lightweight policies,
- and infrastructure that supports visibility and connection without centralisation
CGP is not a silver bullet. It’s a recommended pattern language. You can ignore parts of it — but if you do, you should expect predictable problems to show up.
Collaborative Groups Protocol overview
The Protocol combines the Viable Systems Model of cybernetics, the long-standing cooperative principles, Lessons from the DisCO Manifesto, and decades of real-world collaborative experience into a minimal set of repeatable patterns that groups can adapt to their own context. It’s designed to help groups ensure they have all the core ingredients to be effective as a group and within a wider ecosystem of connected groups, as defined by the VSM:
System 1 — Group Members & Roles The people doing the work. System 1 is where value is created, care is given, and commitments are fulfilled. Members have autonomy over how they work, within agreed boundaries.
- Member List — A clear record of who is in the group
- Group Coordinator — Schedules check-ins and negotiates commitments from members
- Group Networker — Senses opportunities, threats, and connects with other groups
System 2 — Coordination The processes and tools that reduce friction between members. System 2 dampens oscillations, resolves scheduling conflicts, and ensures work fits together rather than colliding.
- Meeting Schedule — Regular coordination meetings with prepared agendas
- Task Board — Shared board for tracking commitments, progress, and blockers
- Shared Files — A central home for documents so everyone can find things
- Internal Chat — A messaging system for member communication
- Meeting Room — A dedicated online space for group and external meetings
System 3 — Stewardship & Internal Regulation Ensures the group’s resources — time, energy, attention, money — are being used in service of its purpose. System 3 intervenes when coordination alone is not enough.
- Contributions Tracking — Track all work including care work for visibility and fairness
- How Members Join — Staged process: introduction, shadowing, trial, commitment
- How Members Leave — Clear process for members to exit with appropriate notice
- How Commitment Failures are Addressed — Escalating steps: conversation, discussion, parting ways
- How Tensions are Resolved — Process to surface conflicts between operations and strategy
System 3* — Reviews, Surveys & Audits A direct feedback channel that checks whether reality matches the picture System 3 receives. System 3* bypasses normal reporting and provides grounded insight.
- Audits & Reviews — Any member can trigger investigations that bypass normal reporting
- Algedonic Channel — Emergency alert system for urgent threats or opportunities
System 4 — Strategy, Sensing & External Connection The future-facing function. System 4 scans the environment, connects with other groups, identifies opportunities and threats, and ensures the group evolves.
- Strategic Plan — SMART objectives translating purpose into trackable goals
- External Scanning Time — At least 50% of Networker’s time for strategic work
- Blog / Project Updates — Public site for sharing progress with others
- RSS Feed — Machine-readable feed so others can subscribe to updates
- Murmurations Profile — Public profile making groups discoverable
System 5 — Purpose, Principles & Policies The constitutional layer. System 5 defines why the group exists, what it stands for, and the boundaries within which decisions are made.
- Shared Purpose — Concise statement of why the group exists
- Decision Making — Agreed method for group decisions (e.g., one-member-one-vote)
- Policy Changes — Defines how changes to policy can be made
The Collaborative Groups Protocol website provides more details to help you learn about the protocol and apply it to new or existing groups. You can download the full CGP Handbook for free, assess your existing group to receive a tailored PDF assessment with recommendations, or set up a new group by following step-by-step instructions to generate a Group Handbook PDF for your group members. The site also automates the creation of a Murmurations profile — which you can host yourself or via the CGP platform — helping your group become visible, discoverable, and connected as part of a wider collaborative ecosystem.
Toward a more connected whole
Humanity doesn’t lack the desire to cooperate. We lack the structures, tools, and shared frameworks that enable effective coordination at a level above the group, project, or community, to enable cooperation to scale. If we can design systems which enable us to operate more like nature — as specialised, autonomous, but interconnected species that are cognisant of their place in a wider ecosystem — then we can all be more effective, both individually, within our groups and projects, but most importantly together as a larger movement.
That’s the intention behind the Collaborative Groups Protocol. Because learning how to collaborate better, together, is one of the most important challenges of our time.
Feel free to share any feedback via The Open Co-op Loomio.