Learn the Protocol
Understand how the Collaborative Groups Protocol helps groups work effectively together and as part of larger networks.
There is a growing consensus that enabling groups, and networks of groups, to work together, is essential to delivering exponential impact in collaboration and solving humanity's multiple systemic issues.
And yet, while collaboration is everywhere, effective collaboration remains surprisingly rare.
Groups form with energy and shared intent, but many struggle to sustain momentum, make decisions, care for their members, or connect their work to a wider movement.
And, even if groups are productive internally, all too often they operate in isolation — duplicating effort, missing opportunities, and failing to contribute to systemic change.
The Collaborative Groups Protocol (CGP) exists to address this gap.
It offers a practical framework for designing small groups that remain effective over time and for enabling those groups to coordinate as part of larger networks — without sacrificing autonomy, trust, or humanity.
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.
Adopting the protocol is entirely voluntary — but ignoring the patterns makes it almost inevitable that problems will arise and groups will not be as effective as they could be.
There is a growing consensus that enabling groups, and networks of groups, to work together, is essential to delivering exponential impact in collaboration and solving humanity's multiple systemic issues.
The Magical Number Seven, ideas about committees, decision making, teams and productivity all suggest that small groups are the most effective. John Hagel suggests that:
“Achieving the full potential of these small groups requires them to come together in creation spaces or movements, building networks that can help these small groups to connect more effectively with each other at larger and larger scale”.
This is the challenge which the Collaborative Groups Protocol aims to solve — by recognising there are multiple reasons why collaborative groups struggle both internally, and to operate effectively in wider networks — and providing guiding patterns to support more effective collaboration both within and between groups.
Groups — and networks of groups — are systems, but are rarely consciously designed as such. The CGP applies systems thinking in an attempt to define the patterns required for effective collaboration at scale.
A collaborative group is a living system. It takes in energy, information, and resources from its environment, transforms them into action, and produces outcomes that feed back into the world around it.
If any of these flows are poorly designed — if information doesn't circulate, if decisions pile up in the wrong place, if care work is ignored, or if the group cannot sense what's happening beyond itself — the system degrades.
The aim of the Collaborative Groups Protocol is not to make groups rigid or bureaucratic, but to give them just enough structure to stay alive and effective.
This means:
- clarifying who does what (without micromanaging how),
- ensuring decisions can be made and revisited,
- creating feedback loops so they can adapt to changing conditions,
- protecting time and attention for strategy and learning,
- and defining clear boundaries that everyone can rely on.
When these conditions are present, groups tend to become calmer, more resilient, and more productive — even under pressure.
System 1 — Group members and 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.
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.
System 3 — Stewardship and internal regulation
The function that 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 to keep the group viable.
System 3* — Reviews, surveys, and audits
A direct feedback channel that checks whether reality matches the picture System 3 receives. System 3* bypasses normal reporting and provides grounded insight into how things are actually going.
System 4 — Strategy, sensing, and external connection
The future-facing function. System 4 scans the environment, connects with other groups, identifies opportunities and threats, and ensures the group evolves rather than stagnates.
System 5 — Purpose, principles, policies, and identity
The constitutional layer. System 5 defines why the group exists, what it stands for, and the boundaries within which decisions are made. It provides coherence and continuity over time.
These systems are not hierarchical in the conventional sense. They form a dynamic, recursive whole, with continuous feedback between them.
Small groups are powerful — but systemic change does not happen in isolation.
To address complex social, ecological, and economic challenges, effective groups must be able to find each other, learn from each other, and coordinate without central control. They are viable on their own, but disconnected from a larger whole.
Why networks matter
Research on networked impact shows that the shift to transformative impact happens best in enlivening networks across systems. Networks allow groups to:
- share learning and avoid reinventing the wheel,
- discover collaborators, support and allies,
- coordinate action across geographies and domains,
- and respond collectively to emerging opportunities or threats.
The visibility problem
One of the biggest barriers to networked collaboration is that groups cannot see each other. Many groups exist only as private chats, shared documents, or informal social ties. Even when groups want to collaborate, they struggle to answer basic questions:
- Who else is working on related problems?
- What are they currently doing?
- How can we contact them?
- Where might collaboration be mutually beneficial?
Without visibility, coordination becomes accidental rather than intentional.
System 4 at the network level
From a cybernetic perspective, networks require System 4 functions. Someone must be responsible for:
- sensing what is happening outside the group and across the ecosystem,
- identifying overlaps and gaps,
- and making opportunities for coordination visible.
In loosely federated systems, this role is often played by Group Networkers connecting laterally with one another. But without shared infrastructure, this work does not scale.
This is the problem Murmurations was designed to solve — by providing an open protocol for publishing public, machine-readable profiles that can be discovered, indexed, and connected without relying on a central platform.
Murmurations is an Open Co-op project which provides a practical substrate for System 4 to scale beyond the group to networks — and networks of networks.
Download the Full Handbook
Get the complete CGP Handbook (PDF) with detailed guidance on implementing the protocol in your group.
Ready to apply this to your group?
Check if your existing group meets the protocol requirements, or set up a new group from scratch.