# Executive
The third sub-system of the community governing system is the Executive. In Beer’s VSM this includes System 3, System 2 and System 3* (Figure 8.6). The purpose of the Executive is to engage and manage the sub-communities, playing the role of the lower brain and nervous system of the community. Its overall purpose is to maintain the operations of the system as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. The most important of these is System 2, because of the complex nature of maintaining the internal coherence and stability across sub-communities. The tasks of this part of the Executive cannot be encompassed by a centralised body and must of necessity be operationalised by both the government of the whole community and the governments of the sub-communities. This I have designated as the responsibility of a Community Collective, (Figure 8.6) which is a body consisting both of representatives of the sub- communities and representatives of the whole community and will be discussed in the next section.
System 3 itself, is a system meta to the governing systems of the sub-communities with the purpose of maintaining a whole community view of the activities of the sub- communities. As discussed in Chapter 5 and 6 it allocates to those subsystems the resources that are required to meet particular challenges from the external environment. This would include building and putting into action new organisations, in the same way as putting resources into building and putting into action new learning in any animal. My learning of music and piano playing, referred to in Chapter 6 is such an example, the creation of new understanding and new skill. The last part of the Executive responsibility is of audit, System 3*, to ensure that the picture presented to the Executive of each sub-community by that sub-community’s House of Representatives is an accurate one. These mechanisms with those of the Community Collective constitute the feedback loop between the whole community government and the sub-communities.
The structure of Beer’s Viable System model envisages a continuing discussion between the Executive and the House of Expertise informing each other of the state of viability of the community. Are the efforts of the citizens of the community, the inside and now (the current understanding in the Executive), aligned with the future evolution of its environment (the current understanding in the House of Expertise)? If change is necessary then agreed change, emanating from the House of Expertise’s learning and creativity, and the ongoing discussions between these two bodies, is proposed to the House of Representatives for their decision – are they in line with the culture and ethos of the community? These ongoing conversational feedback loops are illustrated in figure 8.4 by the curved black arrows. The House of Representatives is the decision-maker, it sits, as required by our understanding of control systems, meta-systemic to the ongoing Executive – House of Expertise discussion. The Representatives are therefore required 14 to be meta – that is outside, above – both the House of Expertise and the Executive. Understanding of these roles is vital for good government. At the larger scale I would propose that one citizen could not be a member of more than one of these three subsystems, House of representatives, House of Expertise, and Executive, but this may not be possible at the smaller scales, e.g a small village.
Given the complexity of governing tasks (it should be no surprise that it is complex) it does not seem unreasonable to require that any potential representative or executive appointment undergo professional development, as in any other profession that requires decision making in complex situations. This is an accepted normal process that applies in such professions as medicine, the law, architecture and others. If a person aspires to be a manager of any organisation then they require both the specialist knowledge of that organisation and knowledge of managing, both sociological, and cybernetic. The route to representative must be open to all, which will require some thought into how the necessary understanding, openness, and true representation can be achieved. Perhaps there should be a rule that a citizen could not be a community representative without having been a sub-community representative, and terms of office limited to prevent representatives becoming separated from their community; all being fractal requirements in line with the fractal systemic structure of governing, but allowing many to participate. Choice by sortition rather than election seems attractive, but if by election, certainly proportional representation is a must to ensure multiple perspectives and experience are present.