Let’s say an organization decides to do some action X. X could be anything, but for the sake of an example let’s say it’s a decision to fund something. Now everyone who observes this decision being made, could take one of the 3 perspectives:

1. Did this decision-making process happen according to the laws that govern the organization (it was lawful)?
2. Do I agree with this decision and what can I do about it?
3. How do we implement action X?

If you take the 1st perspective you will be asking questions like:

• Was due process followed when deciding this?
• Was due process followed when deciding how to implement this decision?
• Was decision implemented correctly?

If you take the 2nd perspective you will be asking questions like

• If I don’t agree with the decision, how do I stop it and make an organization do something else? Or how do I correct for what was done?
• If I agree with the decision, how can I support it (vote for it?)?

If you take the 3rd perspective you will be asking questions like:

• What concrete steps do we need to take to implement this?
• What are the technical details / considerations involved?
• Who should implement this and how?
• Is it feasible?

The first position is a position of the judge. The second position is a position of a legislator. The 3rd is a position of an executive / administrator. These three positions correspond to three branches of government that a lot of governments consist of. The main feature of this tripartite model is typically advertised to be separation of powers to prevent collusion. I argue that this is false. The main feature and benefit of this model is that it represents reality of how decision-making has always been working1. Regardless if we are talking about an individual human being, a community, a democratic government or a dictatorship - in all of these systems decisions go through iterations of these 3 perspectives being applied to them.

If an organization does not consciously use something similar to this tripartite model it simply means they are doing it unconsciously or haven’t mapped parts of their processes to this model. For example, let’s take a community that does not have any formal process for making decisions at all:

• At some point some member of a community will propose to others to do something (like throwing a party) - legislation
• At some point someone will request someone to do the tedious part of that work (like buying all the food) - execution;