Hello
I am forwarding this bit of dialogue because quite frankly I dont know how
to precis the part which may interest you most; indeed I would hope that
different members would see different ways in to how this challenges many
of our deepest held expertises. Good!
chris macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
--------------
I am hugely fascinated by the following topic and Dee Hock's viewpoint
(anyone know him here?). If anyone wants to make an ongoing thread of it
-over and beyond any group thread - please tell me
The particular section which gets me shouting hooray, hooray is: "If we
were to set out to design an efficient system for the methodical
destruction of community, we could do no better than our present efforts
to monetize all value and reduce life to the tyranny of measurement.
Community is more than a mega-balance sheet with the value summed on a
bottom line. Money, markets, and measurement have their place. They are
important tools indeed. We should honor and use them. But they are far
short of the deification their apostles demand of us, and before which we
too readily sink to our knees. Only fools worship their tools. There can
be no society without community. In fact, there can be no life without it.
All life, all of nature, all earthly systems, are based on closed cycles
of receiving and giving, save only that gift of energy which comes from
the sun. There can be no life whatever without balanced cycles of giving
and receiving. Nonmonetary exchange of value implies an essential
difference between receiving and getting. We receive a gift. We take
possession. It is a mistake to confuse buying and selling with giving and
receiving. It is a mistake to confuse money with value. It is a mistake to
believe that all value can be measured. And it is a colossal mistake to
attempt to monetize all value."
Now I agree 500 per cent with this except I want to reverse one logic. It
seems to me that measurement is such a pervasive thing in large companies
that the only way to interact it is (fighting fire with fire) to present a
missing measurement system but one where non-monetary value exchange is
included and where sustained community health is what its designed for
navigating. Only by delivering this missing measurement system to
corporate boardrooms, can we get it to be treated with the same pervasive
attention across companies as the old measurement systems they currently
operate round. (In fact once a boardroom treats our measurement system
with the same seriousness as say shareholder value analyis then the fun
begins in terms of how the 2 systems interact to hopefully produce higher
level intelligence in boardrooms, and other spaces where the biggest
investment decisions are made, including nonprofits like world bank or
whoever you feel makes big public decisions but with a coomunity
accounatble measurement system)
A worldwide mini-network of us are several months into writing a book on
this missing measurement system (which is also a common language in system
theory sense); we want to open source it by which I mean we are looking
for local chapters both by geography or by application context. If you'd
like an individual powerpoint attachment or want other futrther detains
please mail me
sincerely
chris macrae
wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
ps I am also collecting a list of bookmarks to people who "get this".
Examples range from http://www.winwinworld.net/book/chapter_1.htm to the
book Profit Beyond Measure by Johnson and Broms. I need help, particularly
if we haven't dialogued before and you already have a bookmark viewpoint
of your own on this subject. thanks
Community Values
by Dee Hock
One concept that I have puzzled over is an ancient, fundamental idea, the
idea of community. The essence of community, its very heart and soul, is
the nonmonetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care
for others, and for the good of the place. Community is composed of that
which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no
recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try.
Since they can't be measured, they can't be denominated in dollars, or
barrels of oil, or bushels of corn - such things as respect, tolerance,
love, trust, beautythe supply of which is unbounded and unlimited. The
nonmonetary exchange of value does not arise solely from altruistic
motives. It arises from deep, intuitive, often subconscious understanding
that self-interest is inseparably connected with community interest; that
individual good is inseparable from the good of the whole; that in some
way, often beyond our understanding, all things are, at one and the same
time, independent, interdependent, and intradependent - that the singular
"one" is simultaneously the plural "one."
In a true community, unity of the singular "one" and the plural "one"
extends beyond people and things. It applies as well to beliefs, purpose,
and principles. Some we hold in common with all others in the community.
Others we may hold in common with only some members of the community.
Still others we may hold alone. In a true community, the values others
hold that we do not share we nonetheless respect and tolerate, either
because we realize that our beliefs will require respect and tolerance in
return, or because we know those who hold different beliefs well enough to
understand and respect the common humanity that underlies all difference.
Without an abundance of nonmaterial values and an equal abundance of
nonmonetary exchange of material value, no true community ever existed or
ever will. Community is not about profit. It is about benefit. We confuse
them at our peril. When we attempt to monetize all value, we methodically
disconnect people and destroy community.
The nonmonetary exchange of value is the most effective, constructive
system ever devised. Evolution and nature have been perfecting it for
thousands of millennia. It requires no currency, contracts, government,
laws, courts, police, economists, lawyers, accountants. It does not
require anointed or certified experts at all. It requires only ordinary,
caring people.
True community requires proximity; continual, direct contact and
interaction between the people, place, and things of which it is composed.
Throughout history, the fundamental building block, the quintessential
community, has always been the family. It is there that the greatest
nonmonetary exchange of value takes place. It is there that the most
powerful nonmaterial values are created and exchanged. It is from that
community, for better or worse, that all others are formed. The
nonmonetary exchange of value is the very heart and soul of community, and
community is the inescapable, essential element of civil society.
If we were to set out to design an efficient system for the methodical
destruction of community, we could do no better than our present efforts
to monetize all value and reduce life to the tyranny of measurement.
Community is more than a mega-balance sheet with the value summed on a
bottom line. Money, markets, and measurement have their place. They are
important tools indeed. We should honor and use them. But they are far
short of the deification their apostles demand of us, and before which we
too readily sink to our knees. Only fools worship their tools.
Only fools worship their tools.
There can be no society without community. In fact, there can be no life
without it. All life, all of nature, all earthly systems, are based on
closed cycles of receiving and giving, save only that gift of energy which
comes from the sun. There can be no life whatever without balanced cycles
of giving and receiving.
Nonmonetary exchange of value implies an essential difference between
receiving and getting. We receive a gift. We take possession. It is a
mistake to confuse buying and selling with giving and receiving. It is a
mistake to confuse money with value. It is a mistake to believe that all
value can be measured. And it is a colossal mistake to attempt to monetize
all value.
When we make that attempt, we methodically replace the most effective
system of exchanging value for the least effective. Because we cannot
mathematically measure the nonmonetary, voluntary exchange of value, we
cannot prove to our rational mind the efficiency of the whole or the
parts. Nor can we engineer or control that which we cannot measure.
Nonmonetary exchange of value frustrates our craving for perfect
predictability and the control that it always promises but can never
deliver.
When we monetize value, we have a means of measurement, however
misleading, that allows us to calculate the relative efficiency of each
part of the system. It allows us to engineer mechanisms to "solve"
problems that our measurements have revealed. In a strange way, we measure
our problems into existence, then try to engineer them away. It doesn't
occur to us that destroying an extremely effective system whose values we
can't calculate in order to calculate the supposed efficiency of an
ineffective system is fundamentally flawed. It doesn't occur to us that
attempting to engineer a society and institutional structures based on
mathematical measurement may be equally flawed. As the popular dictum
says, "What gets measured is what gets done." Perhaps that's precisely the
problem.
Giving and receiving can't be measured in any meaningful sense. A gift
with expectation is no gift at all. It is a bargain. In a nonmonetary
exchange of value, giving and receiving is not a transaction. It is an
offering and an acceptance. In nature, when a closed cycle of receiving
and giving is out of balance, death and destruction soon arise. It is the
same in society.
When money's rant is on, we come to believe that life is a right that
comes bearing a right, which is the right of getting and having. Life is
not a right. Life is a gift, bearing a gift, which is the art of giving.
And community is the place where we can give our gifts and receive the
gifts of others.
Life is a gift, bearing a gift, which is the art of giving.
When our individual and collective consciousness becomes receptive to new
concepts of organization which that way of thinking implies, society and
its institutions may yet come into harmony with the richness and abundance
of the human spirit, and the earth of which it is an inseparable part.
That is the voice that sings to us now, and the song is beginning to be
heard throughout the land.
Copyright (c) 1999 by Dee Hock
----
The above text is quoted from:
Dee Hock's Birth of the Chaortic Age, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.,
San Francisco, 1999
You can buy his book easily in bookstores or on the net. He is affiliated
with a very interesting group of humans at:
--"chris macrae" <wcbn007@easynet.co.uk>
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