Hi Benjamin,
Seems you've just been rudely initiated to the real world.
There is Novell. There is Utopia. And a lot more organisations in between.
You'd want to check out those organisations who've at least survived half
a century and are still running. Some are multinationals; some are
smaller. You may wish to check out companies who've won the Baldrige Award
as a start. Or Fortune's recently listed most admired companies.
Possible that the reason these organisations are still around, or are
winning awards of excellence in quality, is they're doing something right
(to their own people, within their own organisational boundaries, to their
direct customers). And good to the community they operate in (like
espousing quality, excellence and service beyond the boundaries of their
business through scholarships, grants and other various forms of support
to the community in general).
Could be they're not as pristine as one would ideally want them. You'd
hear of botched right-sizings, environmental misdeameanors, various faux
pas, internal and external. But you'd find, as I occasionally do, they do
have going for them a lot of employee and community goodwill, trailing
their businesses and their philathrophies. Nothing's really just plain
black or white.
You've listed characteristics of the kind of organisation you'd like to
build. You may want to check your list against the characteristics of the
organisations you might initially find among Baldrige winners and "most
admired companies" or "best managed companies". You may even find that you
could, for a while, postpone your dream of building your own organisation.
Perhaps you may even join one in those lists, which hews closely to your
ideal and which more importantly shares your passion. Then you can help
push this organisation to its limits. And move on to another.
There's hope. And you're not alone.
Chuck Gesmundo in Minneapolis
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>