Dear Organlearners,
Ben Compton <BCompton@dws.net> writes:
> Recently I've been involved with a number of friends in designing a new
> business. We're focusing on the "rules" that we should implement. The
> intent is to have rules that maximize the number of coherent and
> meaningful possibilities, rather than limit choi ces and preclude certain
> actions. Of course there must be some rules that preclude incoherent or
> meaningless possibilities; there should, in my mind, be very few such
> rules. (The point is that we need to maximize our choices for effective,
> survival-center ed action.)
Ben, your paragraph above concerns very much the essentiality
"quality-variety" - so much so that I can quote it as a short explanation
of this essentiality! (There are six other essentialities of creativity.
They become very important at the edge of chaos when a new order has to
emerge. If one or more of them are impaired, the emergence will be
impaired or even prevented.)
> One of the rules I've proposed is that there be a method of creating what
> I would call a "corporate insurrection." A way for people within an
> organization to rise up, rebel, and protest the behavior of the
> organization.
I have much sympathy for what you have articulated here. However, there is
something negative in the way which you have articulated it. This
negativity can easily become the key to your downfall as an organization.
You have to articulate it more positively. Let us try to do it.
Why do you want to "rise up, rebel, and protest the behavior of the
organization"? I can think of many reasons. The one most dear to me is
that the organization has been disempowering the creativity of the
rebellious member. The member discovered through personal mastery
something to be very important to empower his/her own creativity. But the
rest of the organization denies its importance in words and deeds.
How do we then resolve this conflict? To try and disqualify or even undo
the personal mastery of the rebellious member, is hopeless -
self-organistion is a fact of life. Thus the other possibility has to be
admitted - Peter Senge's insight - the organisation must become a Learning
Organisation (LO). If the LO does not have an explicit, sound theory and
practise for organisational learning, it has to make implicitly use of
dialogue to promote organisational learning - according to Senge. I see
dialogue as one of a number "implicite templates" which promote
organisational learning. Three other such templates are "solving a common
problem", "investigating a common exemplar" and "teaming up to contest a
common game". In other words, opportunities for "Insurrection & Protest"
will arise in dialogue, problem-solving, exemplar-tracing and
game-teaming.
We have to understand that for a member of an organisation "to rise up,
rebel, and protest the behavior of the organization", this member is
actually driving the organisation further from equibrium. The behaviour of
the individual will be to produce entropy which is then first manifested
as chaos of becoming. I call such a behaviour revolutionary creativity.
Revolutionary creativity is important for rejuvenation.
However, many revolutionaries make a very common error - they believe like
Trotsky in the eternal revolution - a succession of revolutions with
nothing in between. No, every revolutionary phase has to be followed up by
an evolutionary phase. In the evolutionary phase the new bare emergent is
allowed to grow to full maturity - to become fully embodied with free
energy. This constitues the second manifestation of entropy production as
order of being. Only then will the new order be able to give birth to an
even newer order through another successful revolutionary phase.
Evolutionary growth happens close to equibrium when some organisations in
the new order grow by feeding on lesser organisations, either those of the
new order whith insufficient qualities or those of the previous order with
a lack in qualities. It is then when a member of the organistion should
have the opportunity not to "rise up, rebel, and protest the behavior of
the organization", but to "stoop down, honour and protect the behaviour of
the organization".
> And I should say, before closing, that the system we're designing is a
> very open system. Some might call it a "leaderless system." It is not
> democratic per se, although it could become democratic. We hope that it
> will exist as a bunch of rules that can be changed, at any time, by the
> people within the system. In other words, there are no sacred cows in the
> system except that the system itself is a sacred cow that we do not want
> to destroy.
This paragraph can easily serve as a short explanation of another of the
seven essentialities, namely "open-paradigm".
I wonder why you have called a "leaderless system". Let me define the
following four terms, slightly altered from their conventional
meaning:
monarchy - one member of the organisation, often with the superior
creativity, act as leader while the other members follow
his/her creative examples.
oligarchy - a few members of the organisation, often with the
superior creativity, act as leaders while the other members
follow their creative examples.
polygarchy - a majority of members of the organisation, many with
superior creativity, act as leaders while the minority of
members follow their creative examples.
panarchy - all the members of the organisation, most of them with
superior creativity, act as leaders.
Is a panarchy really possible? Is the ideal of a panarchy not the recipe
for anarchy? Ray Harrel Evans often used on this forum the orchestra as an
example of what I now am terming as a "panarchy". Each member of the
orchestra has to be fully creative so that not even one dissonant sound is
made. Yet they have to organise their creativity towards one common goal -
to perform the symphony more harmoniously than ever before! If symphonic
orchestras show us that a panarchy is possible, why do we fear anarchy?
My wishfull thinking is that you had a "panarchy" in mind with your
"leaderless system"! My further wishfull thinking is to become once in my
life, even for a brief interval of time, a member of a "panarchic"
organisation. May you have all success with your new venture - I hope it
will not be wishfull thinking.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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