TO CREATE A LIVING HUMAN ORGANIZATION

A PROCESS TO FOLLOW WHEN MAINTAINING AN ORGANIZATION THAT WILL BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN ITS LIFE FOR DECADES AND CENTURIES

CONTEXT: An organization where human stability, pleasantness, and day-to-day effectiveness -- and above all, a humane existence -- all matter.

INPUT: Daily, visualize a work environment, with behavior, relationships, actions, and rewards, which work and make sense, and nourish you. You are more alive at the end of the day, when you get home, than when you went to work.

OUTPUT: This process allows you and your colleagues to build, in your minds, and in actuality, a nearly complete picture of an organization which stays alive and which perpetuates itself.

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Start by making your mind a blank. Make no initial assumptions about the place, the people, or the way it works. Now, one by one, carefully and slowly, imagine the following features of the organization, growing in your mind. Do it individually, and do it collectively. Visualize each step carefully, and fully, before you go on to the next.

1. A PLEASANT PLACE.

The organization is perpetually housed in a place that feels like home. It has rooms filled with light, gardens, rooms where light reflects off the walls and window sills, and where it is inspiring to see the face of another person.

2. EACH PERSON IS A UNIQUE INDIVIDUAL.

A "normal" corporation is built according to a model, and by definition, people are replaceable, to fill slots in the model. But that is not true. In a real organization, each person is irreplaceable. The organization sways and changes according to the people who are the organization. It cannot, therefore, follow a model.

3. THE ORGANIZATION IS DEFINED BY CERTAIN KEY PROCESSES.

Instead, the organization, and the stability of its existence for five hundred years, is maintained by adherence to the stability of certain processes, never of roles or elements or slots.

INDIVIDUAL PROCESSES FOLLOW, IN ORDER

  • There is a push-down process through which the organization maintains goals and tasks in order of importance. This is reevaluated every month, and reassessed.

  • Members of the organization cook lunch for the group, in turn.

  • Payment of salaries occurs monthly on the last day of the month.

  • There is no such thing as "hiring." Rather, people come into the organization as apprentices, helpers, perhaps do a small job, perhaps work for nothing as apprentices, and then grow gradually into part time or full time positions, as their capacity for responsibility, and their place in the functional processes, becomes clear.

  • A person becomes a member of the family, by a mutual accommodation, which makes the organization and the individual happy. The decision is based on the person's happiness in that place and in the firm.

  • There is a process on going in the organization, through which certain individuals have the work of continuously interpreting the meaning of the work, of the organization, and its goals and feeling philosophy, to all members, old and new, so that there is an ever-present understanding by all members of the true meaning of the task.

  • This process continuously reinterprets the nature and purpose of the organization as it evolves.