Chaordic Principles
Characteristics of Chaordic Organizations (from here)
Chaordic Notes
from: http://permacultureinstitute.pbworks.com/w/page/15951457/chaordic1 (see also 2 and 3. This website is teaching chaordic principles for application to rapidly spread the teaching and use of permaculture. They have a lot of material about chaordic.)
Brought in to save the failing Bank Americard system, he envisioned, years before electronic funds transfers, an organization that "could guarantee, transport, and settle transactions twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, around the globe." That was the function of a bank, but far beyond the power of any single bank. "It would require a transcendental organization linking together in wholly new ways an unimaginable complex of institutions and individuals."
"At the time did I think it could be done? No! Did I think the Bank of America would give up ownership? No! Did I think banks worldwide could be brought together in such an effort? No! Did I think laws would allow it? No!
But did I believe it was what ought to be? Ah, that was another question indeed!"
The purpose is "what ought to be."
...
Hock says it's the hard part of any chaordic alliance, getting the purpose right, making it consistent with real need, with the laws of the planet, with the mysteries of life.
Purpose is derived from morality, from vision, from collective wisdom, not from individual ambition or greed. That, says Hock, is where the whole industrial system, including both corporations and governments, has gotten so far off track.
"Life is not about controlling. It's not about getting. It's not about having. It's not about knowing. It's not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced."
...
"Money, markets, and measurement have their place. They are important tools indeed. We should honor them 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."
...
The founders then drafted a Constitution that departed dramatically from the oppressive pyramids the colonists had fled and learned to despise. Indeed, without ever quite saying so, they created the basis for a nobody-incharge society -- quite literally a first-time experiment in uncentralized governance. The “separation of powers” with its “checks and balances” was explicitly designed to deny any part of our Federal government the chance to make too much yardage at the expense of the other parts – and of the people it was supposed to serve. The Federal system itself was designed to create a continuous tussle between the states and the central government. The tussle was intended to be permanent; no part of the Federal system was supposed to “win it all,” not ever.
It is not just the durability of their extraordinary invention that testifies to the founders’ wisdom.
It is clear from the record they left that they – at least, the deepest thinkers among them, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson -- knew just how unprecedented was the system they were launching.
The people were really supposed to be sovereign. Jefferson still believed this, even after his eight years of trying, as President (1801-09), to be their “servant leader.”
“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1820, “and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.”
...
The Need for Standards
The paradoxical key to a genuinely un-centralized system is mutually agreed standards on whatever is central to the system and thus cannot be left to individual choices or market outcomes.
...
Perhaps the best current example of mutual adjustment at work is the Internet -- at least on a good day.
People all over the world are exchanging information, images, music, and voice messages, with so little regulation that their "commerce" is often noncommercial, in effect a multilateral barter system. Many of their transactions are essentially not exchange, but sharing, arrangements.
Where there are rules of behavior, they are increasingly arrived at by consensus among the participants, or at least are ratified in action by those who will be guided by them. That doesn’t mean the rule-abiding citizens are serfs, doing some lord’s bidding. If the rules work, it’s because nearly all those who need to abide by them are motivated to comply because the rules make sense to them. In the developing culture of the World Wide Web, there are more and more examples of enforcement by peer-pressure.
...
The organization is called ISO. That’s not an acronym, which wouldn’t work for a multilingual club anyway.
Derived from the Greek isos, meaning “equal,” it’s the root of the prefix “iso-” that occurs in many words such as “isometric” (of equal measure or dimensions), “isodynamic” (having the same strength or intensity), and “isonomy” (equality of political rights). As ISO’s website puts it: “From ‘equal’ to ‘standard’, the line of thinking that led to the choice of ‘ISO’ as the name of the organization is easy to follow.”
The first ISO standard, a “reference temperature for industrial length measurement,” was published in 1951. Half a century later, there are now more than 13,544 International Standards, recorded on 403,608 pages. This standard-setting, coordinated by a non-government from a headquarters in Switzerland, costs less than $90,000,000 a year and engages the efforts of some 30,000 “experts on loan,” working as equal partners in 2,885 committees and working groups, in a wide variety of technical fields.
Their commonsense approach has been summed up this way: “Do it once, do it right, do it internationally.”
ISO standards are voluntary – that is, enforced in the market-place: if you produce something fastened by screws that aren’t standard, the word will get around fast and customers will shun you. They are industry-wide, designed to provide global solutions to satisfy suppliers and consumers worldwide. And they are developed by consensus. Consensus doesn’t mean unanimous consent.
An ISO standard can be adopted if it is approved by two-thirds of those actively involved and is blessed by three-quarters of the ISO members – national standard-setting bodies -- that vote.
Maybe they don't even need voting rules, just a commonsense definition of consensus: “. . . the acquiescence of those who care about each particular decision, supported by the apathy of those who don’t.”
...
It may be helpful to sum up – and thus oversimplify – the rationale for the uncentralized systems that seem likely to be more and more characteristic of the post-post-modern era now ahead of us:
• In order for any complex activity to run in an uncentralized manner, there have to be some rules of the game (like the ISO standards).
• The rules need to be adopted by a sufficiently participatory, or representative, process, to persuade nearly all the “followers” they have been part of the “leadership.”
• Until the rules are truly acceptable shared doctrine, there needs to be some interim authority (the policeman at an urban intersection, the foreman in a company, the guru in an ashram, a parent in a family) to remind everybody about the agreed rules.
• In time, the “rules” become internalized standards of behaviour – and the resulting community doesn’t need anybody to be “in charge.”
• The “rules” are then learned at a parent’s knee or at school, by adult training and experience, and by informal (but effective) peer pressure.
...
Leaders and Followers
Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. [as in institutions] Nor is the relationship materially altered if both parties voluntarily accept the dominance of one by the other. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound they are no longer leader or follower. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate, manager/employee, master/servant, or owner/slave.
All such relationships are materially different from leader/follower. Induced behavior is the essence of leader/follower. Compelled behavior is the essence of all the other relational concepts. Where behavior is compelled, there you will find tyranny, however benign. Where behavior is induced, there you will find leadership, however powerful. Leadership does not necessarily imply constructive, ethical, open conduct. It is entirely possible to induce destructive, malign, devious behavior, and to do so by corrupt means. Therefore, a clear, constructive purpose and compelling ethical principles evoked from and shared by all participants should be the essence of every relationship in every institution.
A vital question is how to insure that those who lead are constructive, ethical, open, and honest. The answer is to follow those who behave in that manner. It comes down to both individual and collective sense of where and how people choose to be led. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led. Where an organizational community will be led is inseparable from the shared values and beliefs of its members. [when there is no monopoly, so we are going to eliminate the monopoly by opening the field to unlimited competition based on following of the values and beliefs, not on seniority, or authorization, etc.]
True leaders are those who epitomize the general sense of the community -- who symbolize, legitimize and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community -- who enable its shared purpose, values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted. A true leader's behavior is induced by the behavior of every individual choosing where to be led.
The important thing to remember is that true leadership and induced behavior have an inherent tendency to the good, while tyranny (dominator management) and compelled behavior have an inherent tendency to evil.
Management
Management inevitably is viewed as exercise of authority -- but that perception is mistaken.
Over the years, I have had long discussions with thousands of people throughout many different organizations about management: aspirations to it, dissatisfaction with it, or confusion about it. To avoid ambiguity, I always ask each person to describe the single most important responsibility of any manager. The incredibly diverse responses always have one thing in common: they are downward-looking. Management inevitably is viewed as exercise of authority -- with selecting employees, motivating them, training them, appraising them, organizing them, directing them, controlling them. That perception is mistaken.
The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self: one's own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. We spend little time and rarely excel at management of self precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behavior of others.
However, without management of self no one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of management are inescapable.
Asked to identify the second responsibility of any manager, again people produce a bewildering variety of opinions, again downward-looking. Another mistake. The second responsibility is to manage those who have authority over us: bosses, supervisors, directors, regulators, ad infinitum. Without their consent and support, how can we follow conviction, exercise judgment, use creative ability, achieve constructive results or create conditions by which others can do the same? Managing superiors is essential. Devoting 25 percent of our time and ability to that effort is not too much.
Asked for the third responsibility, people become uncertain. Yet, their thoughts remain on subordinates. Mistaken again. The third responsibility is to manage one's peers -- those over whom we have no authority and who have no authority over us -- associates, competitors, suppliers, customers -- one's entire environment if you will. Without their respect and confidence little or nothing can be accomplished. Our environment and peers can make a small heaven or hell of our life. Is it not wise to devote at least 20 percent of our time, energy, and ingenuity to managing them?
Asked for the fourth responsibility, people have difficulty coming up with an answer, for they are now troubled by thinking downward. However, if one has attended to self, superiors, and peers there is nothing else left. Obviously, the fourth responsibility is to manage those over whom we have authority. The common response is that all one's time will be consumed managing self, superiors and peers. There will be no time to manage subordinates. Exactly! One need only select decent people, introduce them to the concept, induce them to practice it, and enjoy the process. If those over whom we have authority properly manage themselves, manage us, manage their peers, and replicate the process with those they employ, what is there to do but see they are properly recognized, rewarded -- and stay out of their way?
- Are based on clarity of shared purpose and principles.
- Are self-organizing and self-governing in whole and in part.
- Exist primarily to enable their constituent parts.
- Are powered from the periphery, unified from the core.
- Are durable in purpose and principle, malleable in form and function.
- Equitably distribute power, rights, responsibility and rewards.
- Harmoniously combine cooperation and competition.
- Learn, adapt and innovate in ever expanding cycles.
- Are compatible with the human spirit and the biosphere
- They serve their purposes successfully year after year without any obvious headquarters, no glittering center of power, no centralized command.
- No one owns any of them.
- Chaordic organizations are self-organizing and self-governing.
- They operate not through hierarchies of authority, but through networks of equals.
- It isn't power or coercion that makes them effective, rather it's clear shared purpose, ethical operating principles, and responsibility distributed through every node.
- They are pulled by demand, because they meet real needs very effectively.
Chaordic Notes
from: http://permacultureinstitute.pbworks.com/w/page/15951457/chaordic1 (see also 2 and 3. This website is teaching chaordic principles for application to rapidly spread the teaching and use of permaculture. They have a lot of material about chaordic.)
Brought in to save the failing Bank Americard system, he envisioned, years before electronic funds transfers, an organization that "could guarantee, transport, and settle transactions twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, around the globe." That was the function of a bank, but far beyond the power of any single bank. "It would require a transcendental organization linking together in wholly new ways an unimaginable complex of institutions and individuals."
"At the time did I think it could be done? No! Did I think the Bank of America would give up ownership? No! Did I think banks worldwide could be brought together in such an effort? No! Did I think laws would allow it? No!
But did I believe it was what ought to be? Ah, that was another question indeed!"
The purpose is "what ought to be."
...
Hock says it's the hard part of any chaordic alliance, getting the purpose right, making it consistent with real need, with the laws of the planet, with the mysteries of life.
Purpose is derived from morality, from vision, from collective wisdom, not from individual ambition or greed. That, says Hock, is where the whole industrial system, including both corporations and governments, has gotten so far off track.
"Life is not about controlling. It's not about getting. It's not about having. It's not about knowing. It's not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced."
...
"Money, markets, and measurement have their place. They are important tools indeed. We should honor them 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."
...
The founders then drafted a Constitution that departed dramatically from the oppressive pyramids the colonists had fled and learned to despise. Indeed, without ever quite saying so, they created the basis for a nobody-incharge society -- quite literally a first-time experiment in uncentralized governance. The “separation of powers” with its “checks and balances” was explicitly designed to deny any part of our Federal government the chance to make too much yardage at the expense of the other parts – and of the people it was supposed to serve. The Federal system itself was designed to create a continuous tussle between the states and the central government. The tussle was intended to be permanent; no part of the Federal system was supposed to “win it all,” not ever.
It is not just the durability of their extraordinary invention that testifies to the founders’ wisdom.
It is clear from the record they left that they – at least, the deepest thinkers among them, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson -- knew just how unprecedented was the system they were launching.
The people were really supposed to be sovereign. Jefferson still believed this, even after his eight years of trying, as President (1801-09), to be their “servant leader.”
“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1820, “and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.”
...
The Need for Standards
The paradoxical key to a genuinely un-centralized system is mutually agreed standards on whatever is central to the system and thus cannot be left to individual choices or market outcomes.
...
Perhaps the best current example of mutual adjustment at work is the Internet -- at least on a good day.
People all over the world are exchanging information, images, music, and voice messages, with so little regulation that their "commerce" is often noncommercial, in effect a multilateral barter system. Many of their transactions are essentially not exchange, but sharing, arrangements.
Where there are rules of behavior, they are increasingly arrived at by consensus among the participants, or at least are ratified in action by those who will be guided by them. That doesn’t mean the rule-abiding citizens are serfs, doing some lord’s bidding. If the rules work, it’s because nearly all those who need to abide by them are motivated to comply because the rules make sense to them. In the developing culture of the World Wide Web, there are more and more examples of enforcement by peer-pressure.
...
The organization is called ISO. That’s not an acronym, which wouldn’t work for a multilingual club anyway.
Derived from the Greek isos, meaning “equal,” it’s the root of the prefix “iso-” that occurs in many words such as “isometric” (of equal measure or dimensions), “isodynamic” (having the same strength or intensity), and “isonomy” (equality of political rights). As ISO’s website puts it: “From ‘equal’ to ‘standard’, the line of thinking that led to the choice of ‘ISO’ as the name of the organization is easy to follow.”
The first ISO standard, a “reference temperature for industrial length measurement,” was published in 1951. Half a century later, there are now more than 13,544 International Standards, recorded on 403,608 pages. This standard-setting, coordinated by a non-government from a headquarters in Switzerland, costs less than $90,000,000 a year and engages the efforts of some 30,000 “experts on loan,” working as equal partners in 2,885 committees and working groups, in a wide variety of technical fields.
Their commonsense approach has been summed up this way: “Do it once, do it right, do it internationally.”
ISO standards are voluntary – that is, enforced in the market-place: if you produce something fastened by screws that aren’t standard, the word will get around fast and customers will shun you. They are industry-wide, designed to provide global solutions to satisfy suppliers and consumers worldwide. And they are developed by consensus. Consensus doesn’t mean unanimous consent.
An ISO standard can be adopted if it is approved by two-thirds of those actively involved and is blessed by three-quarters of the ISO members – national standard-setting bodies -- that vote.
Maybe they don't even need voting rules, just a commonsense definition of consensus: “. . . the acquiescence of those who care about each particular decision, supported by the apathy of those who don’t.”
...
It may be helpful to sum up – and thus oversimplify – the rationale for the uncentralized systems that seem likely to be more and more characteristic of the post-post-modern era now ahead of us:
• In order for any complex activity to run in an uncentralized manner, there have to be some rules of the game (like the ISO standards).
• The rules need to be adopted by a sufficiently participatory, or representative, process, to persuade nearly all the “followers” they have been part of the “leadership.”
• Until the rules are truly acceptable shared doctrine, there needs to be some interim authority (the policeman at an urban intersection, the foreman in a company, the guru in an ashram, a parent in a family) to remind everybody about the agreed rules.
• In time, the “rules” become internalized standards of behaviour – and the resulting community doesn’t need anybody to be “in charge.”
• The “rules” are then learned at a parent’s knee or at school, by adult training and experience, and by informal (but effective) peer pressure.
...
Leaders and Followers
Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. [as in institutions] Nor is the relationship materially altered if both parties voluntarily accept the dominance of one by the other. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound they are no longer leader or follower. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate, manager/employee, master/servant, or owner/slave.
All such relationships are materially different from leader/follower. Induced behavior is the essence of leader/follower. Compelled behavior is the essence of all the other relational concepts. Where behavior is compelled, there you will find tyranny, however benign. Where behavior is induced, there you will find leadership, however powerful. Leadership does not necessarily imply constructive, ethical, open conduct. It is entirely possible to induce destructive, malign, devious behavior, and to do so by corrupt means. Therefore, a clear, constructive purpose and compelling ethical principles evoked from and shared by all participants should be the essence of every relationship in every institution.
A vital question is how to insure that those who lead are constructive, ethical, open, and honest. The answer is to follow those who behave in that manner. It comes down to both individual and collective sense of where and how people choose to be led. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led. Where an organizational community will be led is inseparable from the shared values and beliefs of its members. [when there is no monopoly, so we are going to eliminate the monopoly by opening the field to unlimited competition based on following of the values and beliefs, not on seniority, or authorization, etc.]
True leaders are those who epitomize the general sense of the community -- who symbolize, legitimize and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community -- who enable its shared purpose, values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted. A true leader's behavior is induced by the behavior of every individual choosing where to be led.
The important thing to remember is that true leadership and induced behavior have an inherent tendency to the good, while tyranny (dominator management) and compelled behavior have an inherent tendency to evil.
Management
Management inevitably is viewed as exercise of authority -- but that perception is mistaken.
Over the years, I have had long discussions with thousands of people throughout many different organizations about management: aspirations to it, dissatisfaction with it, or confusion about it. To avoid ambiguity, I always ask each person to describe the single most important responsibility of any manager. The incredibly diverse responses always have one thing in common: they are downward-looking. Management inevitably is viewed as exercise of authority -- with selecting employees, motivating them, training them, appraising them, organizing them, directing them, controlling them. That perception is mistaken.
The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self: one's own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. We spend little time and rarely excel at management of self precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behavior of others.
However, without management of self no one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of management are inescapable.
Asked to identify the second responsibility of any manager, again people produce a bewildering variety of opinions, again downward-looking. Another mistake. The second responsibility is to manage those who have authority over us: bosses, supervisors, directors, regulators, ad infinitum. Without their consent and support, how can we follow conviction, exercise judgment, use creative ability, achieve constructive results or create conditions by which others can do the same? Managing superiors is essential. Devoting 25 percent of our time and ability to that effort is not too much.
Asked for the third responsibility, people become uncertain. Yet, their thoughts remain on subordinates. Mistaken again. The third responsibility is to manage one's peers -- those over whom we have no authority and who have no authority over us -- associates, competitors, suppliers, customers -- one's entire environment if you will. Without their respect and confidence little or nothing can be accomplished. Our environment and peers can make a small heaven or hell of our life. Is it not wise to devote at least 20 percent of our time, energy, and ingenuity to managing them?
Asked for the fourth responsibility, people have difficulty coming up with an answer, for they are now troubled by thinking downward. However, if one has attended to self, superiors, and peers there is nothing else left. Obviously, the fourth responsibility is to manage those over whom we have authority. The common response is that all one's time will be consumed managing self, superiors and peers. There will be no time to manage subordinates. Exactly! One need only select decent people, introduce them to the concept, induce them to practice it, and enjoy the process. If those over whom we have authority properly manage themselves, manage us, manage their peers, and replicate the process with those they employ, what is there to do but see they are properly recognized, rewarded -- and stay out of their way?
