Posts tagged organisation

This new zeitgeist is less interested in the old social influences of authority and social obligation, and more concerned with demonstrable legitimacy and guaranteeing universal access to the common wealth. Today we are more interested in opt-in/out ways of participation than with committed and consistent roles. We are empowered by communities of practice and peer-to-peer connectivity rather than social status and statutory reputation. We are a generation exploring real abundance in nature and ingenuity that flows from human spirit when it is set free. This shift in attitude signals a reckoning with old ways of power which instrumentalizes the earth, and institutionalizes and bureaucratizes human activity.

via https://medium.com/open-participatory-organized/a-manifesto-for-open-participation–60b62d327684

Death and change are essential to growth and evolution. The bird has to leave the nest. New trees spring up in the forest where old trees decay. A species only acquires adaptive traits with new generations. The old must make space for the new; anything else is stagnation. This is especially true of purposeful work. Because you’re there for more than just a job, achieving the larger mission in the future can require the end of something in the present.

via https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/on-firing-myself–6586512c6359

As we pass the tipping point toward a world fast enough and interconnected enough to be dominated by emergent systems, our methods of making decisions, and the tools available to help us make them, are changing. Here are some rules of thumb and useful modes of understanding for managing ourselves and others in The Emergent Era.

1. Organize around information flows; ditch hierarchy and bureaucracy.
2. Empower individuals.
3. Replace long lists of rules with a good M.O.
4. Get Used to Living in the “In Between.”
5. Open up new feedback loops
6. Tap into the power of minds and machines.

via https://medium.com/emergent-era/the-rise-of-emergent-organizations–76e67e5860f0

“Conspiratorial ideation is the tendency of individuals to believe that events and power relations are secretly manipulated by certain clandestine groups and organisations. Many of these ostensibly explanatory conjectures are non-falsifiable, lacking in evidence or demonstrably false, yet public acceptance remains high. […] The theory presented here might be useful in counteracting the potentially deleterious consequences of bogus and anti-science narratives, and examining the hypothetical conditions under which sustainable conspiracy might be possible.”

–David Robert Grimes, On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs.

recent research seems to indicate that flattening workplace hierarchy is not only much more complicated than it seems, but that people prefer a pecking order. One Stanford study found that egalitarian work structures were disorienting. Workers found hierarchical companies were more predictable, and therefore preferable, because it was easy to figure out who did what and how compensation should be doled out. Another Stanford paper, which looked at why hierarchical structures in the workplace have such staying power, concluded perhaps the obvious: Hierarchies work. They are practical and psychologically comforting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/zappos-holacracy-hierarchy/424173/