Positive Mutiny
Last year I launched the concept of positive mutiny as an organisational principle and mindset. The premise is quite simple. It’s your right, it’s your duty, it’s your responsibility, to commit positive mutiny.
The fundamental principle of organisations in the times we live in, is growth for profit. The fundamental link to our future is collaboration for survival. The systems we build are hierarchy based, so as to control the profit that we produce as it creates power. Of the people in these systems, how many do you believe busy themselves with what they care for and what really matters?
The systems we should be building would be based on allowing people to engage in what they care about. It should be a system that enables the change necessary to accommodate the needs of the people in the system to engage.
I propose a simple yet effective model. Positive Mutiny.
Mutiny on naval ships is know as one of the worst forms of treason, because it leaves the appointed leader of the hierarchy completely without the protection normally granted to for example the state, when it’s at home. However, on a ship in the middle of the ocean it’s hard to call the rest of the cavalry in to save the authority thats under attack. What mutiny reflects, is the need for a systemic change, that does not fit under the current system.
If one were to turn this taking matter in to own hands into a positive and build it in a a basic premise for the system in question. What then do we get? It would be a system that constantly adapts to the needs of its populace and thereby, by constantly shifting in a slow transformative mode, the systemic change you would get would be constant but variable based on it’s needs.
The principles
It’s your right: At any given time can you commit mutiny.
It’s your duty: If you see something that is wrong with the system, it’s your duty to engage with it and change it for the better.
It’s your responsibility: You are accountable for your actions when committing mutiny. You are responsible for the consequences of the changes you set into motion.
In a hierarchical system, the leaders position at the top would always be in question. Yet, he or she could be confident that anyone in the process of replacing him would do so in a way that responsible allows the leader back into the system where a new role can be found where the now previous top leader can contribute.
At the same time this serves as a deterrent for those who want radical change, without contemplating the consequences.
Politics
It’s impossible to come by an organisation that is not political. It’s hard to come by one where the politics are not destructive to the purpose of that organisation. The fundamental flaw in organisations is the people that govern them, populate them as members, customers or employees.
It surprises my naive self, the self in me that believes in a better future for the world, that time and time again when I encounter organisations they are so political. There seems to be some uncontrollable need to control the entities in which we take part. And though the methods with which we take control differ greatly, they ultimately serve the same purpose. Our own short term gain. Generally speaking most of our politics are not for the sake of the future, of what we believe in or the greater good. They are short term solutions usually tied into another need. Money, reelection, power, keeping up appearances and protecting our the positions we have obtained.
We continuously fail to cooperate even about the simplest tasks. Sometimes just dumbly not considering that others might have ownership over this particular issue and other times purposefully, we strive to dominate, force our agenda at the clear expense of our peers.
This power struggle is sickening to all organisations. From natures point of view it seems that the only dampening effect on this is the short human life span. Individuals cannot do too much damage. But here the vast numbers of the human population come to play a key role. Makes you wonder, if nature will allow it to grow much more.
The Failure of Responsibility
A fundamental flaw in our society and the way we act as humans, is our lack of taking responsibility. Society is built on not taking responsibility, from the wording of legal contracts, to our acts towards each other in the work place, to how we treat our business customers and the way we build our important and personal relationships, that end in divorce, law suits family crime and demise.
Our government system is a clear example. In the notion of representative democracy, which in itself is deeply flawed and a farce, we rather than take responsibility, do our best to be off with it. When a voter goes to the booth, he or she hands their personal political responsibility over to a politician via the polling card. This is flaw number 1. The voter leaves the booth expecting that they have now done their job and now its time for the politicians to do the rest. The subsequent action of the voter is to go home and wait. If things do not shape up in a fashion that appeases them, they complain and changes can quickly been seen in opinion polling shortly after, if the winning party does not fare well in the beginning. An good example is the Obama administration that was swept into power on with the support of a solid majority of the populace. However, just over a year later, most of the voters disapprove and would not support Obama in a future election.
Flaw number 2. The Politician who picks up the vote in the election and thereby also the responsibility that comes with it, generally says: Thank you for the vote, and the renewed position it has secured me, but I will pass on the responsibility.
Ultimately the responsibility just lies there in the middle like an abandoned dog that no-one wants anything to do with. The voters shed their responsibility. The Politicians shun it.
Where does this come from? Our society’s constant fear of failure, which is taught through our schooling system and competitive business culture, is a major creator of this fear of failure. In the end it just becomes easy: It was not my fault, It was not my responsibility.
What is value?
1 : a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
3 : relative worth, utility, or importance
7 : something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable <sought material values instead of human values — W. H. Jones
all the above from Merriam-Webster online dictionary.
A basic premise for human life is the exchange of value. In every single word we communicate, even our desire to communicate at all, is based on a need for a value exchange. If we were not seeking to gain something from the other person, there would be no reason to speak in the first place. In fact one could argue, that much of the richness of human life, exists through the value that we experience subjectively.
While value in itself is the most intangible of phaenomena, in our western based society, value has through the use of currency, managed to become tangible. When we convert an emotion or a service into a currency transaction, we make it tangible and understandable at a very basic level. The risk of this is, that highly emotional value exchanges can suddenly be confused with a currency value exchange. For instance, the classic notion that you cannot buy love or friendship and how the involvement of a currency tends to complicate this.
The challenge for us today is that our society in its every seams, is dependent on tangible currency value. Though we in management books and lectures hear about soft values and not being rated on revenue performance but on living up to vision, mission and goals, the currency transaction lies behind almost any transaction. The currency is seen as an enabler, which is also it’s intended original purpose, but the level of enabling has risen to a level far beyond its original scope of purpose, when it becomes a purpose in it self.
Also, the system set in place, to grow currency, within today’s current financial market models, are based on artificially growing the currency beyond any relation to it’s real value.
This is illustrated nicely by example of the US federal reserve bank. This private bank, lends money to the american government, who puts it in the hands of its population and circulates it globally. Each dollar that leaves the dollar mint press, is when it leaves the building and enters circulation a symbol of debt. This is simply due to the Fed adding interest to each dollar. This means, that anyone who has a dollar, in principle owes one dollar plus interest to the Federal Reserve Bank. In short the system, from start to finish creates debt that will never be able to be paid back as there is no counter value present.
With the costs of the 2009 bailouts in our current financial crisis, this becomes apparent, when every single human on the planet on average is indebted with 20.000 dollars that they now owe to the system. These are paid back using interest and fee’s and printing more money, in this case dollars, with more interest, that can gather future income for the Fed. It’s problematic because we would never be able to pay the money back. In fact, calculations show, that if you added the value of all the debt in the world up, there are not enough assets and value to pay for the debt. The world is technically bankrupt.
We need to challenge our perceptions of value. Alternative currency systems such as LETS are already doing this, some more successful than other, though many have difficulties shaking the image that they are just a bunch of hippies trying to be different. Most LETS systems however are simple, but smart systems, where there is no interest in the system and the system is only maintained by a small fee, which has no influence on the value of the currency. LETS are in fact showing that there is a way back to the intended purpose of money, to be a value exchange enabler. Not a value in itself.
Online suicide?
I love this site and it’s ambitions Suicide Machine
From Scaring to Caring
It’s scary how our entire legal system is based on negative definitions of possible situations. Our laws are largely made of what we are not allowed to do. We legislate, particularly from a contract point of view, using negatives, constantly talking about what we are not allowed to do. Instead of focusing on what we can do. In fact much of the way our education system, our business relations and our marriages are put together, is set in a negative framework.
Already in the early schooling years and most likely from an early age within families, children are told what NOT to do. Later, in highschool, university and business life, this continues. And when we break these rules we are always confronted with the consequence. The punishment that will be incurred by a higher power, whether it’s a parent, a teacher, a manager, a politician or a priest.
Religion has a particularly conspicuous role in this, as many of the larger religions such as christianity and islam let the threats of punishment flow freely, if you do not adhere to what the church dictates. Examples, such as the fear of hell, not going to heaven, to the more everyday crimes, such as being nasty to your neighbour, which can be dealt with, with a couple of hail mary’s and a confession.
What is it with man that makes us obsessed with control and restriction, rules and negative statements? This negative way of defining the very communities that we live in counters the purpose of the communities in the first place. Even from a instinctive point of view, the community has always been the heart and the home for the individual in gathering with like-minded others.
Yet it seems, that our standard reaction to any engagement with other people comes with rules and regulations, written in negative contracts, bound in distrust for fellow man.
At the Hub when we work with defining space, be it in physical or metaphysical, we work from a standpoint of defining a motivating space to be in. Not only are we trying to create and host a physical space, we work hard to shape and empower the metaphysical space of the community that occupies it. We do this through our hosting practice and through engaging with people with their passions and what matters in their lives.
Thus we make an effort to engage with what really matters for people, where it makes sense for them to commit, giving them an opportunity to standby their choices and take part in the community. Practically we do this by having a caring contract. This means, from 2010, every member in Hub Brussels, will be asked to sign our caring contract.
The caring contract itself, is a bold statement of choice to our community. It’s about what you choose to be part of. Not only do we have the standard house commitments, rather than house rules, there is also space for anyone to add their special commitment. This enables our hosting team to take care and note of these extra commitments and try to empower them through our daily work with the members and the community in the Hub.
Our questions to our members are: what do you care about? And how can we help you succeed?
Intangible Value
Shifting back to production? Few economist are putting the suggestion forward that we should move focus from globalising our economy to localising production, building value within local communities and creating local value. On top of this financial crisis, most economists and politicians seem bent on straightening out a few wrinkles within regulation of financial industries and services and then continuing down the road that has been traveled so far.
Value and Movement
nodes
In an ideal world, the Hub movement has no real center. The idea is that competencies flow from node to node and hub to hub, based on a needs and a value exchange that can serve the need. There is no need for a centralised command structure, a corporate hierarchy or rules designed for control. The Hub in its nature differs so greatly from other structures and networks that we see today.
Compare if you will, the Hub to Facebook. While the Hub never will reach Facebooks current magnitude of 230 million daily users, there are some comparisons that are interesting to make. Facebook grew exponentially in size, seeing particular strong growth in users in 2007, where a large part of the community on Myspace migrated to Facebook. This move happened within a few weeks and remains one of the most amazing examples of social media tipping points. Similarly, the Hub had existed for a couple of years, before interest and traction took effect and suddenly the number of potential Hubs is not in low double digits, but into the hundreds. Hubs are beginning to open faster than the organisation can handle and much faster than anyone ever could hope or dream of.
The major difference when comparing the Hub and Facebook, are their natural characteristics and the value they propose. Facebook for most people remains a network where one exchanges superficial comments and give sporadic attention. While people happily share pictures of themselves and post comments on each others walls, the intent put into the content remains frivolous and with minor depth and people rarely express opinions and emtions related to deep personal attachment or meaningful conversations or relationships.
Here the Hub, in it’s own nature, differs dramatically. The hub is a very much an alive network of people, where what we create within the physical and metaphorical frames of the Hub, from the outset is loaded with deep value. Firstly, the purpose and the vision of the Hub, A Space for People with Good Ideas for the World, rings a clear sound into most peoples ears. More importantly though, is the characteristic that when people engage in the Hub, they engage with something more than a comment on a social networking site. They engage with their passions for the world around us, their curiosity for exploring new people and ideas and finally they engage with their businesses and their lives. Because of the fact that the Hub costs money and rarely is the cheapest alternative, the sense of commitment is somewhat higher than in many other communities and networks, that are free of charge and where the daily level of commitment is lower.
This is the real value of the Hub. It’s born in the moment that a member chooses to place their business, their curiosity and their life within the frames we as hosts hold for them.
This also goes to show, that we cannot think of the Hub as an organisation, in the traditional sense, that we should govern as a company and harvest for profit. The fashion, in which people have joined the Hub (whether the want to open a new hub, be a host or a member), how people catch on to the idea or the mere notion, moves like wildfire and without clear direction. This has a similar characteristic to that of a movement, where the individuals involved generally are brought together by the same beliefs rather than that of an organisation, where the term greatly implies that it’s organised.
What’s important to understand about movements, is that they do not let themselves be controlled. Movements are fed entirely by the the joint aspiration of the people who join them and likewise are subjected to the joint perception of the public observing them. Individuals have historically managed to stand on the shoulders of movements to achieve great change or impact, but in all most cases after an objective is partially achieved, the movement often breaks into different organisations and the momentum is lost. Recent political examples are the Polish Solidarity movement and the Anti Apartheid and Freedom Movement in South Africa.
It would be en exciting development for the Hub, to encourage the frames for the movement and to not focus too hard on the organisation. How can we enable and empower the qualities of the movement and how can we use the “organisation” as a tool to support this rather than as the model for the system?