“It is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream. The failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.”
Hock “combined the words ‘order’ and ‘chaos’ into one single term - ‘cha-ord’ – in order to emphasize the simultaneous presence of both of them, even more,” “signifying the fact that the two seemingly disparate properties of experience are so thoroughly interpenetrated that neither can exist without the other.”(Fitzgerald and van Eijnatten, 2002b, p.414). (Connect yin and yang…*)
A cha-ord = “any self-organizing, adaptive, nonlinear complex system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos.” It is an organism that functions “on the knife edge between chaos and order,”(Hock, *) “existing in the phase between order and chaos.”(The Chaordic Alliance, 1998; The Chaordic Commons, 2004).
According to one of his followers, chaordic systems:
* Are self-organizing and self-governing in whole and in part
* Are powered from the periphery and unified from the core
* Are durable in purpose and principle and malleable in form and function
* Learn, adapt and innovate in ever-expanding cycles
* Liberate and amplify ingenuity, initiative, and judgment
* Equitably distribute power, rights, responsibility, and rewards
* [Are] compatible with and foster diversity, complexity, and change
* Constructively use and harmonize conflict and paradox
(from http://loud-time.blogspot.com/2013/11/in-search-of-chaordic-conference.html)
Hock draws on the principles of Chaos theory, which is “based on a 20th century discovery that chaos and order are not as we’ve always thought them to be – opposites from which to choose. Rather, they are complementary aspects of a singular reality…”(Putnik, *) Chaos theory is a “popular pseudonym for dynamical systems theory… originally developed in mathematics and spread into natural sciences, biology, and chemistry in the late 70s and early 80s.”(Putnik,*) It was first mentioned “in the management literature” in the mid 80s.(van Einnatten, 2004)
“Chaos can be described as a new systemic kind of lens, a holistic worldview.”(Fitzgerald, 2002; Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 1998, 2002a) It gives rise to “a shift of mind – from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to be connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something ‘out there’ to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience.”(Senge, 1990, pp.12-13). It nurtures “the ability to see intentionally, to feel totally alive, to know intuitively, to act responsibly, to trust life’s process, and to be in relationship (Shelton and Darling, 2003, pp. 354-8). It is “the fundamental organizing principle of nature and evolution.”(The Chaordic Alliance, 1998, The Chaordic Commons, 2004).
A chaord “is an organization capable of adapting, changing, developing and transforming itself in response to needs, wishes, and aspirations of people both inside and out.”(Armstrong and Foley, 2003). “The cognitive aspect is generally conceived with knowledge, understanding and insights.”(Senge, 1990)
“A ‘chaordic system’ is a holon with behavior that is both unpredictable and patterned at the same time.” It is essentially, “a network of sub-contractors.”(Putnik, *) “in which individual and group organization are aspects of the same processes of interaction between people…learning is then to be thought of as an activity of independent people.”(Stacey, 2003, p.325). It is therefore “a process that takes place through the agency of the individual member.” It is “an approach to designing” complex dynamical, non-linear, co-creative, far-from-equilibrium system that recognizes the enterprise not as a fixed structure, but as ‘flow’.”(Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 2002b, p.414).
“The chaordic system…consists of a multiplicity of interacting components. The greater the complexity, the less the hehavior of the system is amenable to prediction.”(Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 2002b, p.415). It is a learning organization, “a structured process or network where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspirations are set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.”(Senge, 1990) “An entity in which nothing ever happens quite the same way twice, but enough happens in a tidy enough way to preclude complete pandemonium.”(Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 2002b, p.264)
“Learning is present in almost all types of human activities,” and what we mean by learning can differ from setting to setting. “Learning is an emergent process that seems to arise through interaction. In a chaos-and-complexity view, ‘unlearning’ might be seen as a similar process, and of the same centrality as learning is: old behavior patterns have to be abandoned before a shift to new patterns is feasible (Harvey et al. 2001; Lei at al. 1999.
It is practical wisdom in the sense that it is “harmoniously blending intellectual and experiential learning.”(Hock, 1996) As Aristotle said… *
Which is why “Chaos theory has performed flawlessly since its formulation in the late 1970s assisting scientists in describing and explaining the behavior of the complex, dynamical, non-linear, co-creative far-from-equilibrium systems…which have proven to be the rule and not its exception.”(Fitzgerald and van Eijnatten, 2002b, pp.414-415). “Complex systems are characterized by” 1. Independents interacting 2. Spontaneous self-organization, and 3. “learning which takes place through feed back.”
Hock explained, “By Chaord, I mean any self-organizing, adaptive, nonlinear complex organization, organism or community, whether physical, biological, or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both order and chaos.”(Putnik, *) “Institutions which have inherent in them the mechanisms for their own continual learning, adaptation, order, and evolution and the capacity to coevolve harmoniously with all other living things to the highest potential of each and all…”(Hock, *)
“Today, it doesn’t take much intelligence to realize we are in the midst of a global epidemic of institutional failure… the signs are everywhere if one cared to look.” Says Hock, “It’s my personal belief, although I would be hard-pressed to prove it, that we are at that very point in time when a four hundred-year-old age is dying and another struggling to be born: a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never known and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.”
And “The seeds of chaordic thinking are sprouting up everywhere,” overriding “Newtonian concepts of control-dictatorship.” “Newtonian science, along with the machine metaphor to which it gave rise, was the father of those concepts. It has dominated the whole of society and the mass of our thinking for more than two centuries to an extent none of us fully realizes. It declared that the universe and everything in it, whether physical, biological, or social can best be understood as a clock-like mechanism composed of separate parts acting upon one another with precise, linear laws of cause and effect. We have since structured society in accordance with that perspective, believing that with ever more reductionist scientific knowledge, more efficiency, more mechanical command and control, we could pull a lever at on place and get a precise result at another… never mind that human beings must be made to perform like cogs and wheels in the process.” Hock calls this “the age of the physical scientist whose primary function was to reduce diverse ways of understanding to uniform repetitive, laboratory processes endlessly repeated with ever-increasing precision.”
And just as “Newtonian science was the father of today’s organizational concepts, the Industrial Age was the mother. Together, they dominated the evolution of all institutions. The unique, variable, individual processes by which products and services had ben handcrafted were abandoned in favor of vertical, hierarchical organizations which, in order to produce huge quantities of uniform products, services, knowledge and people, centralized authority routinized practices, enforced conformity, and amassed resources.”
In this way, “The Industrial Age became the age of managers.” a class of professional experts at reducing variability to uniform repetitious, assembly line processes endlessly repeating with ever-increasing efficiency.” “For two centuries, we have been designing and pulling those levers, all the while hammering people to behave in the compliant, subordinate manner one expects from a well-trained horse.” And rarely have we gotten the expected result.”
And “There have been virtually no new ideas of organization since the concepts of corporation, nation state, and university emerged a few centuries ago.” And so, as Putnik says, “the scope of development efforts, in organizations, are primarily reformative rather than transformative.”(Putnik, *)
Hock tells of “A dean at a local college [who] put me in the way of the classics and awareness of both the power and the limitations of the human time. At the same time, conflict with that institution inflamed a growing preoccupation with the paradoxes inherent in organizations and the people who hold power within them.” On the one hand, the university feeds both “an interchangeable cognitive elite” with immense “Self-interest in preservation of the existing hierarchical forms of organization and the ever-increasing concentration of power and wealth they bring.” On the other hand, paradoxically, it also spawns a great deal of fodder for social change. Lucky for him, he was blessed, he says, “with a stubborn refusal to accept orthodox ideas, be persuaded by authoritarian means, or seek acceptance by conformity.” Long story short, “each time the Sheep determined to change the Company, the Company to corral the Sheep, and with the same inevitable result. Just another hunk of unemployed mutton bruised and bleeding on the sidewalk.”
And “Along the way, he swore a thousand oaths that were he ever to create an organization, things would be different.” “Our need had now become the understanding and coordination of variability, complexity, and effectiveness.”
It was the Joyce Foundation that engaged him “in a dialogue about the future,” “shared…my lifelong concern about the nature of contemporary institutions and the immanent risk of their collapse.” “These problems were much worse than anyone had imagined far beyond possibility of correction by the existing organization.” “The [Joyce] Foundation argued that people had lost confidence in existing institutions and were eager for new concepts… In their view, society was preparing itself for radically different ideas of community and organization.”
He was “elbowed into the chair” of a committee that he thought to be “an exercise in futility.” But the sheep he had become “was driven into management of the program.”
They asked him to discern - “What would it take to greatly accelerate chaordic institutional change throughout all aspects of society?” He called for: 1. other chaordic organizations to show success – in education, government, social services and commerce. 2. Need graphic modeling to show how chaordic systems self-organize and evolve into new patterns, and philosophical explanation to make it clear. 3. Need a global entity to emerge “that is organized on the chaordic principles it espouses.
He asked himself and the others – “If there were not constraints whatever, if anything imaginable was possible, what would be the nature (not the structure) of an ideal organization”…”for exchange of value in the form of arranged electronic signals,” (which makes ‘credit-card’ something of a misnomer). “No hierarchical corporation could do it…” In fact, “no existing form of organization could do it.”
From “a week of intense, night-and-day discussions,” holed up “in a small, remote hotel,” “a dozen or so simple principles emerged.” The answer that emerged was that such an organization would have to be organic, “would have to be based on biological concepts and methods. It would have to evolve – in effect to invent and organize itself.”
“it must be equally owned by all participants…with power and governance distributed…in a flexible but durable way… “capable of constant, self-generated, modification,” “must embrace diversity and change,” create “conditions and environments in which they could flourish.”
“the core of the enterprise has no knowledge of or authority over a vast number of the constituent parts, who are “at one and the same time, its owners, its customers, its subjects and its superiors. No part knows the whole, the whole does not know all the parts and none has any need to… the entirety like all chaords – including those you call body, brain, and biosphere, - is largely self-regulating.”
And it was by following these same principles that VISA had “completed the largest trademark conversion in commercial history in a third the time anticipated, and built the prototype of the present communication system in ninety days for less that $25,000.” “It remains difficult to describe that community, but the record is impressive with regard to what happened when chaordic principles were applied, power distributed, and human ingenuity released.”(Hock, *)
VISA espouses no political, economic, social or legal theory, thus transcending language, custom, politics, and culture to successfully connect institutions and peoples of every persuasion.” “It has multiple boards of directors within a single legal entity, none of which can be considered superior or inferior, as each has irrevocable authority and autonomy over geographic or functional areas.” “It has had no less than 20 percent and as much as 50 percent compound annual growth for a quarter century, through the best and worst times.” It would have a market value of $150 billion” if converted to a stock company. “Yet, it can’t be bought, traded, raided or sold since ownership is held in the form of perpetual nontransferable membership rights. However, that portion of the mission created by each member is owned solely by them,” “a very broad active market.”
“Time and time and time again they demonstrated a simple truth we have somehow lost sight of in Newtonian mechanistic organizations.” And that is that, “Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things.”
And so he “severed [his] connection with VISA for a life of anonymity and isolation, thinking to grow wooly with books, nature, and uninterrupted thought.” Read Waldrup’s Complexity in 1993, “concepts in the book were not surprising: they seemed like old, familiar friends.”
Hock has now founded the Global Chaordic Federation “to become the instrument through which substantive examples of chaordic institutional success could materialize…” “If that were to happen, it could catalyze within the decade the massive cultural, spiritual, and institutional change that a livable sustainable future demands.”
To simplify his hard learned convictions…
1. That the greatest danger is “greater and greater concentration of power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands.”
2. That we need radical organizational change based on “consequences of emerging science and technology was not gadgets…but radical, social change: ever-increasing diversity and complexity in the way people live and work.”
3. “Industrial Age mechanical command and control pyramids of power, whether political, social, educational, or commercial, were aberrations of the Industrial Age, antithetical to the human spirit, destructive of the biosphere, and structurally contrary to the whole history and methods of physical and biological evolution.”
4. Like the human body, the neural network of society is too complex even to imagine, let alone to manage.
5. “The most abundant, least expensive, most underutilized and frequently abused resource in the world was human ingenuity; the source of that abuse was archaic, Industrial Age institutions and the management practices they spawned.”
“The chaordic enterprise might be the end state toward which an actual company – seen as a learning organization – might evolve.”… “capable of self-organization and transformative change under hyper-turbulent conditions.” In other words, able and free to think on its feet and adapt intelligently to changing conditions.
“Much progress has already been made on that front in the peer-to-peer economy. In a September 27th article titled “Peer-to-Peer Economy Thrives as Activists Vacate the System,” Eric Blair reports that the Occupy Movement is engaged in a peaceful revolution in which people are abandoning the established system in favor of a ‘sharing economy.’ Trading occurs between individuals, without taxes, regulations or licenses, and in some cases without government-issued currency.” (http://truth-out.org/news/item/19314-is-homeland-security-preparing-for-the-next-wall-street-collapse)
“Progressives may call it the ‘sharing economy’ while Libertarians may refer to it as Agorism - a ‘society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution’."
“Whatever it's called, together, they're opting out of the current socioeconomic matrix and creating a new alternative economy where trading occurs peer-to-peer and increasingly without government-issued currency.”
“As Buckminster Fuller said, ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’"(http://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/peer-to-peer-economy-thrives-as.html)
As Willis Harman said, Hock’s work ushers in “a smooth, orderly transformation to a salubrious and sustainable global society,” one that could ward off “the chaos and anarchy that some see in our near-term future.” It represents, in fact, the healthiest form of anarchy, as it was originally understood by Peter Kropotkin to be a system of spontaneous mutual-aid – a dream our children’s children would thank us for realizing.
This is what we at the Madison Mentor Center hopes to help accomplish, not to compete with schools as we know them, but to compliment them so they can do what they do rather well even better. If that is testing, then they would compliment the work of every freelance teachers and independent student who needs, ultimately, to demonstrate mastery of what he or she has learned. So let the partnership begin.
Hock “combined the words ‘order’ and ‘chaos’ into one single term - ‘cha-ord’ – in order to emphasize the simultaneous presence of both of them, even more,” “signifying the fact that the two seemingly disparate properties of experience are so thoroughly interpenetrated that neither can exist without the other.”(Fitzgerald and van Eijnatten, 2002b, p.414). (Connect yin and yang…*)
A cha-ord = “any self-organizing, adaptive, nonlinear complex system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos.” It is an organism that functions “on the knife edge between chaos and order,”(Hock, *) “existing in the phase between order and chaos.”(The Chaordic Alliance, 1998; The Chaordic Commons, 2004).
According to one of his followers, chaordic systems:
* Are self-organizing and self-governing in whole and in part
* Are powered from the periphery and unified from the core
* Are durable in purpose and principle and malleable in form and function
* Learn, adapt and innovate in ever-expanding cycles
* Liberate and amplify ingenuity, initiative, and judgment
* Equitably distribute power, rights, responsibility, and rewards
* [Are] compatible with and foster diversity, complexity, and change
* Constructively use and harmonize conflict and paradox
(from http://loud-time.blogspot.com/2013/11/in-search-of-chaordic-conference.html)
Hock draws on the principles of Chaos theory, which is “based on a 20th century discovery that chaos and order are not as we’ve always thought them to be – opposites from which to choose. Rather, they are complementary aspects of a singular reality…”(Putnik, *) Chaos theory is a “popular pseudonym for dynamical systems theory… originally developed in mathematics and spread into natural sciences, biology, and chemistry in the late 70s and early 80s.”(Putnik,*) It was first mentioned “in the management literature” in the mid 80s.(van Einnatten, 2004)
“Chaos can be described as a new systemic kind of lens, a holistic worldview.”(Fitzgerald, 2002; Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 1998, 2002a) It gives rise to “a shift of mind – from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to be connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something ‘out there’ to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience.”(Senge, 1990, pp.12-13). It nurtures “the ability to see intentionally, to feel totally alive, to know intuitively, to act responsibly, to trust life’s process, and to be in relationship (Shelton and Darling, 2003, pp. 354-8). It is “the fundamental organizing principle of nature and evolution.”(The Chaordic Alliance, 1998, The Chaordic Commons, 2004).
A chaord “is an organization capable of adapting, changing, developing and transforming itself in response to needs, wishes, and aspirations of people both inside and out.”(Armstrong and Foley, 2003). “The cognitive aspect is generally conceived with knowledge, understanding and insights.”(Senge, 1990)
“A ‘chaordic system’ is a holon with behavior that is both unpredictable and patterned at the same time.” It is essentially, “a network of sub-contractors.”(Putnik, *) “in which individual and group organization are aspects of the same processes of interaction between people…learning is then to be thought of as an activity of independent people.”(Stacey, 2003, p.325). It is therefore “a process that takes place through the agency of the individual member.” It is “an approach to designing” complex dynamical, non-linear, co-creative, far-from-equilibrium system that recognizes the enterprise not as a fixed structure, but as ‘flow’.”(Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 2002b, p.414).
“The chaordic system…consists of a multiplicity of interacting components. The greater the complexity, the less the hehavior of the system is amenable to prediction.”(Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 2002b, p.415). It is a learning organization, “a structured process or network where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspirations are set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.”(Senge, 1990) “An entity in which nothing ever happens quite the same way twice, but enough happens in a tidy enough way to preclude complete pandemonium.”(Fitzgerald and von Eijnatten, 2002b, p.264)
“Learning is present in almost all types of human activities,” and what we mean by learning can differ from setting to setting. “Learning is an emergent process that seems to arise through interaction. In a chaos-and-complexity view, ‘unlearning’ might be seen as a similar process, and of the same centrality as learning is: old behavior patterns have to be abandoned before a shift to new patterns is feasible (Harvey et al. 2001; Lei at al. 1999.
It is practical wisdom in the sense that it is “harmoniously blending intellectual and experiential learning.”(Hock, 1996) As Aristotle said… *
Which is why “Chaos theory has performed flawlessly since its formulation in the late 1970s assisting scientists in describing and explaining the behavior of the complex, dynamical, non-linear, co-creative far-from-equilibrium systems…which have proven to be the rule and not its exception.”(Fitzgerald and van Eijnatten, 2002b, pp.414-415). “Complex systems are characterized by” 1. Independents interacting 2. Spontaneous self-organization, and 3. “learning which takes place through feed back.”
Hock explained, “By Chaord, I mean any self-organizing, adaptive, nonlinear complex organization, organism or community, whether physical, biological, or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both order and chaos.”(Putnik, *) “Institutions which have inherent in them the mechanisms for their own continual learning, adaptation, order, and evolution and the capacity to coevolve harmoniously with all other living things to the highest potential of each and all…”(Hock, *)
“Today, it doesn’t take much intelligence to realize we are in the midst of a global epidemic of institutional failure… the signs are everywhere if one cared to look.” Says Hock, “It’s my personal belief, although I would be hard-pressed to prove it, that we are at that very point in time when a four hundred-year-old age is dying and another struggling to be born: a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never known and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.”
And “The seeds of chaordic thinking are sprouting up everywhere,” overriding “Newtonian concepts of control-dictatorship.” “Newtonian science, along with the machine metaphor to which it gave rise, was the father of those concepts. It has dominated the whole of society and the mass of our thinking for more than two centuries to an extent none of us fully realizes. It declared that the universe and everything in it, whether physical, biological, or social can best be understood as a clock-like mechanism composed of separate parts acting upon one another with precise, linear laws of cause and effect. We have since structured society in accordance with that perspective, believing that with ever more reductionist scientific knowledge, more efficiency, more mechanical command and control, we could pull a lever at on place and get a precise result at another… never mind that human beings must be made to perform like cogs and wheels in the process.” Hock calls this “the age of the physical scientist whose primary function was to reduce diverse ways of understanding to uniform repetitive, laboratory processes endlessly repeated with ever-increasing precision.”
And just as “Newtonian science was the father of today’s organizational concepts, the Industrial Age was the mother. Together, they dominated the evolution of all institutions. The unique, variable, individual processes by which products and services had ben handcrafted were abandoned in favor of vertical, hierarchical organizations which, in order to produce huge quantities of uniform products, services, knowledge and people, centralized authority routinized practices, enforced conformity, and amassed resources.”
In this way, “The Industrial Age became the age of managers.” a class of professional experts at reducing variability to uniform repetitious, assembly line processes endlessly repeating with ever-increasing efficiency.” “For two centuries, we have been designing and pulling those levers, all the while hammering people to behave in the compliant, subordinate manner one expects from a well-trained horse.” And rarely have we gotten the expected result.”
And “There have been virtually no new ideas of organization since the concepts of corporation, nation state, and university emerged a few centuries ago.” And so, as Putnik says, “the scope of development efforts, in organizations, are primarily reformative rather than transformative.”(Putnik, *)
Hock tells of “A dean at a local college [who] put me in the way of the classics and awareness of both the power and the limitations of the human time. At the same time, conflict with that institution inflamed a growing preoccupation with the paradoxes inherent in organizations and the people who hold power within them.” On the one hand, the university feeds both “an interchangeable cognitive elite” with immense “Self-interest in preservation of the existing hierarchical forms of organization and the ever-increasing concentration of power and wealth they bring.” On the other hand, paradoxically, it also spawns a great deal of fodder for social change. Lucky for him, he was blessed, he says, “with a stubborn refusal to accept orthodox ideas, be persuaded by authoritarian means, or seek acceptance by conformity.” Long story short, “each time the Sheep determined to change the Company, the Company to corral the Sheep, and with the same inevitable result. Just another hunk of unemployed mutton bruised and bleeding on the sidewalk.”
And “Along the way, he swore a thousand oaths that were he ever to create an organization, things would be different.” “Our need had now become the understanding and coordination of variability, complexity, and effectiveness.”
It was the Joyce Foundation that engaged him “in a dialogue about the future,” “shared…my lifelong concern about the nature of contemporary institutions and the immanent risk of their collapse.” “These problems were much worse than anyone had imagined far beyond possibility of correction by the existing organization.” “The [Joyce] Foundation argued that people had lost confidence in existing institutions and were eager for new concepts… In their view, society was preparing itself for radically different ideas of community and organization.”
He was “elbowed into the chair” of a committee that he thought to be “an exercise in futility.” But the sheep he had become “was driven into management of the program.”
They asked him to discern - “What would it take to greatly accelerate chaordic institutional change throughout all aspects of society?” He called for: 1. other chaordic organizations to show success – in education, government, social services and commerce. 2. Need graphic modeling to show how chaordic systems self-organize and evolve into new patterns, and philosophical explanation to make it clear. 3. Need a global entity to emerge “that is organized on the chaordic principles it espouses.
He asked himself and the others – “If there were not constraints whatever, if anything imaginable was possible, what would be the nature (not the structure) of an ideal organization”…”for exchange of value in the form of arranged electronic signals,” (which makes ‘credit-card’ something of a misnomer). “No hierarchical corporation could do it…” In fact, “no existing form of organization could do it.”
From “a week of intense, night-and-day discussions,” holed up “in a small, remote hotel,” “a dozen or so simple principles emerged.” The answer that emerged was that such an organization would have to be organic, “would have to be based on biological concepts and methods. It would have to evolve – in effect to invent and organize itself.”
“it must be equally owned by all participants…with power and governance distributed…in a flexible but durable way… “capable of constant, self-generated, modification,” “must embrace diversity and change,” create “conditions and environments in which they could flourish.”
“the core of the enterprise has no knowledge of or authority over a vast number of the constituent parts, who are “at one and the same time, its owners, its customers, its subjects and its superiors. No part knows the whole, the whole does not know all the parts and none has any need to… the entirety like all chaords – including those you call body, brain, and biosphere, - is largely self-regulating.”
And it was by following these same principles that VISA had “completed the largest trademark conversion in commercial history in a third the time anticipated, and built the prototype of the present communication system in ninety days for less that $25,000.” “It remains difficult to describe that community, but the record is impressive with regard to what happened when chaordic principles were applied, power distributed, and human ingenuity released.”(Hock, *)
VISA espouses no political, economic, social or legal theory, thus transcending language, custom, politics, and culture to successfully connect institutions and peoples of every persuasion.” “It has multiple boards of directors within a single legal entity, none of which can be considered superior or inferior, as each has irrevocable authority and autonomy over geographic or functional areas.” “It has had no less than 20 percent and as much as 50 percent compound annual growth for a quarter century, through the best and worst times.” It would have a market value of $150 billion” if converted to a stock company. “Yet, it can’t be bought, traded, raided or sold since ownership is held in the form of perpetual nontransferable membership rights. However, that portion of the mission created by each member is owned solely by them,” “a very broad active market.”
“Time and time and time again they demonstrated a simple truth we have somehow lost sight of in Newtonian mechanistic organizations.” And that is that, “Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things.”
And so he “severed [his] connection with VISA for a life of anonymity and isolation, thinking to grow wooly with books, nature, and uninterrupted thought.” Read Waldrup’s Complexity in 1993, “concepts in the book were not surprising: they seemed like old, familiar friends.”
Hock has now founded the Global Chaordic Federation “to become the instrument through which substantive examples of chaordic institutional success could materialize…” “If that were to happen, it could catalyze within the decade the massive cultural, spiritual, and institutional change that a livable sustainable future demands.”
To simplify his hard learned convictions…
1. That the greatest danger is “greater and greater concentration of power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands.”
2. That we need radical organizational change based on “consequences of emerging science and technology was not gadgets…but radical, social change: ever-increasing diversity and complexity in the way people live and work.”
3. “Industrial Age mechanical command and control pyramids of power, whether political, social, educational, or commercial, were aberrations of the Industrial Age, antithetical to the human spirit, destructive of the biosphere, and structurally contrary to the whole history and methods of physical and biological evolution.”
4. Like the human body, the neural network of society is too complex even to imagine, let alone to manage.
5. “The most abundant, least expensive, most underutilized and frequently abused resource in the world was human ingenuity; the source of that abuse was archaic, Industrial Age institutions and the management practices they spawned.”
“The chaordic enterprise might be the end state toward which an actual company – seen as a learning organization – might evolve.”… “capable of self-organization and transformative change under hyper-turbulent conditions.” In other words, able and free to think on its feet and adapt intelligently to changing conditions.
“Much progress has already been made on that front in the peer-to-peer economy. In a September 27th article titled “Peer-to-Peer Economy Thrives as Activists Vacate the System,” Eric Blair reports that the Occupy Movement is engaged in a peaceful revolution in which people are abandoning the established system in favor of a ‘sharing economy.’ Trading occurs between individuals, without taxes, regulations or licenses, and in some cases without government-issued currency.” (http://truth-out.org/news/item/19314-is-homeland-security-preparing-for-the-next-wall-street-collapse)
“Progressives may call it the ‘sharing economy’ while Libertarians may refer to it as Agorism - a ‘society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution’."
“Whatever it's called, together, they're opting out of the current socioeconomic matrix and creating a new alternative economy where trading occurs peer-to-peer and increasingly without government-issued currency.”
“As Buckminster Fuller said, ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’"(http://www.activistpost.com/2013/09/peer-to-peer-economy-thrives-as.html)
As Willis Harman said, Hock’s work ushers in “a smooth, orderly transformation to a salubrious and sustainable global society,” one that could ward off “the chaos and anarchy that some see in our near-term future.” It represents, in fact, the healthiest form of anarchy, as it was originally understood by Peter Kropotkin to be a system of spontaneous mutual-aid – a dream our children’s children would thank us for realizing.
This is what we at the Madison Mentor Center hopes to help accomplish, not to compete with schools as we know them, but to compliment them so they can do what they do rather well even better. If that is testing, then they would compliment the work of every freelance teachers and independent student who needs, ultimately, to demonstrate mastery of what he or she has learned. So let the partnership begin.