Fall into Greatness: Exploring the GTIdeology
Every Thursday, September 1 — November 17, @ 4:00 PT & 7:00 ET
“The Skolny Organization exists for the visionary, for the artist, for the entrepreneur — for the authentic individual in each person who society says has no right to live in the world. The Skolny Organization exists for you.” — Vince Skolny
Beginning on September 1st and continuing until Thanksgiving, we will be discussing each of the GTIdeology’s ‘7 Radical Ideas’ to define ‘greatness,’ and consider the implications of ‘Greatness through the Individual’ for business and individuals.
Our GTIdeology is not radical because of its ideas broadly stated, but because of the seriousness with which we take them and the solutions they demand. It is rooted in the demonstrably unassailable philosophy of Greatness through the Individual (GTI), which provides the axiomatic starting point of the GTIdeology (the ideology of Greatness through the Individual) and our reason for existing as an Organization:
We exist to impact the world by creating and encouraging greatness through the Individual.
These discussions are aimed at that purpose. So, as the leaves begin to turn, footballs get teed up, and spiced cider replaces cold brews on Thursdays, we want to Fall into Greatness with you.
We will challenge and reject many common social and business assumptions, promulgating the GTIdeology to be challenged, yet fully intending to influence through it.
It promises to be challenging and, at a few points, probably provocative. And of course, it will also be fun. After all, it’s happy hour.
We are excited about it and hope you will join us on Thursdays all fall.
Here is the entire schedule of the topics (plus links to position posts, transcripts, and Vince’s rejoinders as they are published) with a synopsis of the 7 Radical Ideas.
Follow us here and on twitter to keep up with everything and tweet @ us if you’d like a weekly Happy Hour reminder with a position post link and the discussion Qs.
Organizational Purpose and Structure: A Radical Organization requires Radical Leadership
September 1 to September 22
Our first and second Radical Ideas define the Skolny Organization’s purpose, relationship to society, and its necessary organizational structure. In essence, the Organization is governed by the GTIdeology itself and the self-governing individuals who comprise it.
Our 1st Radical Idea, A Radical Organization: The organization must transcend society.
September 1 –Defining Greatness: Individuals Are the Thing
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Our notions of greatness are at odds with social norms and assumptions. Contrary to those assumptions that greatness is exclusive, defined by achievement, we believe that greatness is the potential of any individual, volitionally fulfilled in a way that makes them happy.
That is the radical root of the entire GTIdeology. We believe that of ‘Greatness through the Individual’ is created when each individual incarnates personhood and potential in pursuit of a shared vision, mission, or purpose.
We exist to impact the world by creating and encouraging that greatness.
September 8 — The Radical Organization in a Dysfunctional Society
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Vince asserts that social, emotional, and psychological dysfunction is ubiquitous, the norm, because society relentlessly attacks and quashes the individual. Is he right? And what does it mean for creating greatness through the Individual?
Our 2nd Radical Idea, Radical Leadership: All hierarchical and structural authority is invalid.
September 15 — Courage, Encouragement, and the Culture of Greatness
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Vince believes that it takes literal courage to create greatness through the Individual in our anti-individualist and dysfunctional society and that for most of us that courage requires the encouragement of others striving to create greatness themselves. The Skolny Organization’s Culture of Greatness is an environment in which greatness through the Individual is relentlessly encouraged.
September 22 — Embracing Radical Leadership (Plus Vince’s birthday party!)
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Radical leadership is the only leadership system in which every individual member of an organization can truly thrive. It rejects all structural and hierarchical authority that subordinates one individual to another depending instead on encouragement. Likewise it depends on neither personal charisma nor motivational tactics to gain compliance from and conformity of others with or in a structural authority system.
Three Key Values: Opportunity, Diversity, and Equality
September 29 to October 20
At the heart of the GTIdeology are our three core values that translate to our market morals. The values are a moral triumvirate — each is necessary for and dependent upon the other two — that defines what we will not do and with whom we will not work for the sake of profit.
Our 3rd Radical Idea, Radical Opportunity: Potential is more valuable than experience.
September 29 — The Potential Virus: Radical Opportunity and Visionary Action
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: In our dysfunctional society experience rarely reflects potential, reflecting instead historical personal circumstance. Therefore, we esteem individual potential as more valuable than experience, thereby unfettering an Individual from her or his past and both its real and perceived constraints. Radical Opportunity allows and demands visionary action taking to develop potential that will spread as a virus throughout the Organization.
Our 4th Radical Idea, Radical Diversity: The Individual is the fundamental social building block.
October 6 — Radical Diversity and an Essential Impact
Read: Our Postion Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Creating an impact on the world is essential to any organization. It is impossible not to. The issue is only what the impact will be and whether it is intentional. Impact must also be essential as the necessary outcome of its visionary activity, most fundamentally created and defined by its individual members.
October 13 — The Impact Motive: Creating Meaning through Work in an Alienated Society
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Money qua money is not the singular and primary driving motivator for most individuals, but our entire economy is based on the assumption that it is or should be. It creates a sense of alienation and purposelessness driven by an unfulfilled “impact motive,” the desire to contribute in ways that matter to the individual contributors. Therefore, the solution cannot be to ‘find’ meaning in work, but to create it.
Our 5th Radical Idea, Radical Equality: Profit belongs to the Individual who creates value.
October 20 — Radical Equality and the Blurry Line Profit Motive (Plus 100th Happy Hour celebration party!)
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript
Summary: The ‘profit motive’ is a real, good, and valid thing. Nobody works for free. But it is also particular to the individual, in both its strength and its emphasis on financial profit. The solution is to shift from the “best (most profitable) use” of capital to its chosen use, recognizing that profit belongs to the Individual who creates value.
Practice and People: Radical Capitalism conducted by Radical Individuals
October 27 to November 17
Any ideology is legitimate only in so far as it can be practiced consistently and without imposing on others, the GTIdeology included. Our sixth and seventh Radical Ideas provide the practical framework for our Family of Companies and its guiding strategy, respectively.
Our 6th Radical Idea, Radical Capitalism: The for-profit community must be a moral community.
October 27 — Radical Capitalism: Creating Wealth and Meaning in a For-Profit Moral Community
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: American Capitalism has created profound wealth by which every individual from the bum to the boardroom lives far beyond what her or his daily effort individual would enable outside of the system. It has also created a universally dysfunctional, class-based, hierarchical society. A shift from what an Individual has relative to others to what that Individual is proud to have created and become is essential.
November 3 — Individual Values, Market Morals, and ‘Cult-like’ Cultures
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: While many businesses prattle on about values, maybe even taking easy and popular “value-driven” actions, “values” are nebulous and rarely distinctive. Very few companies actually tread onto the ground of ‘morals’ where it is easier to judge the congruence of their words and practices. But every business indeed has “market morals” — those values that actually define how they treat others, with whom they will or will not work, and what they will or will not do for lucre. Understanding and embracing them is vital.
Our 7th Radical Idea, Radical Individuals: We work with our friends. We profit. We have fun.
November 10 — Defining ‘Friends’: 3 Essential Traits
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: There is no expectation that every member of the Skolny Organization be a BFF or a bro. As in the rest of life there are different sorts and different levels of friendships. Being “work friends” is both necessary and sufficient but that means more than colleagues. There are three essential aspects of any friendship — shared morals, liking, and trusting. Each is an essential aspect of our recruiting and hiring process.
November 17 — Defining Greatness: YOU Are the Thing
Read: Our Position Post | The Discussion Transcript | Vince’s Rejoinder
Summary: Our final discussion brings us full circle to again defining greatness. It follows that if Individuals are the thing that you are the thing. It is impossible to exist as a Radical Organization without comprising a community of radical individuals. Embracing the GTIdeology means embracing that there can be no radical leadership, radical opportunity, radical diversity, radical equality, or radical capitalism — that there can be no Greatness Through the Individual without radical individuals determined to create it.
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 24 — American Thanksgiving is one of three Thursdays each year (along with the last two) on which there is no happy hour get together. Enjoy your family, friends, and turkey, and we’ll see you in December!
Coming in December… Holiday Greens: Holly, Ivy, Money We have two follow up profit-related discussions from our 2016 Summer of Collaboration planned, plus a discussion about Holiday Bonuses on tap for our annual holiday happy hour party on December 15.
#GTIdeology Happy Hour
You’re invited to — and we hope that you will — join us at 4:00 PT & 7:00 ET every Thursday, to unofficially kick off the weekend and discuss these issues with us and the smart, fun, and friendly #GTIdeology Happy Hour crowd.
Follow us on twitter to keep up with everything and tweet @ us if you’d like a weekly Happy Hour reminder with a position post link and the discussion Qs.
