Why It’s Worth Knowing Who Started What
Organisations aren’t important.
What matters is the moments where we take the initiative.
Look at everything that anyone has ever made in the world: cathedrals, global social justice movements, teapots, anything. Everything starts with someone taking the initiative. Sometimes, in the process of making those things, someone will start an organisation. Sometimes they won’t. It’s not important. What matters is the moments where we take the initiative.
There’s nothing wrong with starting an organisation. Like, there’s nothing wrong with starting an imaginary club with your friends in the playground when you’re six years old. An organisation is just another thing that someone made by taking the initiative. Organisations belong to that class of things that only exist in the imagination and are fictional. Stories that can be written and rewritten. Content. The moments when we take initiative belong to a different class of things.
Start an organisation. Choose a name. Choose some rules. Choose how many people you’d like to be in it. Choose its favourite colour. Choose a picture to sum it up. You can choose anything you like. Everything is negotiable. If, after a while, you change your mind about the name, change the name. If you change your mind about the rules, change the rules. The colour, the number of people in it — anything — you only have to change your mind and you can change them. It’s just content.
Initiatives are different to organisations. That moment when you take the initiative to start something — you can’t go back and change that. You can wish you hadn’t taken that first step, but you can’t un-take it. Because initiatives belong to the world of verifiable, historical facts. For every thing that was ever made by people, there was a person who started it. A person who took the initiative. And — you can tell different stories about it if you like — but you can’t change who started something. You can’t change when something started. You can’t change what motivated someone to start something.
If you want to understand what you’re doing, you have to look past stories of organisations. Because those stories are changeable. If you’re working for an organisation, knowing the name of the organisation doesn’t tell you what you’re doing there — someone could decide to change the name tomorrow. If you want to understand what you’re doing, you have to look back to the moments where someone took the initiative. Because that is something that actually happened. Because that is the moment of creation.
“All life starts this way…
…Something vague taking shape.
A shape emerges from a seed.
And the life that’s there in the seed
is the source of the whole creation.”
- From ‘I thought I was on the way to work, but I was on the way home’
When we’re working together, it’s important to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction. Between things that are made-up and can be changed and things that are not made up and can’t be changed. Not because fact is good and fiction is bad, but because different rules apply.
Job titles are fictional. Job descriptions are fictional. The vast majority of organisational charts are fictional. The fact that you can hire consultants and pay them $10 million to come in and ‘re-organise’ and rewrite organisational charts shows that those things are fictional and can be rewritten.
The moment when someone started a thing — that’s a factual moment you can track down and record. It’s fixed. The moment when someone stepped up to help — that’s fixed. These moments of commitment are historical moments. And the details of these moments are revealing: What motivated that first step? What was being committed to? Who was committing to whom? These things are of a different order to job descriptions and job titles. A consultant can’t come in and just decide they’re different. They happened.
It’s these historical moments that create the field that we work in. When you’re working on a project with a group of people, when you’re recruited into a company, the only way you can really know what you’re doing is to find out who you’re helping and what they need. Who started this? When? What did they commit to do? Why did they commit to that? Who is helping them? What are they helping with? When did they commit to helping? What am I helping with? Who am I helping? What am I committed to? When did I commit?
These questions have answers. They’re not answers you can invent. They’re only answers you can uncover. And being clear about the answers is being clear about what you’re doing. And not being clear about the answers is not being clear about what you’re doing. More often than not though, these questions aren’t even asked. While the world is well drilled in the importance of accounting every financial transaction, when money isn’t involved the accounting can get a little sloppy. Ask who paid for something in an organisation and you can be sure it’s written down. Ask who started something? Not so sure.
But why shouldn’t the same rigour we expect in financial processes be applied to creative processes? When we’re so disciplined about recording how much what we’re doing costs (or earns), why not be equally disciplined about recording what we’re doing? If you put money at the heart of work, then maybe it makes sense to only pay attention to the money. But when work is purposeful, when work is focused on realising a vision, then it pays to pay attention to what the vision is, where it came from and what progress is being made towards it being met.
This requires a different kind of accounting.
Think of the moment when a project starts. Not the moment when a Limited Company is registered. Not when a legal contract is signed. Not when someone cuts a ribbon or unlocks the door to a new office. The moment when it starts.
It’s probably not a grand moment. It’s probably not very photogenic. It’s probably kind of mundane. But it is momentous. And for the person doing the starting, it tends to stand shiny and bright in their memory. I’ve probably talked to a hundred people this year about the moments when they took the initiative to start something. And it would seem that the vast majority of these moments took place in coffee shops. Or bars or hotel rooms or long train journeys. But most often it’s coffee shops. (Maybe we’re all just following the trend set in 17th Century London when, seemingly, most of modern society was initiated by people sitting around drinking coffee. Drinking coffee and inventing the insurance industry. That kind of thing.)
Two people are chatting. The conversation sprawls. Maybe different questions get thrown around, different ideas are toyed with. Nothing is really happening. Then one of them takes a step. Actually proposes an action. Maybe invites the other to make something happen. And in that moment, something starts. From that point, they might start making plans. They might recruit more people. They might hire offices and design logos and register websites. They might build an empire. But this is the point where it started. And that moment matters.
And not just that moment. Not just the moment when person number one invites number two. Not just the moment where person number two steps in. But the moment when person number two invites person number three. And person number three invites… well, every moment where anyone invites anyone. Every moment where anyone steps up. Those moments where visions are shared and committed to. Where risks are taken. Where responsibility is taken.
And these moments should be accounted for. Because they form a factual map of the creative process. Because a map like that shows you who is helping who with what and why. And it tells you who is responsible for what and who is responsible to whom. And it tells you who committed to what and when. And it tells you who has authority. It tells you who instigated a project. Who is the author of a project or a piece of a project.
It’s not about designing an organisation. It’s not about rewriting job titles or restructuring departments or paying McKinsey $10 million to rearrange stuff. It’s about paying attention to how things actually are and how things actually work. It’s about personal commitments and personal responsibility. It’s about people taking initiative. Because you can rewrite job titles and restructure departments and pay McKinsey $10 million if you like, but that won’t change how things actually are or how things actually work.
Because these are the moments that define how work works. These undramatic, factual moments of people stepping up. Of people expressing their vision and making themselves vulnerable and asking for help in realising it. Everything else is a sideshow.
Organisations aren’t important.
What matters is the moments where we take the initiative.
This way of looking at how people work together is built on Peter Koenig’s thinking on ‘Source’. For an introduction to Peter’s approach, see Work With Source. For more on how to be clear, subscribe.
