Invitation to an Experiment: How can we build more humane organizations?
We are living in an amazing age of innovation with the creation of the digital ecosystem, as important as the Cambrian explosion, I believe that now is the time to re-invent and re-imagine everything, a time to question why and how we do everything, to think differently, so that we can explore other ways.
I dream to change the world through building more humane organisations. So how can we do this? What are your thoughts here?
To begin with here are my thoughts and questions around five key areas which we need to consider in designing more humane organisations:
1. Fairness — The Inspiration
I always believed that there’s a better way, a fairer, a more humane world possible. If there is one word that sums it up for me it would be “fairness”. Fairness can be used to address the three divides we see today, the ecological divide (between self and nature), the social divide (between self and others), and the spiritual divide (between self and self), this is something that we should explore further. I see fairness to be the foundation for more humane organisations.
2. Collaboration and Transparency — The Values
Collaboration and transparency used by a co-creation team are critical in designing a fairer society, a more humane society and ultimately more humane organisations. I feel the pain of many of the people who would like to work in more humane organisations. I would like to see the our learnings to be shared openly. I believe that it will be collaboration not competition that will help us in the longer term. How do we make this happen? Trust will be a critical barrier to address, before collaboration and transparency will flourish.
3. A Foundation — The Processes
Ideas are the seeds of businesses, seeds need a foundation to grow. I see the humble farmer (the startup founders, others and myself) trying tirelessly to plant his/her seeds into the soil and help them grow, and as I look across the world I imagine billions of seeds , looking for a place to grow, but today what we have is a desert as only a very few grow. I dream to discover the soil to make it easier for start-ups to grow and flourish. I see a role to help to discover this soil to create a more hospitable environment, so that together we can plant our seeds and let them grow.
4. Evolutionary Teal — The Technology
We need organisations based on Teal principles. I believe that startups leveraging Teal principles will be the disruptive organisational change makers to make this world a fairer, a more humane place. So what do Teal startups with this new organisational design, DNA look like? In order to find this out, I believe that a co-creation team is needed, to discover this eco-centric, organic system, the evolving DNA for startups. This DNA will need to be shared, iterated upon, re-shared by the startups with gratitude as the glue. Furthermore, I see technology as our liberator here, and the internet, as a powerful platform that will be crucial to accelerate the evolution of this DNA in driving change forward, for fairer, more humane organisations.
5. A Community — The People
We really need to rethink the way in which we engage people. How do we find them? These days a community is an important thing for startups, they consist of our innovators, our early adopters, etc.; without a community it is nay impossible to launch a startup successfully. Once we find people, how do we compensate and recognise them for their efforts in a fairer way? When we think about compensation today, we immediately think about salaries or equity. And in order to pay salaries we then need to think about how we get funding? Today’s funding come from various sources, e.g. angel, venture capital organisations, traditional bank loans, etc, most are using Orange money, some are using Green money, but maybe we need Teal money? Or maybe it’s something else? Is money really the best way? Next how do we grow people? Mentorship will be a key part of the community; together we learn, together we grow, together we become fairer people, we become experts in our fields of passion.
If a different, fairer, more humane organisations is possible, what will such a future way look like? Now is the time to design a new entrepreneurship startup model, to discovery a new way. I can already start to imagine a fairer, a more humane world is beginning to emerge. As part of the journey of “Teal for Startups” we will be exploring these in more depth and will be developing an online resource to share, collaborate, iterate, a possible way forward. Join us!
