Overview of organizing orders

This is a post in my series on organizing  “between and beyond.” Other posts are here. The series is inspired by David Bohm’s and F. David Peat’s notion of “the order between and beyond”.¹ I wrote in the 1^st post that organizing “beyond” is a “deeper order” of organizing which transcends the compromises in “existing orders”. And I identified a number of questions in the 2^nd post which gives a direction to the search for a “deeper order.” The purpose with this post is to start the exploration.

Let’s see what organizing “orders”² we can find. Let’s see how they are entwined within each other in ways that are basically incompatible. And, finally, let’s also see what other clues to a “deeper order” we can find. The focus for now is on getting an overview.

Overview
What we are interested in, as a first step, is to identify existing “orders” of organizing. Many different frameworks, approaches and conceptions have been developed over the years. The challenge is that these approaches cannot be thought of as being well-defined organizing “orders.” However, they all contain leadership/followership and individual/collective decision making in one way or another. The following table shows some examples (unsorted).

Comments
When analyzing the approaches in the table above, the notion of “information”³ becomes important. And “misinformation”⁴ becomes particularly problematic! As an example, Taiichi Ohno, the man behind the Toyota Production System unequivocally warned against using any kind of label on grounds that people then would view it as a ready-made package.⁵ He counseled, never codify method, because it is the thinking that is the key. This means that the label Lean, in itself, is misinformation. And the same is true for Agile, which has become an arena for consultants and vendors. Another example of misinformation is Holacracy’s use of the term holarchy,⁶ a term coined by Arthur Koestler.⁷ Holacracy is said to abolish the hierarchy, while a holarchy, according to Koestler, is a hierarchy. Identifying misinformation is very time consuming but necessary. Furthermore, an approach may not only generate “misinformation,” but might also be misinformed, which is why “active questioning of all assumptions including our own” is important.⁸

Another step in the analysis is to identify how the various approaches are entwined within each other in ways that are basically incompatible. An example is how Holacracy is entwined with Sociocracy.⁹ Another example is the incompatibility between value and method in Sociocracy. There is a strong emphasis on “equivalence” in Sociocracy,¹⁰ while the “equivalence” at the same time is limited to decision-making on “operating limits” only.¹¹ A third example is the incompatibility between Holacracy, where the power is in the process,¹² and Agile, which values individuals and interactions over processes and tools.¹³

A third step in the analysis is to look at the history of the approaches to understand how the thinking has evolved. This can be particularly valuable and revealing. An example is Sociocracy, which not only is influenced by cybernetics,¹⁴ but also by how Quakers make unanimous decisions.¹⁵ Another example is Holacracy’s patent application from 2007,¹⁶ which gives insight into the historical development of Holacracy and its relation to Sociocracy. The patent application was subsequently abandoned. Sociocracy is prior art. These are just a few examples. Again, the focus is on getting an overview. The analysis will require considerable time and creative energy.

Here is the next post in the series. Here are all posts.

Notes:
¹ David Bohm and F. David Peat, Science, Order, and Creativity (Routledge, 2010-09-01, first published 1987-10-01), p. 275.
² The notion of “order” is from David Bohm and F. David Peat. Bohm and Peat explore the meanings and implications of “order”. They try to deepen and extend the understanding, rather than making a definition or exhaustive analysis. Ibid., p. 98.
³ Bohm and Peat introduce the notion of “active information,” which is important in explaining generative orders. Ibid., p. 80.
⁴ Bohm and Peat view “misinformation” as “pollution”. Ibid., p. 249.
⁵ John Seddon, Freedom from Command & Control (Vanguard Consulting Ltd., 2nd ed. 2005), p. 149.
⁶ The type of structure used for organizations in Holacracy is not a traditional hierarchy, but a ”holarchy.” See Brian Robertson, Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy (Penguin, 2015), p. 38.
⁷ Arthur Koestler defined a holon as a node in a hierarchic tree which behaves partly as wholes or wholly as parts, and a holarchy as a hierarchy of holons. See Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine, (Last Century Media, 1982, first published 1967), pp. 48, 103, 348.
⁸ Jon Husband et al., The Wirearchy Commons, Wirearchy: Sketches for the Future of Work pp. 5–6.
⁹ See my comparison of Holacracy vs. Sociocracy.
¹⁰ Gerard Endenburg, Sociocracy: The organization of decision-making, (Eburon, 1998), pp. 44, 49, 143, 167.
¹¹ Ibid., p. 23.
¹² Brian Robertson emphasizes that ”rules and processes reign supreme” in Holacracy. See Brian Robertson, Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy (Penguin, 2015), p. 21.
¹³ Agile values ”Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. See the Agile Manifesto.
¹⁴ The engineering perspective is strong in Sociocracy. The way of seeing is the engineer’s. The operating idea is cybernetics. I have written about it here.
¹⁵ Michael J. Sheeran, Beyond Majority Rule: Voteless decisions in the Religious Society of Friends.
¹⁶ See Brian Robertson’s patent application Pub. No. US2009/006113 A1. The patent application was filed in 2007, became public in 2009, and was subsequently abandoned.

Revision history:

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts