Why the chaordic design process?
by Tim Kjeldsen
In 2001, Don Weed created a Steering Group to help the transition of ITM from a ‘closely held training organisation’ to a ‘democratically based members’ association’. It became apparent to me during the discussions that we could either attempt to graft an existing model of democratic organisation on to the present set up, or we would need to do some radical thinking (in the original sense of that word: a return to roots) to find a model that accurately reflected the strengths and values of the ITM community.
This view was endorsed by the feedback received from a consultation exercise done with the ’99 Training Course. Amongst the requests for a traditional membership structure there were numerous comments about wanting a non-hierarchical organisation, with a minimum of bureaucracy.
I’d had experience of a more traditional structure with other organisations, and didn’t feel comfortable myself with the way things were conducted. In particular I hated the sense that a small elite group seemed to take huge amounts of work onto themselves, whilst the rest of the membership did very little, the result being that the former complained about how no-one got involved, and the latter complained about what the former did! I hoped that, given our adherence to principles and the synergy that is generated by the ITM approach, we could create an organisation which was truly synergic: in which the minimal efforts of each individual member would contribute to a maximal output in productive activity.
At the same time I was having a series of conversations with my friend and colleague Linda Harris, who has thought a great deal about organisations, and was struck by her fear that an organisation can ‘structure out’ participation from the beginning if it is not careful, and that a living, vital organisation should be like a healthy organism: not a carapace, in her words, but a tree. She spoke about an ‘educative participatory organisation’ in which we were not merely fulfilling set functions, but learning to work together to produce something greater than the sum of the parts. And she distinguished between the ‘hard structure’ which needs to be a transparent and efficient machine to communicate and execute the community’s will, and the ‘soft structure’ which needs, amongst other things, to be a ‘mechanism for catching ideas’.
So I typed ‘forms of organisation’ into Google one Sunday afternoon and found myself at the Chaordic Commons site. I had some considerable difficulty working out what it was for, but it gradually dawned upon me that they were talking about creating organisations which are infinitely adaptable in terms of structure and procedures, but knit together by a clear and deep sense of purpose and principle; mutually articulated and held. The mistake, according to this view, is to rush prematurely to setting up structures without taking the time to determine what the organisation is for, and what principles should govern its conduct. Such structures are in danger of becoming obstacles to, rather than means of, participation and development. The structures in a principle-based organisation, on the other hand, can be generated and dissolved with relative ease; they need never outlive their usefulness, they are always open to adaptation; they are always ultimately subordinate to the principles and values which underlie them. This is what gives rise to the term ‘chaordic’: a synthesis of ‘chaos’ and ‘order’, designed to represent the modern organisation living at the frontier of order and chaos; never so ‘ordered’ that it is inflexible and resistant to change, never so ‘chaotic’ that energies are dissipated in the attempt to run it.
It hardly needs saying how much this is in accord with Alexander, and particularly, ITM values. That it is has been shown by how readily the idea was embraced, first by the Steering Group, and then by the wider ITM community. We set up a design team to follow the chaordic design process, beginning with an in-depth investigation into the purpose of the organisation we want to create. We have no idea what is going to become of it, but the design team meetings we have had so far suggest that it is going to be an absorbing and rewarding process.