Chaordic Alliance Website

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’

Margaret Mead

“We are in the midst of a pivotal time in history where everything we know is being called into account.”

• profound period of change
• dissolving and destroying all boundaries we thought we knew
• new boundaries are unclear
• the best and worst in us is being called out

“We are on the knifes edge of evolution.”

Dee Hock, 12/6, 2000

Our 3 (possible) courses of action:

1. Consciously try to make the “new” realities fit our customary way of organizing
2. Engage in denial (insulate and isolate)
3. Seriously quest an internal model of reality and embrace enthusiastically

The first 2 are easy but futile, the last enormously complex and difficult.

How do you create an institutional immune system?

It’s already there, inherent in them (institutions). Can we evoke it?

The greatest obstacle is in here (pointing to his head), within each of us. Language, embodied in images, metaphors and languages, has profound implications to how we communicate. There are many conversations but little communication.

Planning is vastly overrated, generally characterized as setting objectives with targeted outcomes. The planning process itself eliminates many possibilities. Instead we should get very clear on principles, which defines how you will conduct yourself in pursuit of your purpose. Purpose and principles are enduring while your practice should be infinitely malleable in its form and function.

Many Chaordic systems exist; all are archetypes (VISA, Alcoholics Anonymous, NAMA, CAIA, URI, Gore Industries, Society of Organizational Learning, Modrigal System (in Spain), the GeoData Project).

Science moved out of the mechanistic paradigm in the 1920’s and 30’s but they didn’t apply it to society.

I cannot see any pattern emerging from the responses to my book (The Birth of the Chaordic Age). I’d forecast 5-10% odds it will be realized.

I’ve done the best that I can. Now let’s let those that can do better.

Why do I do this? I just can’t do otherwise.

“The only thing I know is that it’s

far too late and far too bad for pessimism.”