Timothy Wilken
I had a good first meeting with my prospective Ortegrity client on Saturday. We spend 3+ hours in a friendly exchange of information. The owner of the company and 4 of his primary associates attended. I was fortunate in that they had all read my paper on Organizational Tensegrity, so had some familiarity with the ideas being presented. At first I answered questions, and then led them through the start up scenario. They seemed to accept synergic relationship as nothing very new. They said as a small company they were already quite synergic. When I suggested that using the concept of synergic consensus and synergic veto in a more formal setting might be more powerful than they imagined, they were open to that but wanted some practical examples. I then suggested they tell me about some of the real problems concerning them, and I would guide them through a practice Ortegrity process.
The meeting got much more interesting as they began discussing real issues and concerns. They all grew more animated and finally, one member began by stating a problem of great concern for him. I noticed some hesitation on the part of the owner as the discussion turned to this particular problem so reassured the group that this was just a practice session and that the decisions made here were not binding. Simply, lets try the process and see what happens.
I then asked for comments from the group as to better define the problem. After a some more discussion, modifications were made. Once defined, I asked for a proposed solution.
One member ventured a proposed solution. I then asked for amendments or suggestions for how to make the proposed solution better. After a few minutes of vigorous discussion the suggested proposal was amended and finalized. In turned out that this problem had been aggravating the organization for sometime, but the owner had not felt comfortable taking action.
I then called for synergic veto. I asked if anyone saw anyway the proposal would cause loss for anyone in the organization, they were required to veto. After, a moment of reflection. Each member stated they had no veto. I then explained that all motions not vetoed were passed. The owner spoke up at this point. He said he was genuinely surprised by how he felt. He said he had always been uncomfortable when asked to solve this particular problem in the past, but felt very much in support of the group’s decision to solve it.
Their decision made, I next asked for a volunteer to take the lead in implementing their agreed upon solution. One member quickly volunteered to accept responsibility for implementation. I explained the process of negotiated action teams. We talked about Leader—Follower, sometimes I lead, sometimes I follow. The necessity of sometimes using hierarchy when time constraints occur. They seemed comfortable with this concept as well.
However, what really excited them was proprietary compensation. Andrew J. Galambos’ developed an Expanded Concept of Property which includes Life itself, the first derivatives of man’s life which are his thoughts and ideas. Ideas and actions produce further, or secondary, derivatives. These include the utilization, enjoyment, and disposal of material, tangible goods of all kinds from ash trays to television sets, from log cabins to skyscrapers, from oxcarts to jet planes. Proprietary compensation means you are entitled to get paid proportionately to your contribution to the organization—compensation for your time, effort and ideas—compensation that is reflective or your true value to the company—proportional compensation reflective of the value of your property contributed to the organization.
We discussed briefly the principles of synergic royalty compensation based on the investment of action and leverage on behalf of the organization. But, they wanted more than principles, they wanted a method to calculate proprietary compensation. At the request of the owner I agreed to develop an example spreadsheet based on the financial data on his business of what proprietary compensation might look like for his circumstance. This should be a good intellectual exercise for me. I guess I will have to put my money where my mouth is! ;>)
All in all very worthwhile. I learned a lot. The things that concerned them were not what I expected. I will be meeting with them again next week. It was a great learning experience.
Yesterday, I announced we are shifting from theory to application. This is the next phase of the synergic evolution. In a synergic future how does a group of humans desiring to work together make decisions?