Community in Business

I’ve reflecting on what it is that I’m trying to accomplish by blogging. One of the things I told myself when I started this blog, is to have an ability to organize my thoughts. I find it to be working well.

Some of what I have written may have been idealistic. There is nothing wrong with idealism but ultimately ideas and thoughts need to be practical. A solution to problems and taking action is what will spin the wheels. I’m still learning how to make the wheels spin. I’m a visionary and need to surround myself with people who can keep me in the present.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it would look if a community mind set would be embraced in the business world (there are positive signs already that the business world is beginning to adopt community). I believe that if community were adopted by businesses it would at least solve some of the ills (serious ills that is) in today’s corporate world. When I talk about community in groups or with friends I see puzzled faces and frowns. It does not surprise me considering that the majority of people today are embedded in rugged individualism. This is reflected in the corporate world on more then one level.

The following are community attributes according to Scott Peck who wrote extensively about community and also did Community Building Workshops (CBW) for businesses and individuals before he past away. They are realistic and obtainable.

Inclusivity, commitment and consensus
Learn to communicate
Realism
Contemplation
A safe place
A laboratory for personal disarmament
A group that can fight gracefully
A group of all leaders
A spirit

On the fifth point Peck says: “An experiment is designed to give us new experience from which we can extract new wisdom. So it is that in experimenting with personally disarming themselves, the members of a true community experientially discover the rules of peacemaking and its virtues.”

Based on his experience with community building workshops, Peck says that community building typically goes through four stages (stage four is a true community)

Pseudo community
Chaos
Emptiness
True community

For a description of the four stages click here. Similar stages are also described in what is called organization theory. See the above link.

The personal experience I’ve had in community for two years now, the above stages work like clock work. Sadly many groups (including in businesses) are either stuck in pseudo community or chaos and when out of chaos (a group that does not know how to work through emptiness) will go back in to pseudo community.

For more information on community building these two books have a wealth of information. A World Waiting to be Born and the Different Drum both by Scott Peck