Alex

After sharing the Visa story and underlying concepts, I told a small story. [...] Why then does such a system still lie dormant in the field of health? The answer is not complicated. Who would you trust to own and control such a system? [...] Only with the evolution of a chaordic organization in which all relevant and affected parties have an

Everyone, any time, could see the picture emerge and evolve. They could see how the whole depended on their work, and how their work was connected to every other part of the effort. [...] To be able to get one's own work done and help another became a sought-after privilege.

When speaking of others, rarely was a person referred to by name. The language suggested object or thing, not person. There was classification of individuals by nationality, race, or religious origination, and generalizations about each class. There was reluctance to deal with others as individual human beings. There was even greater reluctance to

Competition and cooperation are not contraries. They have no opposite meaning. They are complimentary. [...] Cooperation gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of equality, use of centralized force to achieve uniformity, ever-increasing coercion to sustain it, and eventual slavery. Competition gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of

Think of it as a reverse holding company. The regulations to which each party must submit are created by them. Any time a member does not like what has been created, they are free to walk away without obligation. It is an open, enabling, self-governing organization.

The issue of duality was the greatest example. On no issue were we more right. On none did we fail more ignominiously. [...] complete freedom of banks to become owner/members of both the MasterCharge and BankAmericard systems would foreclose the emergence of new systems, and severely limit consumer choice.

Visa was a quasi-governmental, quasi-for-profit, quasi-consulting, [...] It was none of them, yet it was all of them. It was chaordic. In the strict legal sense, Visa was a nonstock, for-profit, membership organization. [...] The financial institutions that create its products were, at one and the same time, its owners, its members, its customers,

Side by side with a compelling desire to excel in the world as he found it was equal desire to behave in accordance with the world as he wished it to be. Shoulder to shoulder with desire for power, fame, and fortune was longing for solitude and contemplation. Hand in hand with the urge to excitement and action was the call to contemplation and

Why are organizations, everywhere, political, commercial, and social, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?

Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part?

Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?