Synergetic organizations. Part II

Many have already heard the term turquoise organizations, which came from the book of F. Laloux “Discovering the organizations of the future” (Frederic Laloux “Reinventing organizations”). This has become a fashion trend in recent years, a whole community of supporters of this theory has already formed, which is being implemented in business with varying degrees of success.



I also do not stand aside from this exciting process, which you can read about in my previous publications . We began to build self-government in our IT company long before the work of F. Lalu, first intuitively, later more meaningfully, and now we are developing our own vision - a synergistic organization.

I recently gave a short interview on this subject, and I got a very obvious question: what is the difference between a synergetic organization and a turquoise one? Up to this point, no effort has been made to separate the concepts, but it is time to fix the difference, as well as to propose for discussion a new vision of self-organization of joint activities. It is important that the fundamental basis for these concepts is the same - self-organization, the pursuit of integrity and the evolutionary goal, but I highlight two important differences.



First differencein the methods of implementing processes within the company. Such concepts as trust, interdependence, a secure communication environment, openness and transparency are key to nurturing a turquoise essence, but everything rests on the initiator of these changes, i.e. you need a leader who will himself be at the turquoise level of development and will help the company transform. That is why in the book of F. Lalu, one of the prerequisites for a successful transition is the acceptance by the leadership of these values. I see this as a paradox and vulnerability of the turquoise concept, as long as the leader is turquoise, everything is fine, but if he changed his views or another person came, what then? There is no management pyramid, but the role of the owner-founder remains key and retains all the risks of the human factor.

I call it the “curse of the captain,” whether I want it or not, my voice will always be especially significant and sometimes decisive. My subjective look can take us to a new level, create something new, but there is always the possibility that I am mistaken, and not the fact that other colleagues will be able (want) to understand this in time. I fully agree that for starters there should be a crystallization point in the form of a specific person, but further development requires a more flexible decision-making system and resource allocation. The initiator himself is a necessary condition for the emergence, but it can also become the main cause of failure. Dialectics to the utmost!

Therefore, I propose to get rid of this subjectivity and throw the captain overboard! It’s a joke that you don’t need to throw anyone away, but in the turquoise approach in this place it is proposed to change the role of the founder to a respectable mentor, modest consultant, chief facilitator, etc. This is all great, but not enough for the stable evolutionary development of the organization, since it does not solve the most important problem - the subjective factor of one particular person, this is the point of failure, the reason for a possible change in the entire strategy of the organization. Add here the fact that immortality is not yet available to us, although it would only enhance the negative effect.

The synergetic organization proposes to solve this through information technology, and more specifically through the implementation of decentralized protocols with collective consensus, I think only the lazy did not hear about blockchain, there was a lot of hype, but it always happens with innovations when the “monkeys” cannot understand where attach points to see reality. Already, there are many experiments on project management based on distributed protocols. For me, the use of this tool to solve the above problem is obvious.

We can now tokenize various assets, develop deterministic decision-making algorithms, legally consolidate events and entities in the blockchain. Distributed technology is great for breaking the curse of subjectivity, because after developing a protocol, defining work principles, allocating resources and consensus updating protocol, the organization is separated from the creator, it is able to live its own life, this is a kind of birth of a new life. The success of such a digital form of existence depends on the inherent genes - the principles of consensus and its cells - people. This is not in the concept of turquoise, but is offered in a synergistic model.



Second differencemore fundamental, since it affects the very foundations of human relations and the building of society. We can talk a lot about turquoise and the innovations that it brings, but not mention the most important thing, which the author of the turquoise term also modestly ignored. More precisely, he practically did not see this in the companies under study, and if there were rudiments, then they were insufficient for serious conclusions. We are talking about the owners of the company, about private property, this is a fundamental concept that needs to be paid close attention.

We are invited to create a living organization with human relationships and the right principles, but nothing is said about who owns this pet? It is taken for granted that it belongs to the founding owners and investors, who else? When I see the publications of Sberbank on the creation of turquoise branches, it sincerely amuses me, on the one hand it’s good that German Gref is in trend, on the other - you really think that this will work for many years, evolve, develop by ordinary employees, it will become something new ? I can’t take these things seriously, although I’m ready to say thanks for spreading the ideas of self-organization.

In fact, it turns out that we changed the form, but left the content the same, there is an owner, and there are turquoise people who have created comfortable conditions for work and development, this is definitely progress, but I see a serious flaw in it, I’m sure my discerning reader, you’re his you see too. This is where the fundamental difference from turquoise lies - the synergetic organization must belong to people who invested their work, ideas, money and time into it, precisely to those who work or worked in it - the community of professionals, but this does not mean that the founders need to go By no means do they have a legitimate and fair right to a good share, but on an equal footing, without the possibility of abuse or sole control.



Many will argue that this is difficult to implement, but no one promised a simple life, otherwise they would have lived and not been troubled for a long time. Here I must return to the first difference, since the issue of ownership can also be effectively resolved on the basis of distributed technologies with reference to a specific jurisdiction, which recognizes entries in the distributed registry. I am saying all this on behalf of the founding owner, realizing that not all turquoise leaders will agree with such a paradigm, but we will be happy to call those who are ready to go this difficult path as colleagues and synergetic leaders.

It was smooth on paper, yes, they forgot about the ravines, my attentive reader will say, having decided that I am theorizing and hallucinating here, and will be right in some ways, I really share my vision, partly to find new colleagues and partners, partly to record your intentions and commitments to colleagues and the community. I will be glad to meet new people and new experience, as well as sound criticism.

In the end, I want to give a link to a piece of our practical experience in this direction, herethe register of distribution of future ownership shares of our organization lies. We issued a token on the Ethereum protocol in accordance with the ERC20 standard and completed the initial distribution of shares among colleagues, which we devoted a certain working time to the project without receiving monetary rewards. It was the contribution in man-hours that determined the proportions of the distribution of shares, my share today is 46.68% of them 25% as a founder, the rest is work, the reserve fund is 47.08%, and the rest are in colleagues. The total issue is 14 930 352 shares, it can be noted that the share of colleagues is small, but I am determined to fix this in the next 2 years. In February 2018, the first distribution was carried out, there is already data for the second tranche.

It is also worth adding that over the past two years of work, we have faced various life situations: the employees leaving the company with and without a share, the employee’s death and the testament of shares to another colleague. For this to work, I wrote a draft of the rules for distribution and participation in the management of the company, this is a kind of preparation for the future smart contract to convey the interaction logic from person to algorithm, where code is a law that can be changed, but only collectively rigidly specified protocol rules.

There are still many questions to be solved and the very path that will ensure the achievement of the goal will be found. It’s not a fact that we will be it, but I’m sure that our efforts will help accelerate the adoption of a new paradigm for the global transformation of society.