Is Your Organization a Community?

We now are living in the time of technology. There is technology all around us; at home, at work, and even at church. But it is important that while we are still beginning to gain a handle on the implications of all of this technology and how it can work for us, we must not forget that we must work with each other. Juanita Brown and David Isaacs are the co-founders of the World Cafe and in their writings that appear in Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (pp.508-517), they discuss the six C's they believe are necessary to turn an organization into a true community. What follows is a condensed version of their contribution to the book. By developing these core processes, organizations will begin to understand the fundamentals need to create a real-world community at work. The processes needed are:

Capability- Companies need to develop skills, knowledge, and personal qualities to renew themselves and reinvent their future. Do this by encouraging learning and improvement among everyone as a collective undertaking. If intellectual capitol is the key asset in the knowledge era, then the capacity for great conversations about things that matter is essential for breakthrough thinking and collaborative innovation.

Commitment- Commitment builds when people are an active part of the experience of creating something they value together. Many employees are willing to commit themselves to a truly engaging purpose, larger than just personal self-interest. They are willing to give of themselves to help create the collective enterprise. But we live in a free-enterprise system. Therefore, the employees also seek concrete evidence that the collective enterprise is committed to them.

Contribution- Develop ways for people to see clearly how their daily work makes a real contribution to the organization's success. Healthy communities provide opportunities for the full diversity of members' talents and contributions to the community's sustenance, not just in narrowly defined roles. Each person's gifts are unique; each enables the community to continue developing and serving the common good.

Continuity- We need to become more creative about how to build some sources of continuity. Otherwise, the knowledge of mature citizens literally gets lost in the constant "churn" of career movers. Technology supports a common knowledge base that the community can draw on for years.

Collaboration- Interdependence is the essence of effective collaboration in a community. Collaboration does not live in the abstract. It depends, for example, on the web of information which, in thriving communities, flows freely in all directions. When members know what's going on in the (company) and why, they can act together autonomously to achieve common goals without being supervised or monitored.

Conscience- All healthy organizations incorporate processes which could be described as "conscience" mechanisms. The organization finds ways to embody or invoke guiding principles, ethics, and values such as service, trust, and mutual respect. These, in turn, translate into daily actions and concrete decisions. This helps answer the question "To what are we going to be responsible?"

With the increase in social technology it is even more exciting to think of the possibilities of how groups can work together even more efficiently. Social tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Wiki's can help increase the speed of work, but until individuals can work together in the real world it will not be any easier in the virtual one.


"Building Corporations as Communities: Merging the Best of Two Worlds"
in P. Senge, et. al. (eds.), The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (Currency, 1994)