Are We Just Insane?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Einstein -

Hence the title of this post. It occurs to me that our society is not very quick at realizing the wisdom of that statement. One simply has to look at the current economic and environmental crisis to see how "insane" we have collectively become. The markets came crashing down, the environment can hardly sustain much more of this capitalist system, and still, the "economic recovery plans" all call for a return to what it was before the crash! Of course, there is the question of more regulation on the financial system, but as a whole, the plan is to get the average citizen back onto the stores spending money to roll the economy. Is it just me or that does not sound like much of a sustainable plan? The same seems to often happen with organizations. Results fluctuate over the years, sometimes for the best, sometimes not.

Every now and then, when things are not going so well, Management will call for a restructuring to shake things up in the hope of achieving better results in the future. But one has to wonder why, if such restructuring operations are "good", do they have to be performed so often? Is it the only way to adapt to changing environments? Is it the best approach to affect change in the results of the organization? And what about the negative consequences of such "decisive actions"?

By its very nature, Sociocracy is a dynamic approach that triggers creativity and draws from the wisdom of the collective. At all levels of an organization, various individuals hold varying amounts and various types of information, perspectives, and experiences. Perhaps the greatest challenge for managers is the feat of tapping into that collective wisdom in order to inform decisions that must be made. Dynamic Governance does that through the structure it brings to systems. In many ways, DG removes the impact of personalities by fostering the involvement and contribution of the collective. That ends up being both empowering for the members of the organization, and to the system itself. Once in a while, it is worth trying something different. In such a case, it actually makes sense to expect different results!