Great subject!

I don't think that it is a question of size, but rather a question of As an organisation grows, do the individuals brought in to facilitate the growth have the same passion and vision as the founders?

How can the culture and values be sustained in spite of size?

We are now in a scaling-up phase, and those 2 questions are our most challenging situation that we face ourselves in.

I know that there are systems, etc ...

I will read comments as they will appear, because I am also looking for solutions.

Laurinda

Hi Laurinda:

It seems to me that you are verging on a different set of question from the ones I raised, but they're certainly worth pursuing. You ask:

QUOTE: As an organisation grows, do the individuals brought in to facilitate the growth have the same passion and vision as the founders? :UNQUOTE

Perhaps I can answer that question by bringing over a post I made a couple of days ago in another event here:

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I've often thought about the difference between those who begin something out of their own juices, and those who follow in their footsteps. Two examples, if I may:

Tim Gallwey lost match point in the National Junior Tennis Championship while a student at Harvard – and the impact of that one missed point stayed with him. After considerable thought, he cam to the conclusion that it was his own mind, his thought stream, which had interfered with his otherwise excellent tennis playing, and wrote his celebrated, best-selling book, The Inner Game of Tennis as a result. I have watched Tim coach oters who have read and practiced his techniques, and the truth is that while others can gain considerable benefit from them, Tin is still the most astute observer of the form of "mental interference" he describes. Others have added Tim's insights into their repertoire of insights – but for Tim, that body of insights was life or death, the very essence and crux of the moment that changed his life.

Ignatius of Loyola was a dissolute youth given to womanizing, swordplay and gambling – until he was wounded in battle, and had time to think his life over. He came to the conclusion that his life had been based on trivialities and felt revulsion at his own behavior – a revulsion which radically changed his life: he went on to found the Jesuit order. Now, centuries later, young boys can attend Jesuit schools and colleges, find themselves inspired by some priest, decide they have a vocation to join the Jesuits, and do so. The thing is, the virtues they practice spring from their good nature and the innocence of their youth, whereas Ignatius practiced virtues into which he was catapulted by revulsion at his own corruption. His virtue is hard won, theirs may be less so.. Once again, they add something they admire to their existing repertoire, while he did the only thing possible to his tormented soul.

I am not preaching either Tim Gallwey's almost Zen approach, nor the Catholic practices of the Jesuits, here. I am suggesting that what we bring forth because it is the fruit of our own individual necessity will always be more powerful than what others find to admire in us and imitate, copy, replicate, or otherwise take further.

And to the extent that I can find a moral in these stories, it is that those who provide continuity to an idea can at best achieve 95% of faithfulness to it, with the last 5% being what distinguishes Everest from another Himalayan peak, whereas those whose work is their own, flowing wholly from their own juices and necessity, can manage that last Himalayan 5%.

To whatever extent is possible, I would re commend shooting for that extra 5%.

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That's the post I made a couple of days ago, and it encapsulates me sense that you will never quite recapture the same vision, or the same passion, as the founders had. There's a fascinating commentary by the anthropologist Victor Turner on the early life of the Franciscans, in which he suggests that St Francis wanted them to live a perpetually "liminal" life with absolute uncertainty as to where their next roof or sleeping place was coming from. Zen: "Above, not a tile to cover the head. Below, not an inch of ground upon which to stand." Christ: "Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

The thing is, from Turner's POV, the liminal state is one which you enter from the "regular" world for the purposes of initiation, and from which you necessarily "return" to that regular world. Perhaps the founders' vision is to establish a possibility, and the facilitators' vision is to live within in.

I don't know how the "mathematics" of quantity affects that of quality, but I do suspect we should always question the axiom that more of a good thing is better.

And I have one final suspicion, that part of the downside of scaling up is the power that "economies of scale" can get to dictate exactly how things shall be done, so that bureaucracy sets up rules that facilitate "mass production" of some virtue, at cost to the delicacies and varieties of human situations.

If this is right, part of the solution must be to maintain awareness that the purpose is to serve people with goodness, if I may express it that way, not to put them in service to goodness.

And there will no doubt be plenty who would argue with me on that!

I agree tht bigness for its own sake is an evil; just look at the resuls of most corporte acqusiions (a recent WSJ report showed that most mergers/acquistios actually resulted in a reduction in stock value). The larger the organiztion the faster it will drift from its orginal mission, espeially if that mission is triple bottom line. Just as Ben Cohe who is not auiet about his opinion of the buyout results of Ben and Jerry's. It is natural- the more people in an organization, the more subunits form and the more each subunit develops its own survival mission.

The key to scale I think is replication. This can be done through franchising or through teaching/promoting. In the mid-eighties I ghost wrote a book for a man names Michal Gerber who had worked out a way to teach small businesses to franchise themselves. The book - The E-Myth - went on to sell 500,000 copies and spawn 3 other books, indicating that there is a hunger out there for ways to grow without getting bigger.

I have been a little under the weather these past two days, and only able to drop in in occasion, so I'll keep this brief and go back to bed.

Patrick:

QUOTE: ways to grow without getting bigger :UNQUOTE

That's wonderful, that is just the sort of idea I was hoping we'd come to.

Please continue discussing Patrick's insight...

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Okay, a quick second question: Are there any areas where the only approach that works is global?

I'm up and almost normal for the first time in a few days, and would like to pick up this conversation again and see where we can go with it.

Any takers?

Greetings from India. The size of countries like India and China is because of changed economic and demographic contours of the world. It is demographic dividend that India and China are reaping. In fact during 1970s and 1980's population was a great problem of both the countries. However, the inherent strengths of the countries such as ability to in China and hard work combined with resilience of India which withstood long years of subjugation by foreign rule and used its learning in colonial rule for its advantage. We can discern that 1) Size was not their strength until changed economic environment. 2) It is not very clear how long this advantage will last and sustainable is also need to be considered. 3) If same policies of growth as done by the advanced countries, for example if every Indian to have same kind of life style as an American the Bio mass requirement of India will be 50% of the world. Then size will be great disadvantage. Let me talk about organizations 1) Let us consider Wikipedia, myspace, scribd etc.The content is created by people for the people and they maintain at the lowest costs. the Size is a greatest advantage. However, we may say that it is possible only for IT organizations. If we take AMUL an Indian organization started as a milk cooperative has achieved one of the greatest revolutions, known as white revolution. It helped farmers and the the consumers with money and high quality milk. If we consider Dubbawallahs of Mumbai the sheer size of operations makes it as one of the great six sigma organizations in the world. The question is, is it relative? or is it dependent on period of history we are talking?

Thank you so much for your comment, and my apologies for the long time it has taken me to respond

a matter of health problems.

If I understand you correctly, you are showing us that size (considerable size, the "size" of India or China) can be clearly seen to be powerfully disadvantageous in some circumstances and no less powerfully advantageous in others. Your comment on 50% of the biomass of the world is exceedingly important, obviously, and I am grateful that you pointed us towards the dubbawallahs. I hadn't been aware of them until now, and can only hope that others are learning from their example.

My main question, however, attempting to build on what you are saying, has to do with those cases where large scale is indisputably good in the sense that many, many people are helped with some specific need, in many cases an urgent one, and asks whether, within those cases, scale itself presents an obstacle. I don't necessarily mean an obstacle to the main objective, either, but to some aspect of the healthy functioning of the social matrix in which they act.

Ivan Illich talked about this in terms of transportation systems, then education and then medicine, as I recall, the idea that very large positive "flows" will tend to have counterproductive "eddies" within them. In the case of medicine, this meant that large hospitals (Cook County Hospital was his object of study as I recall, though it has been a while) have a tendency to engender their own, "iatrogenic" forms of disease.

I'm not a medical expert, and have only read Illich's work casually, but my impressions is that he argued that at systems passed some sort of size limit, they began to be self-defeating in ways which could be found across disciplines: iatrogenic disease was merely the medical variant.

It's that sense that past a certain point, growth itself becomes a toxin that I am trying to explore here.

But that's not the point you were trying to make, and I'd welcome further discussion from your side, too.

Thanks again for your participation, and for the reference to the Dubbawallahs.

Dear Charels, Thank you very much for you reply. It has clarified my thought process. I agree to a large extent with Ivan Illich for talking about Deshooling the Society and iatrogenic nature of big institutional set ups such as educational systems and hospitals. I would like to mention about economizing model on which these institutions are build ( it may be my hypothesis). Modern society has achieved increased wealth and rising of standard of living by peaceful means by following model of economizing. All the other societies have used war, plunder,expropriation,tax-farming, or other means of extortion. However,Economizing model is build on "productivity", ability to gain a more than proportional output with given expenditure of capital, or given labour. It is more than a zero sum game. All of us know about this. The theoretical virtue of the market is that it coordinates human interdependence in some optimal fashion, in accordance with th preferences of buyers and sellers with any distribution of income. However, Veblan has pointed out, not the price system but the value system of the culture in which the economy is embedded will provide direction of the economy. the price system is mere a mechanism for relative allocation of the goods and services within the frame work of the kinds of demand generated. Economic guidance can be efficient if the cultural value system shapes it. The value system of industrial society is increase a private consumption of goods and services. However, the best things in life are free. Cean air, good water, sushine, ease of meeting friends, satisfaction in work etc. They are not salable. However, they contribute to the welfare of the society. However, our accounting system never takes this into account. the second consideration is that of the growth. The is generated by more and more effect on the environment and increasing social costs. Now the role of size play a very important point here. If we are following economizing model, the size after some time will lead to disastrous results. On the other hand if you have socializing model where we include all persons into the society,. If the value system of the society is known to everyone and simple as a measure of allocative system of society then i think we will have a model that is sustainable and size will not be a disadvantage and become self serving as being experienced by all of us. The second important dimension is availability of social goods. I will provide an example of Tirupur Textile manufacturers. They are finding it difficult to obtain water. They formed one of the largest public private partnership with approximately 2 billion $ investment water to the tiny palace in Tamilnadu. I think social enterprises can form a loose federation with a common social purpose and join with government to ensure better allocation of resources may be a model that can help our society. Sorry for arrogating myself with heavy handed prescriptions and myself falling victim to the iatrogenic form of disease . I am only giving some shape to my thoughts after going through Veblan's works and works of Daniel Bell. Thank you very much for trigging these thought processes in me.

Dear Charels, Thank you very much for you reply. It has clarified my thought process. I agree to a large extent with Ivan Illich for talking about Deschooling the Society and iatrogenic nature of big institutional set ups such as educational systems and hospitals. I would like to mention about economizing model on which these institutions are build ( it may be my hypothesis). Modern society has achieved increased wealth and rising of standard of living by peaceful means by following model of economizing. All the other societies have used war, plunder,expropriation,tax-farming, or other means of extortion. However,Economizing model is build on "productivity", ability to gain a more than proportional output with given expenditure of capital, or given labour. It is more than a zero sum game. All of us know about this. The theoretical virtue of the market is that it coordinates human interdependence in some optimal fashion, in accordance with th preferences of buyers and sellers with any distribution of income. However, Veblan has pointed out, not the price system but the value system of the culture in which the economy is embedded will provide direction of the economy. the price system is mere a mechanism for relative allocation of the goods and services within the frame work of the kinds of demand generated. Economic guidance can be efficient if the cultural value system shapes it. The value system of industrial society is increase a private consumption of goods and services. However, the best things in life are free. Cean air, good water, sushine, ease of meeting friends, satisfaction in work etc. They are not salable. However, they contribute to the welfare of the society. However, our accounting system never takes this into account. the second consideration is that of the growth. The is generated by more and more effect on the environment and increasing social costs. Now the role of size play a very important point here. If we are following economizing model, the size after some time will lead to disastrous results. On the other hand if you have socializing model where we include all persons into the society,. If the value system of the society is known to everyone and simple as a measure of allocative system of society then i think we will have a model that is sustainable and size will not be a disadvantage and become self serving as being experienced by all of us. The second important dimension is availability of social goods. I will provide an example of Tirupur Textile manufacturers. They are finding it difficult to obtain water. They formed one of the largest public private partnership with approximately 2 billion $ investment water to the tiny palace in Tamilnadu. I think social enterprises can form a loose federation with a common social purpose and join with government to ensure better allocation of resources may be a model that can help our society. Sorry for arrogating myself with heavy handed prescriptions and myself falling victim to the iatrogenic form of disease . I am only giving some shape to my thoughts after going through Veblan's works and works of Daniel Bell. Thank you very much for trigging these thought processes in me.

At some point the organization becomes more important than the mission. I worked on a huge study of the Veterans administration Hospital System and it was abundantly clear that "Any mature bureaucracy will come to serve the purpose of it's Staff and not the population it was created to serve>" Loyalty to the ethos predominates. Much effort goes into maintaining position and not moving off towards the unknown.. Politicians get elected as reformers, but quickly see that to retain the office requires compromises they would have scoffed at before their installation. BTDT. Further, the General Motors Budget Committee is made up of the heads of the successful divisions. Why would he head of the SUV division take capital from his product line to fund hybrid technology?