After these past three weeks, it must be clear to you that the way your world is organized, derives from your memberships and attachments to many and diverse organizations. These organizations are facing repetitive challenges of maintaining their logic of action legitimate and of retaining their temporary advantages. First, meaning is depreciated when the logic of action that an organization follows is gradually taken over by another logic of action. We have seen that the logic of the market has over the years taken more and more importance, and found its way into many areas of sectors, that acted upon other logics. Public security, for instance, is now co-managed by national police following the logic of the state and hundreds of private companies, offering private protection or dedicated services. Public health is a subject where many organizations that follow different logics of action are intervening. From public service to NGOs, from religious institutions to private clinics, from national research programs to private consortia, many different organizations are present. Second, competition proceeds from core presence of organizations, and today, with globalization and technological trends, existing organization face many more rivals than in the past. This leads to competitive advantage erosion, and the need for organizations to really find constantly the selection of their assets, the implementation of their strategy, and the constitution of a coherent universe of MEANING for their members, clients, and stakeholders. Therefore the consequence of these challenges is that you witness regular changes in your world as organizations come and go. The logic of actions of some become pointless, and less and less legitimate for you. Other organizations are unable to retain their advantages and disappear. This may provoke a material change in your situation, such as the loss of your salary, or the impossibility to continue using the same solutions by lack of spare parts, or components, or service interruption. But also, the meaning you found in your relationship with them may dissipate as well, and the status position linked to your membership within an organization, or the pleasure you experienced in the use of a given solution, now lost. Whatever the origin, when the meaning is lost, and is not immediately replaced, Your world is disorganized, and this disorganization generates a sense of uncertainty and insecurity. It is at this point that you, as an individual, will seek and find new meanings, To ensure that your world is again fully coherent. This is where what we have called <i>ORGOLOGY</i>comes into action. It does not restrain itself, to observe the rise and fall of meaning, the weakening of some logic of action, to the benefit of reinforcement of others. Orgology, as a disciplined study of organization, starts with the premise that change is inevitable and constantly occurring, and it deconstructs why our world is disrupted multiple times, to better envision how to reconstruct it, repair it, mend it. You aren't bound so tightly to one organization that only the meaning it carries shapes your world. In fact, you are a collection of many memberships and attachments, some stronger, others weaker. Some have a strong impact on your life, while others are almost negligible. All participate in the co-construction of your world. You need thereby to be in a position where you effectively manage these memberships and attachments. The first step, of course, is to figure them out. Is it possible to map them out clearly, so that they can be represented neatly? Can you draw this map on a piece of paper, with absolute certainty that it is correct? Obviously, this a particularly difficult task. In fact, if you take your memberships and attachments one by one, you will find it difficult to delineate clear borders and optimal paths. Let's use a metaphor. One good way to illustrate your memberships and attachments to various organizations is under the form of an exquisite corpse. In art, this is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. I'm sure you've tried it with friends. Take a piece of paper, write down a phrase, fold the paper to hide your phrase and leave just the last word of your phrase apparent. Pass over the paper to one of your friends, he has in turn to follow the same process starting with the word or drawing you left apparent to coin his own message. After several iterations with friends, you unfold the paper and read the collective phrases or watch the final drawing. Surprisingly, the text forms a tale the drawing a bizarre vision. To an outsider, the text or drawings may be completely incoherent, or at the very least surreal. Yet for you and your friends, they would represent something altogether very real: The expression of your friendship, or the memory of the fine time you spent doing this exercise. Ultimately, what has been produced most certainly doesn't match the story you had in mind when you wrote your phrase. Yet after unfolding the paper, with the shift of one or two words, the insertions of some bits of phrases or drawings, so you can end up with an ensemble that while still not coherent, is alright by you. Your diverse memberships, and attachments to many organizations follows exactly the same procedure. You, as an individual, are your very own exquisite corpse, a collection of seemingly disparate organizational elements, added one by one, none of them following exactly the logic of your other memberships or attachments. Most of them, if not all, carry different meanings. For instance, you are attached locally, as a neighbor, as a citizen, but you are also integrated to the rest of the world. You are globalized, if only because it is impossible in modern-days economies to restrain your consumption exclusively to products that have been locally produced. There are two questions here: The first one is, does it matter to be coherent from one attachment to the other? The second is, can you find this coherence, and can you act on it? For example, should the water pipes in your neighborhood need changing, how can you ensure that their origins match what you believe is good for the rest of the planet? Does it matter to you? We saw that, as an individual, you and all of us are insignificant in the public space. However, your memberships and attachments to organizations give you a lever to act. Yet let's not forget that logics of actions are present and crucial in defining how the organizations are acting. So entertain, entertaining hopes of changing an organization, or steering it in one direction must be done within the framework of the logic of actions it follows. Otherwise, it becomes an unreachable dream. Furthermore, because your attachments and memberships to organizations are what define you, you cannot permanently change and rearrange them without the risk of losing yourself in the process. So each time one of your memberships, or one of your attachments needs changing, you must be able to judge how this impacts your capacity to act on your world and where you may find meaning in this change. To continue with the metaphor of the exquisite corpse, there is no point in trying to find a way, to a final document, something absolutely coherent. What matters is that through accessible and moderate changes you are able to relate to your environment. What you need to consider is that it is a work in constant evolution, where some entries are deleted, others are created, and others are transformed, and that you can act upon it. So. If you want to act on your world, what can you do? -Seek the perfect match between your personality and an organization. -Nothing -Manage your attachments and memberships, in a way that makes sense to you. While, of course, the solution is the third one. But what does manage membership and attachment mean? Well, it is reassessing your commitments to one or several organizations. It's not jumping endlessly to one from another until you find your match. It's not, also, to wait and hope for the best. It means, understanding what logic of action the organization you deal with are following, and finding yourself in the position of being able to set limits when this logic wanes or is misinterpreted. Always remember that there are many organizations around you, and that you can find support in them. So let me introduce you to the three most important ways you can manage your memberships and attachments. By engaging in or with an organization, that is, investing yourself in it. By resisting when the trinity logic of action, organization and world are not producing meaning anymore. And third, by rearranging your world when co-organizations are faltering. The three actions are the lesson learnings that we shall see in the next three episodes.
