An Organization to Carry Us into the Future

The Reinhabit Cooperative the Living Systems Institute is promoting is designed to be an organization that can carry our community into the future.  We are not concerned with existing business, government and religious organizations.  We humans can belong to more than one organization.  The problem that Reinhabit Cooperative seeks to address is the needs of all those individuals who are not being adequately served by those existing organizations.

In the world we want in the future every individual human will be able to obtain the things they need to thrive.  The things humans need to thrive are food, shelter, learning, health belonging and purpose.  Reinhabit Cooperative will produce those things for all those participating in it.

There are three sets of ideas we want to incorporate into the cooperative in order to address these needs.

The first set is the ideas about managing a common pool resource following the work of Elinor Ostrom.   We call the common pool resource available to a community biological potential.  Biological potential is all the participation that could be contributing to the well being of the community but is not.  Biological potential includes the potential contributions of the people who are unable to find a job paying a living wage.

The second set of ideas is those that Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call deliberately developmental organizations.  This set changes the employer/employee relationship in ways that foster the development of employee.  By giving employees the incentive to be constantly improving themselves, both developing skills and maturing, the organization becomes more effective at accomplishing its goals.

The third set of ideas is those Frederic Laloux calls "teal organizations'.  These are organizations that honor the humanity of the people doing the work by allowing them the authority to do the work in the right way.  These are also known as horizontal organizations and the process is described as "pushing decision making to the edges."

The goal of managing a commons is to get the best use out of a resource in a sustainable and regenerative way.  The goal of a deliberately developmental organization is a structure that allows every individual to pursue their full potential.  The goal of a teal organization is a structure in which each participant can take responsibility for their contribution to the society.  We want to incorporate all three of these goals into Reinhabit Cooperative.

 

 

  


 

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