the
e utopia Book
0 Introduction
e utopia Principles
by Scott Myers
the e utopia Book
What is Everything? What is True? What is Good? How should we live?
Q. What is Everything? A. Everybody wants to live in a Good Place. (God wants everybody to live in a Good Place.)
Everybody wants to live in a Good Place . Pretty much everyone can agree about this. It is a big order, so we look at it in three areas: Communities, Individuals, and Organizations . In our Communities , we can work to have a shared vision of the Good Place that we want to live and work in, and then engage everybody to build it. As Individuals , we always want more . If we aren’t aligned to find more in God, we tend to live destructive lives. God wants to continue creating love in our hearts and peace, balance, wholeness, and health through us in the world. Our purpose is to seek this work of God in our hearts and through our lives. We can work in Organizations that 1) support our living in the world, 2) develop our potential and build up who we are as individuals, and 3) help us make our world a better place. We can do all three of these through our work.
Introduction
x
eutopia Principles with Discussion Duestions
Being the First Level Statements of the Understanding or Doctrine
known as eutopia which being intereperted means “a Good Place” as in Everybody Wants to Live in a Good Place ( and as in “eu”topia [a Good Place]
is not the same as “u”topia [no place])
by Scott Myers
eutopia Principles
Contents
Introduction . . . . . 1 Communities . . . 27 Individuals . . . . . 41 Organizations . . . 49 Summary . . . . . . . 59
e utopia Principles
Introduction
Everybody wants to live in a Good Place . . . . . 1 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Communities . . . . . . . 41 Individuals . . . . . . . . 49 Organizations . . . . . . 59
Introduction
e utopia Principles
Everybody Wants to Live in a Good Place
Everybody Wants to Live in a Good Place.
People who don’t agree about very much can agree that they want to live in a Good Place, that it should be safe for children, have low crime, good housing, opportunities for employment, etc.
We can disagree about a lot of things - whether we like the Yankees or the Red Sox, the Democrats or the Republicans. But everybody wants to live in a Good Place.
Discussion Questions
What does “Everybody Wants to Live in a Good Place” mean to you?
What do you think that might mean to other people?
What might come from different people having different ideas about this?
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Introduction
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“A Good Place” is a pretty big concept. Building a Good Place is a pretty tall order. How could we accomplish something so big and so general?
In order to deal with this one, large concept we break it down into three areas: Communities Individuals Organizations .
Discussion Question
What are your thoughts about this taxonomy of three areas?
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Communities
How we live with each other in our communities - neighborhood, block, city, country, your own house, whatever - this is usually the first thing we think of when we talk about living in Good Places. The first step toward building up a Good Place (whether a neighborhood, city, etc.) involves having a comprehensive vision of that place as a Good Place. As a friend of mine often says, we can’t do better until we know better. Developing a common, comprehensive vision of our place as a Good Place is a process. That process requires some leadership. Once we develop that vision (or as we are developing it), we need to make it known. People need to see that vision of the place as a Good Place. Once people see it they will react to it (“That’s it!” or maybe, “You left out . . . “). These reactions will improve the vision. As people see, hear and understand the vision they will start to work towards making it real in their lives and in their places.
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Introduction
Individuals
A community is a collection of individuals in a place. We can’t live in a Good Place if we don’t have good lives as individuals. However, we are often selfish and greedy. We need to counter these tendencies in order to live in and contribute towards a Good Place. We must start with our own hearts or our communities can’t be Good Places. Everybody has something to contribute. We need everybody. If we don’t all contribute, our places won’t be good. We can’t assign the task of creating a Good Place to some professional class of Good Place builders. If you want to live in a Good Place - and we all do - we each must contribute.
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Organizations
The organizations that we form and work in to earn our livings have a huge impact on whether or not our places are Good Places. We spend more hours “at work” than at any other single activity. That work has more effect on the world than anything else we do. If the work that we do to earn our living doesn’t contribute to building up a Good Place then we are lost. We can’t make up for that during evenings and weekends. In order to build up a Good Place we need to address how we live and work in our organizations.
So that is an overview of the three areas we address when we talk about living in a Good Place. Now let’s look at each one in a little more depth.
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Introduction
Discussion Questions
What are your thoughts about each of these three areas?
What interactions do you see between and among these areas?
How do you see these three areas interrelating in a work place?
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Introduction
e utopia Principles
Communities
80 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Conditions, 2 . . . . . . . 13 Process/Event . . . . . . 15 Every Every Else . . . . . 16
News About
a Good Place . . . . . . 19 Heart, Head, Hand . . . . 20 Work in Organizations . 21 Discussion Questions . . 22
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Introduction
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80 Eighty percent of us agree on eighty percent of what makes a Good Place.* We all pretty much agree that a Good Place is safe for children, that kids should have opportunity and encouragement to get good educations. We want good housing to be available, not just for ourselves but for our neighbors. We want good jobs to be available, not just for ourselves but for our neighbors as well. It doesn’t help if your are the only one in your neighborhood who is having a good time while everyone else’s life is miserable. That is not a Good Place. It needs to be a Good Place for everybody. We want low crime, beauty versus trash and so on. Party politics focuses and magnifies the twenty percent * about which we disagree. The people who often come to mind first as the stewards of our places, our elected officials, tend not to focus on the 80 percent we all agree about. In order to get us to vote for them versus their rivals they need to differentiate themselves from each other. So the people we largely entrust with the care of our community - elected officials - as they are being elected, they want to focus on the things people disagree about. Politicians have created a whole industry around making subtle distinctions between themselves and other candidates. They focus on and magnify tiny elements from the 20% we don’t agree about as if THESE were the key factors that will make a Good Place or not. They make these smaller differences seem like they are the whole world. The whole world will either march on to triumph if you choose one candidate, or else we will plummet into disaster if we choose the other candidate. So it seems if we listen to opposing candidates. Our elected officials, generally, skip over the 80% that we all agree about and focus on a few, divisive issues to rally personal support. Once elected they need to follow through on their promises and continue to focus on these issues, to the detriment if not exclusion of the 80% that the rest of us all agree we need to have in order to make our places Good Places.
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Introduction
We will be better served by spending 80% of our attention and effort on the 80% of what we all agree on and make that happen. This will be the most efficient and most effective application of our attention and effort. We can hold our politicians accountable to that as well. Sometimes it feels like we spend 80% of our attention and effort on the 20% or less of things that we don’t agree about. We can have better! Having said all that about elected officials, I don’t want to give the impression that they are responsible for most of the work to build up Good Places or that most of our duty is discharged by voting for the right people. Not at all! Elected and appointed government officials have their roles, but “we the people” bear a much greater responsibility for our places. Of course we do! There are so many more of us than there are of them. We the people employ our government officials to do some of the work for us, but the vast majority of the work to be done must be done by people not employed by the government. We will do well to focus first on the 80% (or s0) on which we agree.
Discussion Questions
1. How and how much are our perceptions of our community shaped in any way by people who benefit (financially or politically) from highlighting areas of disagreement?
2. Who is known for attracting attention to areas of broad agreement and motivating collective action that accomplishes shared goals?
*People ask where I got this statistic. I totally made it up! Well, not totally. I base it on experience and observation.
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Conditions, 2
The conditions that we either create or allow to exist in our communities determine to a great extent what kind of place we live in. Each of us has individual moral responsibility and free will. We can each try to be good people as individuals, but if we let our community fall apart it can’t be a Good Place. Some conditions encourage one type of behavior while discouraging others. If the place where we live continues to produce destructive behavior, then we need to investigate the conditions of our place and work to make it a better place. Over time, our chosen behaviors create the kinds of places we live in. Under any given set of circumstances any group of us will tend to act within a range of “normal” behavior for that particular set of circumstances. If you put a bunch of people out on a baseball field, outfit them in the uniforms of two different teams, give them bats, balls and gloves, put a crowd in the bleachers, sell hot dogs and then sing the national anthem, chances are pretty good that they will start playing baseball. Everybody pretty much knows the rules. They’ve seen people play baseball before. Even if people didn’t agree ahead of time to play, given these conditions, most likely a baseball game will start up. If we set up our communities so that kids don’t get any reinforcement at home for keeping up at school, adults aren’t around to direct their time after school, they don’t have anything to do all summer, but throughout the neighborhood different gangs offer something to belong to and offer kids something to do helping them to sell drugs, with pay, what do you think will happen? Is every kid going to recognize this as wrong and choose to exercise his or her free will to resist temptation? We know the answer.
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Introduction
If the places where we live continue to produce destructive behavior, then we need to investigate the conditions of our places and work to make them better places. In order to build up a Good Place we need to address the conditions people live in.
Discussion Questions
Discuss the proposition that conditions influence people’s choices.
How much, if any, effort should we spend to improve the conditions people live in?
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Process / Event
B uilding up a Good Place is more of a process than an event.
Events can serve the process, but they don’t tend to accomplish much just on their own. On their own, events usually don’t change any of the conditions that keep our places from being as good as they can be. Events draw attention to issues. Events can lead people to become involved in processes that actually change people’s lives and the community’s conditions. If there are no processes that lead to real change in the community then events lose much of their potential value. An event could possibly lead to the beginning of an on-going process.
Discussion Question
Discuss the relationship between events and processes as they relate to lasting change in a community.
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Introduction
Every body needs Every body Else
Everybody needs everybody else. No one of us can build up a Good Place all on our own. No small group can build up a Good Place all on its own. No large group from just one part or a few parts of the community can build up a Good Place all on their own. Every little bit helps, of course.
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Just as in Dr. Suess’s Horton Hears a Who , though, it takes all of us. As I heard someone say once, everybody brings their piece to the puzzle. Nothing is more frustrating than a puzzle that is almost complete but missing just a few pieces. We need the piece that you bring. The community is a pretty big, interconnected system. As much as we may wish it, we can’t ignore the politicians to make Good Places. We each have our own jobs. If I don’t do mine, no one else will do it. Or, if they do, they will have to shirk some part of their job to do some part of my job. Often those we see as being Important People Who Get Big Things Done - they don’t actually do anything (or anything much) themselves. They lead or in some sense speak for hundreds or thousands of other people - who actually get the things done. The spokesperson is not the important one. Each of the individuals doing the work is the important one. The leader has an important role, too. But the leader of 1000 people cannot do the work of 1000 people. We need to keep that in perspective. We can get excited about the big vision, but the big vision only happens in small pieces - what one person can do at a time - whether on our own or as part of a group. We can’t live in a Good Place by fleeing the troubles on one side of town, setting up a gated community on the other side of town, then relaxing with our own personal little good place. A Good Place is not a plot of ground that you can build a fence around to keep everybody else out. We are not subsistence farmers, nor were meant to be. Each of us is connected to so many other people just to be able to turn on the lights, to get food out of the cupboard, to walk out the door and get in a car or a bus or a train. All the people with whom we share labor to make our places work are part of our lives, part of our places. If they don’t live in a Good Place then neither do we. As the old song says, With one of us in chains, none of us is free. John Perkins brings a strong message to this point. The people with resources need to live in community with people
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Introduction
who don’t have resources. They bring so much just based on who they are, not just what they have. They have connections. They know how things work. They bring so much to the group. When people with resources leave a community to go off to some gated neighborhood that leaves only people without resources. Everybody needs to participate, with the aim of benefiting everybody else. Because,
Every body needs Every body Else .
Discussion Questions
Discuss the statement: “the leader of 1000 people cannot do the work of 1000 people.”
What responsibility do each of us as individuals have for our community?
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News about a Good Place
It’s good to have news about a Good Place. Not just who won the election, what blew up, what caught on fire, what crimes were committed and so on. These kind of stories attract attention but do little or nothing to help us build up a Good Place. On the other hand, news about people, activities, organizations, plans that are aiming at building up Good Places are very helpful. They describe the field of play and the action. They inform us about groups, process, activities that we can join to help build up Good Places. The authors of The One Minute Manager say that “Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions.” They surmise that, if bowling alleys hoisted sheets so that you couldn’t see your bowling ball as it rolled down the lane, no one would bowl. The visual feedback of seeing the ball you rolled achieve its objective (to some degree, you hope) keeps you in the game. What feedback do we get about building up Good Places? Very little from standard news sources. The way we report news that helps build up a Good Place is a little bit different than journalism as practiced generally. In order to offer an example of news about a Good Place we started the Good Place Akron report, accessible at www.goodplaceakron.com.
Discussion Questions
News about our community: who is our neighbor? How much effort do we need to to exert to find out if anyone is hurt on the road to Jericho?
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Introduction
Heart, Head, Hand
How we live as individuals has a big effect on the community.
The best way to act in our places is to let our hearts guide us. By our hearts I mean the combination of our passions and our moral sense. Our hearts provide our motivation through the passion to see good things happen. We can’t live totally and solely by logic and calculation. Our hearts need to guide our actions. At the same time, those passions must pass through our heads, our rational, reasoning minds, on their way to actions. We probably prefer well-meaning bumbling to intentional evil, but why can’t we have intelligent, well-meant actions? The actions we take can have both a moral, passionate basis as well as a rational, reasonable basis. Heart, head, hands. In that order.
Discussion Questions
Discuss the proposed order: heart, head, hands.
Where have you seen this applied well? Poorly?
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Work in Organizations
Our organizations - businesses as well as non-profit, government and any others - need to be oriented towards building up a Good Place. Each will have aims specific to that organization apart from or beyond or other than community aims. But if our organizations, the places where we go to work to earn our livings, don’t build up Good Places we can’t make it happen outside of the main areas of our work and efforts and application of group resources. For most of us, the majority of our effort goes toward the work that we do for pay to earn our living. That work in some way has to build up a Good Place.
Discussion Questions
How can the work by which we earn our living build up Good Places in our communities?
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Introduction
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Individuals
More . . . . . . . . . . 26 Eden . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Purpose . . . . . . . . . 28 Tools . . . . . . . . . . 29 Infin ite . . . . . . . . . 31
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Introduction
More
The real change that will create Good Places begins in our hearts. As individuals we are often selfish and greedy. Why is that? We were created always to desire more. That desire does not just spring from our fallen nature. Our fallen nature takes that created desire for more and applies it to the world and to each other. The world, in this sense, is finite. It cannot satisfy our continual desire for more. Certainly we as individuals are finite and cannot, in our selves, satisfy each other’s continual desires for more. Our desire and drive continual to get more ultimately will lead us to the one infinite entity, God. The Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, is the lover of our souls. Only in the infinite God can our continual desire for more find satisfaction, only in God can we find peace. This allows us to relax and not seek from each other or the world what we cannot get from each other or the world, which helps keep us from being selfish and greedy, which helps us not be destructive in our relations with each other or the world. Our relations become destructive when we try to get from each other or from the world what we can only get from God. When we align our continual desire for more towards the infinite God then we can live at peace in the world and with each other. When we establish our connection to God through Christ all of our relationships become transformed and redeemed. Then our living in the world brings transformation and redemption to our places.
e utopia Principles
Our continual desire for More will be satisfied only in ________________________________ .
What happens when we apply our continual desire for More to the world?
What happens when we apply our continual desire for More to each other?
How have we observed the continual human desire for more?
How does our relationship to the world change when we apply to God our continual desire for More?
How do our relationships with each other change when we apply to God our continual desire for More?
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Introduction
Eden
If we look closely at the creation story in the book of Genesis we see that we have been created at a level where we can participate in continuing creation - both in the world and within ourselves. In Genesis God gives people work to do, work that changes both the world (the Garden) and ourselves. The Garden contained a tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of that tree, from the Garden which they tended, changed them. There was another tree named in that Garden, the Tree of Life. Eating from that tree would have also changed them. What else would have been in that Garden which they were tending? What would they have become, tending a Garden that changed them in these ways, if they had never taken the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Ultimately, I think what they would have become was re-established through Christ. Christ re-established what we would have become in Eden. Now we become that differently. We become that through the finished work of Christ on the cross. In Eden we were created to participate in continuing creation. This implies that we have a purpose to our lives.
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Explain the understanding expressed in the text relating to our work in the Garden.
What have you experienced that might seem to support this understanding?
How might this view of work apply “outside Eden”?
How could this view of the purpose of work affect a person’s role of leadership in an organization?
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Introduction
Purpose
One way to state our purpose for living is this: Our purpose in life is to seek and allow God’s continuing creation in our hearts and through our lives in the world. God’s continuing creation in our hearts builds up hearts of love. God’s continuing creation through our lives in the world builds up shalom - a Hebrew word for which there is no direct, English equivalent. It contains the concepts of peace, justice, harmony, balance, health, rightness. God wants to create love in our hearts and shalom in the world. Through God’s sovereign will he has chosen, in many ways, to limit himself to what we will allow him to create in our hearts and in the world through our lives. It is our purpose,therefore, to seek God’s continuing creation and to allow God to work in our hearts and through our lives in the world.
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Discuss the premise expressed in the first paragraph.
Do you agree? Disagree? Is it adequate? Comprehensive? Incomplete?
How might this understanding of the purpose for our lives affect how we lead in and shape an organization?
4.
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Introduction
Tools
God has filled this world with tools which God will use to continue creation in our hearts and through our lives in the world. In a way we can almost think of life being like a video game, where our aim is to run around and gobble up these tools. This might not be the best analogy. All analogies break down somewhere. I think it points us in the right direction, though. Our purpose, then, is to bring these tools, these means of grace, into our lives and to allow God to use them to create love in our hearts and shalom - peace, justice, harmony, balance, health, rightness - in the world. This is what we all want, anyway. If we try to do it on our own, apart from letting God work in and through us, things don’t work out so well. That is when and how things get messed up. We can just be selfish and apply our efforts to satisfying our own desires. This selfish and greedy behavior is destructive. We can also try to do God’s work on our own, by our own effort, using our own strength and resources - all of which are inadequate to achieve our desired end. Our purpose in life is to seek these tools, put them in our lives and then allow God to work in and through us.
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What is the difference between “seeking and allowing God to work in and through us” and doing things by our own strength and ability?
Discuss the practive of putting tools for God to use in our lives, then letting God use them.
Discuss the different levels or strategies or approaches ex - pressed in the last three paragraphs of this section.
How do you see applications of the ideas in this section ( Tools ) in an organization? Is there any application?
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Introduction
Infi nite
The world is, far as we are concerned, infinite in this way: as individuals we will never experience all the good in the world. The billions of us who are living on the earth now, the billions who have lived before us - none of us has experienced all that the world has to offer. The billions of us have not lived out all of the potential that the world offers. This causes us pain when we think about dying. We have such wonderful experiences of the world that we don’t want to leave, we don’t want to see any of our friends leave, until we have finished experiencing all the good in the world. Yet none of us will experience the whole world. (Oddly, at the same time the world is finite in this way: as full of good as the world is, it cannot satisfy our desire for the infinite.) The world is the perfect environment for us to become what God wants us to become. God has filled the world with the tools by which we can become what he wants us to become. Nearly anything in this nearly infinite world can be used for this purpose. Still, some are more useful than others. These are the three most useful tools (or means of grace): 1) prayer, our hearts in communion with God, 2) reading the scripture that has been given to us, 3) church, being in some kind of fellowship with other people seeking the same. Prayer, scripture, and church are probably the three most powerful tools God uses in our lives to create hearts of love and lives of shalom. If we don’t have these three in our live I don’t know how we achieve our purpose. At the same time, there is a nearly infinite number and variety of other tools, other means of grace, that God uses in our hearts and lives to create love and shalom.
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Discuss the contrasting views of the first two paragraphs.
What is ithe importance of the three “most useful” means of grace indentified in this section?
What are some of the “infinite” tools in the world that God can use in our lives?
How do you see applying this understanding in an organization?
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Introduction
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Organizations
Why do we work
in Organizations? . . . . . . . 39 Why do we work at all? . . . . . . . . . . 41 The Non-Profit Dilemma . . . . . . . . . 42 Finding Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Stewarding Organizations . . . . . . . 49 Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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Why do we work in Organizations?
Why aren’t we all subsistence farmers? Why don’t we go out into the woods, cut down enough trees to make a field, dig out all the roots, plant and grow all of our own food, harvest the grain, grind the flour, make the bread, make our own houses from scratch, make our own clothes, make our own shoes, dig a well to get water, and so on? Little House in the Big Woods offers a romantic vision but I don’t think any of us who are used to living in a neighborhood in a house with indoor plumbing and electricity and heat and air conditioning and a refrigerator and a freezer and transportation and the grocery store and restaurants and malls and stores really would accept that kind of life. The major reason we work in organizations is for efficiency. Through a coordinated division of labor we are able to accomplish so much more with so much less effort than if each of us had to do everything for ourselves. I will spend my time building houses, you focus on making shoes. They will focus on growing food. In order to live the lives we have today, everybody really does need everybody else. Consider breakfast. Somebody assigned the stories, other people wrote them, other people edited and typeset them, printed them, distributed them throughout the city, somebody else delivered it to my house, all so I can read the newspaper at breakfast. This doesn’t take into account the people who made the paper and ink, the people who manage the forests from which newsprint is manufactured, or the people who mined, drilled, refined or otherwise processed the chemicals making up the ink; or the people who made and maintain the machines that make the paper and ink, or the people who made and maintain the presses that print the paper. Think of all the people involved in my scrambled eggs: the ones raising and tending the chickens, processing the eggs, making and maintaining the machines that process the eggs for retail, delivery, and then everyone at the grocery store.
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The orange juice. My toast, the margarine, the strawberry jam. Easily hundreds, possibly thousands of people’s labor is necessary to produce what we could consider a pretty simple breakfast. The more of us there are living on the planet the more we can specialize in our work and each of us can concentrate on smaller and smaller segments of larger jobs. This is how we improve the efficiency of what we do and how we can have so much variety available to us. As long as we aren’t selfish and destructive this is a good thing! That is why we work in organizations.
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Why do we work at all?
The Genesis story of creation gives some reasons for work, one being that we must work by the sweat of our brow for the food that sustains us. We tend not to stop working after we have secured food, clothing and shelter, though. We keep working for more than that. Essentially we are never really satisfied, looking to get from the world and from each other what we can get only from God. Working to get the “most” from the world and from each other leads to damaging relationships both to the world and to each other. If we don’t have some ideal condition in mind for ourselves and the world, what do we work for? If everybody aims for increasing efficiency and profit at work rather than trying to establish some specific condition in our lives and in our world through our work - so that our work serves that ideal condition; if we turn one of the methods of work into the purpose of work, and everything else serves our efficiency, and our efficiency is measured by the profit we make - then we will have damaging relationships with each other and the world. A modestly proposed observation: we are kind of living this way now. Most companies are designed to maximize efficiency and profits
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The Non-Profit Dilemma
Many of us hold some version of the following beliefs: - The purpose of Business is to make money, specifically, to achieve the best return on investment for its shareholders. - The purpose of a Non-Profit Organization is to make the world a better place. - For-Profit businesses, from their profits, support Non-Profit Organizations. - The world is not nearly as good of a place as it could be. Non-Profit Organizations could make the world a much better place if only more people and more businesses and government entities would give them more money. - Many, if not most, businesses don’t really make the world a better place as they work to make a profit. Many businesses actually damage the environment, local communities and human relationships - some maybe just a little bit, some more so, and some maybe a lot - in their quest to make and maximize profits. Based on these commonly-held beliefs, the source of donations for Non-Profit Organizations (who work to make the world a better place) is the profit produced by businesses. This may take the form of - direct corporate donations, - donations from for-profit business employees (who receive pay checks because their work contributes to creating corporate profits), or - government money - which comes from taxing businesses and people who work at businesses. (Taxes paid by people working at Non-Profit Organizations come from donations or taxes from those working at profitable businesses.) Ultimately, based on these beliefs, the only source of funds to support Non-Profit Organizations - who work to make the world a better place - is the work of people at for-profit businesses.
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Let’s say that all For-Profit Corporations make 10% Net Profit from their operations. This is an over-optimistic Net Profit percentage, but it makes the numbers easy to work with. What if all For-Profit Corporations would tithe 10% of their profits to Non-Profit Organizations, who work to make the world a better place? A tithe would be 10% of their profits. Their profits are 10% of their operations. 10% of 10% is 1%. A corporation’s tithe of their profits equals 1% of their overall operations. Therefore, 1% of the impact of a For-Profit Corporation (in this example) would go towards making the world a better place, while the other 99% of their activities maybe don’t contribute to making the world a better place. Indeed, they may damage the environment, local communities, or human relations. The dilemma is this: Non-Profit Organizations, whose work helps make the world a better place, all have to share pieces of that 1%. The only way for Non-Profit Organizations to increase the amount of good that they do in the world is if For-Profit Corporations somehow give them more money (either through higher donations or taxation). The only way that For-Profit Corporations can give Non- Profit Organizations more money is for them to increase the scope of their operations in order to generate more profit. But, by increasing the scope of the 99% of their operation that generates the 1% that they donate, they may further damage the environment, communities and human relations. Every increase in the 1% potentially increases the problem 99 times more. It’s worse than that, though. Actual corporate and individual giving to Non-Profits is not 10%. Both are 2-3%. Average individual giving is 2-3% of our income. Businesses, likewise, on average donate 2-3% of their profits. So for businesses, 2-3% corporate giving of 10% profits (which we already said are overstated for ease of math) results in 0.2-0.3% of business activity, as measured in dollars, applied directly to making the world a better place, while 99.7-99.8% of business activity is directed at making money. The efforts directed at making money may help make the world a better place, be neutral, or actually damage the world.
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Introduction
If their impact is totally neutral, then our pace of world improvement proceeds at a rate of 0.2-0.3% per year. Therefore, while this system guarantees job security for Non-Profit Organization workers, the hurrier they go the behinder they get. Ask any Non-Profit worker if they feel this way. They all do. And for good reason. It is clear that, even under ideal circumstances, Non-Profit Organizations cannot keep up with making the world a Good Place by themselves. All is not lost, though! Another path forward is to focus on what we do at work in for-profit businesses. For-Profit Corporations could take as a primary aim to make the places where they work Good Places by the same labor that generates their profits. People who want to make the world a better place don’t have to just sit around saying, “I wish more people would give me more money so I can go out in the world and do more good.” They can look for economically sustaining work that both pays their bills by the profit it generates and makes the world a better place. We all need to resist the artificial distinction suggested by the tax system. Don’t allow the tax structure to bifurcate our lives into: For-Profit, make money; Non-Profit, do good. If the work we do to earn a living doesn’t also build up Good Places at the same time, we can’t make up for it by our donations and our volunteer hours on evenings and over weekends and the occasional mission trip week. We spend so much more time at work than we do volunteering! If our work is at best neutral and at worst damaging, our few spare hours and dollars can’t make up the difference. That’s why all of the Non-Profit organizations who are working to make the world a better place are always short of resources. We cannot donate our way into Good Places. If we spend the majority of our time at work serving the principle of achieving the highest efficiency possible, earning the most money we possibly can, as that causes damage or neglect to human relationships, damage or neglect to the community, the same to the physical world, we can’t make up for those effects in our spare time.
42
The work we do to earn our livings can - and must - at the same time build up Good Places. If it doesn’t, we can’t make up the difference through our donations and spare time. A solution that (brilliantly, I feel) addresses this dilemma: blur the lines between For-Profit and Non-Profit. For-Profit organizations can include in their values and on their task lists work that makes the world a better place. Non-Profit organizations can include activities that both accomplish their missions and that generate revenue. Indeed, all organizations – whether For-Profit or Non-Profit - can seek a balance of effort in these three areas: 1. Economic Activities –work that builds up Good Places and returns a profit, that generates resources to support the members’ living expenses and pays for the organization’s other activities, 2. Development – encouraging and supporting the members in continual growth, 3. Service – work that builds up Good Places but that doesn’t return a profit.
Aims by area:
Economic Activities Build up Good Places and return a profit Products and Services that delight the Customer Support the operation and growth of the organization Provide opportunity for individuals to support their living in the world Support the organization’s Development and Service activities Development Any remedial education necessary for members to do their work Job training so that each worker is equipped with attitude and aptitude for excellent, satisfying work “Business” training so that each member understands what organizations need in order to grow and thrive Job training as above for service work Education for background as well as in-depth knowledge of
the group’s economic and service activities Other personal education and development
43
Introduction
Service Not all work that builds up a Good Place yields a return. Some work needs to be supported by the economic activity and to be done without a return. Service work should be related to the group’s economic activity so that it can be supported by the entire organization (skills, resources, networks, expertise, infrastructure), not just by its donations. Maybe some service work could be chosen and directed by the organization’s leadership. A high value should be placed on team and individual choice as well. I propose this as a solution to the Non-Profit Dilemma.
44
e utopia Principles
Finding Value
The good news is that we have managed to become so efficient at physical production and distribution of food, clothing, housing and other of life’s necessities that we have time available in our busy lives to focus on building up Good Places. We don’t live life the way people prior to about 1850 did - working sixty to eighty hours per week in order to have one or two sets of clothing, maybe one pair of shoes, very basic food, poor health care, and so on. A relatively poor person living in a developed, 21st Century society has much more physical amenities than even a fairly wealthy person did two or three hundred years ago. Because our work today can be so efficient, we can have organizations where we spend a lot of our time in an economic activity to pay our bills. We can also spend time building up who we are as individuals, so that we are not just spending all our time just to be the absolute most efficient we can at work. And we can spend some of our time building up the community and the world we live in. In our organizations we can spend our time and effort in three areas: 1) an economic activity to support our living in the world and the rest of the activities of the organization; 2) building up who we are as individuals - first off training, so that we know what our jobs are, but then also education and development for who we are as people; 3) some kind of service that people don’t pay us for but that makes the world a better place by the work that we do. Whatever we do at work we get pretty good at. The most likely area of service for an organization is in some way to provide what they are good at to people who can’t afford it. This might not necessarily be your main service. It could perhaps be some of your internal support services that would benefit some kind of Good Place effort outside your own organization. A well balanced organization is active in these three areas: an economic activity, building up the members of the organization through training, education and development, and service to the community outside the organization. All organizations must be economically viable (meaning that they bring in more money than they spend, among other financial considerations). But the true value at any organization is the people, not the money. This includes people outside of the organization.
45
Introduction
In order to build up Good Places we must be careful never to choose an economic activity that supports our own living but that doesn’t also in some way make a contribution to the other members of the organization, to the world and to the community outside the organization.
46
e utopia Principles
Stewarding Organizations
People are often afraid that if they don’t spend every moment at work trying to be absolutely as efficient and make as much profit as possible, if they back off of that even just a little bit the company will go out of business and they will become poor. This is not true! There are ways to manage an organization profitably, value people, and work to build up Good Places - all at the same time! We have developed some ways to express the principles for managing or stewarding organizations to accomplish these three aims all at the same time. Later we will explain and discuss them more. Here we will just list them: Charters : we need to know the purpose of the organization, what its aim is. Plans : we work best when we think ahead and plan. Managing Systems : the systems we establish in our organizations produce results more than individual efforts do. People work in systems. We need to manage the systems that people work in - this determines our efficiency. Financial Management : A system that not only accounts for income and expenses but that also teaches the members of the organization how their individual decisions affect the rest of the group. Training, Education, Development : Training teaches us how to do our specific job tasks. Education includes learning in an area or a field beyond task-specific training. Development goes beyond education, even, to address not just what we know but who we are and who we can become. When a person joins an organization they should receive not only the Training about his or her specific job tasks but also the encouragement and opportunity to proceed beyond training into Education and Development. Service : Every organization develops specific skills and abilities that serve its customers and that bring the financial return that makes the group economically viable. Those same specific and perhaps unique skills and abilities can be applied to make the world a better place in ways that people can’t afford to pay for.
47
Introduction
Leadership : Having organizational authority and being a leader are two different things, although the first is often mistaken for being the same as the second. A leader tends the health of the organization by tending its growth and development and by taking care of the people in the organization. After that, the rest of it almost takes care of itself. Managing the Business Formula : Describing the essence of a successful operation gives you its Business Formula. Leaders must be very careful not to make detrimental changes to the Business Formula either intentionally (in the name of progress or change for change’s sake) or unintentionally (under the banner of improving efficiency). Any changes to the organization’s Business Formula must be made very intentionally, carefully, and with a great deal of thought. Internal and External Communication : Very intentionally managing communications with members of the organization, with external stakeholders, and especially with customers goes a very long way to properly building these vital relationships. As with every other important area of operations leaders should have specific, well thought out and clearly delineated communication plans for both internal and external stakeholders. Managing Innovation : Every organization grows and develops or else they die out. As with every other important area of operations leaders should have specific, well thought out and clearly delineated plans for Managing Innovtion. The organization should neither neglect investing time and resources into innovation nor should it allow unrestrained, unguided efforts at innovation. Innovation benefits from planning, scheduling and budgeting. Governance : No part of life in the organization should be subject to the whims of various leaders. Everyone should be accountable to someone else and all actions should be directed by foundational principles owned and clearly communicated by the organization.
48
e utopia Principles
Summary & Restatement
Everybody wants to live in a Good Place. Pretty much everyone can agree about this. It is a big order, so we look at it in three areas: Communities, Individuals and Organizations. For Communities, we can work to have a vision of the Good Place where we want to live and work and then engage everybody to try to accomplish it. As Individuals, we always want More. If we aren’t aligned to find More in God we tend to live destructive lives. God wants to continue creating love in our hearts and peace, balance, wholeness, andv health through us in the world. Our purpose in life is to seek this work of God in our lives. We can work in Organizations that are economically viable and support our living in the world, that build up who we are as individuals, that help us live out our various callings and develop our potential as individuals, and that help us to make our world a better place. We can do all three of those at work.
49
Introduction
Discussion 5 Organizations
1. Why do we work in Organizations?
How many people does it take to make breakfast?
2. Why do we work at all?
Why do we keep working after we have enough?
3. The Non-Profit Dilemma
Explain the Non-Profit Dilemma as described on pages 42-46.
Name ways that the work we do to earn our living can make our world “right.”
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4. Finding Value
What limitations do we face in working to make the world “right”?
5. Why do we work in Organizations?
In what ways do we have a “balanced” organization as described on pages 47-48 How could we improve this?
6. Summary & Restatement
How effectively can we contribute to building up Good Places if we focus on only one area listed on p. 73? In what ways can we improve our balance among these three areas?
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Copyright © 2017 by Scott Myers
Published by Good Place Publishing 180 South Avenue Tallmadge, OH 44278
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be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording, internet— without the prior written permission of the authors. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
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