Inspired Organisation

The potential for the Inspired Organization is given by the experience with which the organization began. That Out of the Depths experience consisted infinitely more of power and energy erupting in some irresistible way than any neat form and structure. The experience was primal in the sense that something dramatic and new suddenly appeared as if from nowhere, with scarcely more content that the great “I got it” from the lips of the founder. What “it” was, and what “it” would become were all unknowns. In the succeeding stages of maturity, the original entrepreneurial business idea, having emerged from Out of the Depths, became more focused and particular as it appeared in Vision, Understanding, Language, and Data-Information. It moved from high energy and little focus down to a laser-like point when it became “really there” on the first day of business. From there on out, the business idea appeared in successive modes of being, each one of which allowed for a fuller expression of its potential. Beginning with the narrow particularity of the Re-active Organization, the entrepreneurial business idea transformed through Responsiveness, Pro-activity and Inter-activity. At each stage, the constraints of form and structure became of less consequence, while the possibility for the full expression of the entrepreneurial business idea in time and space increased. Yet even at the Inter-active level, form and structure were important and constraining considerations. The Inspired level brings the possibility of going beyond those constraints.

At this point, there must be a real switch in perception. Up to now we have encountered an entrepreneurial business idea that wasn’t quite “there” until the “First Day of Business.” After that, it was “there” through certain modes of being which were locked, more or less, to form and structure. We are now contemplating the reverse of all of that – a situation, a way of being, in which the business idea is real and free. Pure energy. Pure Entrepreneurial Spirit.

Why would one even want to consider such a situation? The point is that it is more than conceivable our world may speed to the rate where we enter a sort of “hyper-warp” in which forms transit with such rapidity that we can no longer sense their shape, but only their passage. Then, like it or not, we will find ourselves in a world dominated by energy and flow. At such a time, and indeed that time already may be now, the Inspired Organization will be more than an esoteric curiosity. It will become necessity. Thus, even if we cannot imagine an Inspired Organization in detail, we can imagine the circumstances under which the Inspired Organization would be damn useful.

Still, in the case of Inspired Organizations, I believe there are factors that place them somewhat nearer to probability if not possibility. First, I think we already have some limited experience with such creatures. In my view, the Inspired Organization is nothing more nor less than one of Peter Vaill’s High Performing Systems operating at peak levels. According to Vaill such systems are characterized by the quality of the energy they exude. Participants there seem to be oblivious to time clocks and physical conditions; rather they express sheer joy in simply doing what they are doing.

Occasionally us rather more mundane folks have the exquisite privilege of participating in such a system as for example when we witness an outstanding symphony orchestra operating at and beyond peak performance. It is not stretching a point to say that time and space, even hard chairs, just disappear, to be replaced by a soaring sense of energy and purpose. Form, structure and physicality are all there, but they are all transcended, transformed, if you will, by the spirit of the music.

Harrison Owen, 1987