Hack:
Beyond management: Organizations thrive through community collaboration

Community collaboration might be one of the options.   

“In biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.”-- Wikipedia

Community collaboration promotes interaction, sharing, common intent and belief. All these help build and sustain exciting dynamics inside and outside the organization. When rules and policy are replaced with ingrained culture, and leadership is infused in each part of the community (organization), the energy and potential of the organization will explode with inspiration.

A community oriented organization is teamed with people sharing similar values and spirit. It has no management team, no hierarchy, and no reporting structure.  All the decisions are made by each group based on their defined functions. Constant collaboration happens between the individuals inside and outside the group and organization.  The strong bonding tying the group and individuals together is the shared vision, value, and culture. Facilitators formed as a functional group will help coordinate, organize, and communicate organizational-level activities and decision making with the assistance of a sophisticated and intelligent knowledge and information sharing system.

Needs and values are the engine of the creativity, innovation, initiative, and commitment. Bringing people sharing similar values and purposes together in a community oriented organization stimulates the feeling of belonging and allows each individual to be more open and enjoy the working experience. Without the hierarchy and chain of command, an individual doesn’t have to compromise their creativity for the happiness and satisfaction of the management. The freedom to be-your-self stimulates productivity and enhances the organization’s adaptability to change.

To ensure the success of the community-oriented organization, we need:

• Self-selective teams with shared passion, values, and goals
• The entrepreneurship performance and reward system
• Facilitating-oriented team decision making mechanism
• An open knowledge collaboration and information sharing system

I will detail these 4 key components in future postings.