Posts
Renewing Governance
Renewing Governance
More and more organizations are seeking to find new governance structures and practices that support a balance between individual creativity and organizational harmony and effectiveness. This was the case 100 years ago when the first Waldorf School was founded. In the past 100 years, we have had the benefit of a great deal of work and insight into the nature, function and development of organizations. Rudolf Steiner offered some keen insights into social development that are still relevant and useful today. In addition, Bernard Lievegoed, the dynamic student of Steiner's, head of the Anthroposophical movement in Netherlands and inspired thinker, trainer, and author worked with this question his whole life and was part of the new world wide movement to bring new insights into understanding organizations and their development. Following on Lievegoed's work, the Waldorf movement in the last 50 years has pioneered new collaborative models of organization and governance. The Center for Social Development in England and the work of Chris Schaefer and others there and in the US have contributed a great deal to the understanding of the dynamics of governance. New models like Dynamic Governance, Holocracy, and Policy Governance are also examples of responses to this question that continue to offer new ideas about collaborative organizations.. Frederic Laloux, in his book, “Reinventing Organizations”, provides us with another deeper look at a new emerging paradigm in collaborative organizations.
The articles in this newsletter offer a variety of insights on the topic of governance – from understanding basic principles of governance and knowing the basic types of governance models, to looking at effective practices in Waldorf Schools and delving deeper into anthroposophical insights into social creation.
The images for this newsletter are pictures of tree trunks – each quite beautiful and unique and each serving a similar function – to protect, nurture and support the tree’s growth. Trees stand as a structural element of the forest, much like governance is a structural element in organizations. -MS-
How Spiritual Organizations Develop – LeadTogether Highlight #4 9-8-14
Dear Colleagues
What are the natural developmental phases of spiritually based communities and organizations? Bernard Lievegoed, one of the early leaders of organizational development work and long-time Director of the Anthroposophical Training Organization, NPI, in Holland, wrote “ The Developing Organization" in 1973 in which he outlined the phases of development of organizations. In 1988 he offered a new booklet to clarify his thoughts about the difference between the phases that economic businesses and educational institutions go through. Lievegoed offers that spiritually focused organizations involved in human development don’t follow the typical phases of pioneer, administration and integration, but develop in a much more organic fashion, from their early development through growth and into maturity. This booklet, “Institutions of the Spiritual Life” provides insights to better understand how the growth and development of our institutions unfold over time. We have added the booklet into our resource collection for you. (We've put it into a format so you can print it out as a booklet.) Find it here.
Keep in touch.
Michael Soule
Keep in touch, Michael Soule LeadTogether