Threefold Social Organism in Organizations: The Responsibilities of Collaborative Leadership

Jessica Heffernan Ziegler

2017 AWSNA Conference

June 27, 2017

What I would like to do this morning is offer a framework for understanding and working collaboratively within our organizations. I will not be proposing any specific leadership model or structure per se

– each school has its own particular set of circumstances, and more importantly, its group of people that bring their talents, interests and skill sets to the school. Taken together, these create the context within which each school will be able to address their own questions around the theme of collaboration and leadership. I hope that the framework I will be introducing here, along with some leading thoughts and principles on the subject, will help in this endeavor.

The questions that are raised as the core theme of this conference – how do we share responsibility for guiding and leading our schools in a collaborative and effective manner, which I think have at their core the theme of finding the balance between power and trust, are ones that keep not only the schools but also other anthroposophical organizations up at night, a lot. They are questions that I have been working with for over 20 years in the different roles I have held in the Waldorf movement, as a cofounder and administrator of a Waldorf school in Germany, traveling and working with other schools and organizations in Germany and the US, and in my role at Sunbridge Institute.

I use an archetypal structure that my colleagues and I have been working with for many years as a blueprint when working with these questions, which has proven very useful in both understanding and navigating our organizations – our schools – and as a tool for diagnosing and correcting the imbalances that can lead to unsustainable situations or crises.

This archetypal structure, a set of three of realities as we call them, is what our organizations are based on.

It is a picture of the Threefold Social Organism, originally developed by Bernhard Lievegoed, specifically in relation to organizations, and is made up of three main realms.

The three overarching realities are: the ideal reality, the social reality, and the material reality. We use the term realities here because that is what they are – they prevail in every organization, whether a family, a school or a multi-million $ international. The archetype lives behind each and every one. They are just as real as the make-up of a human being – spirit, soul and body. The health of an organization, as with the health of a child, depends on the recognition of these realities, as well as on their balance with each other. Too much of one, or too little of another, causes discordance and can eventually lead to a breakdown of the organization.

The ideal reality is made up of our vision and mission, our principles and values, and our strategies and goals. This is where we determine our direction. As an individual, we choose to connect with the spiritual world (or not) –when we do this work.

This realm is where each of us as individuals enjoy our purest form of freedom. The freedom of thought – our ideals – the freedom to create our own value system, our own principles that we choose to live by, and to set our own goals. This is where individualism reigns – no one can determine for us what to think – or what intentions to formulate – here, we are free.

This is where I am I.

Now I will go to its polarity - The material reality – or the economic reality – which is where our vision, mission, values and goals are put into action. We connect with the material world when we work in this realm. It is about our commitment to bring our ideals into the material world.

This is where the rubber hits the road – where our goals meet form, our values meet process, and vision meets resources. In this realm, individual freedoms take a subordinate role to the collective will, to the purpose of fulfilling the mission of the school.

This is where you and I become We.

The social reality – in the middle – is the realm of relationships – is where individuals meet – the open space where individuals recognize each other, or You - where an I and an I agree to come together to form a We. Where we discover our common visions, our common values and our common goals – in the ideal realm - and align with each other in the social realm, to create form and process in the material realm – in order to bring the ideal into reality. We connect with each other in the social world when we do this work.

This is where You and I meet.

We do this all the time. Years ago, in Germany, a woman I had recently met through the biography work network and I became inspired while lamenting how little biography work was being offered in the city we lived in. We began to share what was important to each of us about the work, and our own visions on how we could be the ones to bring it. As we got to know each other better, and each other’s pictures of why, how and what we wanted to do, it became clear that we were closely enough aligned, that with some compromises on each side – I wanted to hold courses that ran once per week for a couple of hours, and she wanted to run weekend courses (we settled on the weekend version) - that we wanted to commit to giving our little initiative a shot. We only ran 2 of them in the end, but it was an incredibly fulfilling experience of meeting another individual, collaborating on an idea, and forming it enough that we together could bring it into a reality.

Now, leadership is responsible for assuring that these three areas are attended to in a school. Leadership is tasked with assuring that we have shared direction in the ideal realm, alignment in the social realm and commitment in the material realm.

In order to do this, leadership must do two things: Bring awareness, and provide guidance. Creating healthy processes in order to fulfill our mission is at the core of this work. Processes based on, imbued by and reflective of the principles our school community has articulated.

Bringing awareness around the current state of the school, broken down by the archetypal structure - how strong are we in our ideal reality, our social reality and our material reality? Where do we do well? Where are we experiencing challenges? – asking these questions is crucial for understanding what areas are in a healthy state and what areas need further development and attention.

For instance, if we feel rudderless in our allocation of resources – if we can’t agree on how many hours the second foreign language teacher should be teaching, or, if we can’t agree on whether or not we should expand, and found a high school, we would need to go back to the ideal reality that we have committed to.

Is the direction of our programming clear? Have we determined that a focus on two foreign languages throughout the grades is part of what makes us unique? Is it a core aspect of our identity? And if we have, are we able to fulfill that promise – the one we made to each other when we made these commitments? Or are there new circumstances that require us to review and perhaps revise our vision and mission? Has there been a major shift in our focus, in our purpose? Are our vision and our mission still relevant? Guiding us back, and asking these questions, is a leadership task.

Using the model of the three realities of an organization gives us a tool we can use to navigate our way through the complexities of figuring out which area our questions lie in, which in turn helps guide us in how best to approach them.

We saw in the example of the foreign language teaching hours that the question behind it was one of identity – of our ideal reality. We can then return to what it was we originally committed to, and evaluate if that is still relevant. By doing this – by returning to the agreements we made -we shift the discussion and take pressure off the immediate situation, and importantly, off the players in that situation. We bring objectivity to whatever decision will need to be made. It is not me, the teacher, hoping to be able to truly bring the language and culture in a meaningful way to the children, or the college chair or administrator, or whoever is responsible for teaching hours and tasked with sticking to the budget. Rather, the decision must be based on the direction we gave ourselves when we determined our vision and mission, when we determined our principles, and when we determined our strategies and goals. This is the realm that gives direction to all we do.

Therefore, it is imperative that when we make these promises, we have sought wide counsel and wide agreement within the community on our ideals, as they are what inform our practices.

In the foreign language example, it would be in the leadership’s hands, if others have not seen it themselves, to shine the light on where we are in this situation, what questions to ask, and what action will help us move forward. To guide us back to our original vision and mission, back to the identity realm, to check in and be sure we are still on course. Now, we may not always find a clear answer – a definitive decision – when we go up the ladder, so to speak, for direction. But the work we did in that realm should inform us as to where to focus our resources going forward.

We all have examples of where we failed to get critical input to inform a major decision, and the resulting inability to implement it.

The other major role of leadership is to be sure we recognize where we are – what the current situation is – that we take the steps necessary to do the work of picture building. In any given situation where a problem solving or decision-making process is called for, the first and crucial step is to be sure we agree on what is.

This does not mean we have to agree on the reasons on how we got here, nor how we each feel, or what it means for the future – we do not need to agree on anything at this point other than the fact that we have arrived at this place in time – that we agree that this is the current state, that we recognize and acknowledge the facts and the feelings involved. Once we agree, once we are all on the same page as to what is, then we can move on to determine the urgency of the matter, and further steps. We can have a situation where some think we are in a crisis, and others don’t. This is where we have to listen to each other. Arriving at this place is harder than it sounds, as most of us know. It takes resolve and courage and time and good will to listen to each other – to accept there are differing versions of the past and of what brought us to where we are. To accept that some of us are perhaps hurt, even though no offense was intended and others are perhaps impervious.

It is all part of our shared history, and belongs in the picture. We don’t need to hash it out – we don’t need to get mired in debate. We need to recognize that it is. If conflicts or other disputes emerge, then managing them must be the very first thing we tend to. Resolving conflicts comes first – always. No sustainable progress can otherwise be made.

The ability to competently build pictures as a group is an essential part of collaborative leadership – to recognize our current state of being; to face it. Without this step, any further actions or decisions will surely falter, as they will be based on only partial realities.

This is work we did at Sunbridge when I came on almost 9 years ago. Our resources were depleted, and we had to make very tough decisions. Our vision and mission no longer represented the reality of the college. The most painful decisions had already been made, and it was up to those of us remaining, or newly coming on as I was, to determine the future direction of Sunbridge. We had to, we chose to, go back and revisit our ideal reality – our vision, mission, principles, strategies and goals - we held meetings all summer long with as many of our constituents as were interested in our future, to determine what that future would look like. We spent time aligning each of our pictures of what Sunbridge was to be – what our promise, a newly formed group of colleagues, to each other, and to the world, would be. That promise was our commitment to devote ourselves and our resources to strengthening our core programming – that is, Waldorf Teacher Education. Running bookstores and dorms was not what we did well, but teacher education was, we felt.

That commitment has guided us these past 8 years, and given us direction at the different junctures in our path. This work in the ideal realm has also provided a bond in the social realm that helps carry us when we are faced with more difficult decisions in the material realm.

As I said earlier, the core of leadership’s responsibility is to assure that healthy processes are created and followed in order to provide direction, alignment and commitment. Schools that have the ability to scrutinize themselves, create healthy processes, and work together out of an attitude of compassion, build confidence and trust in their communities, which of course form the basis for collaborative leadership.

I would like now to give some more depth on the three realities of an organization, and their underpinnings.

Direction is what the work in the ideal reality, or realm, gives us – our vision, mission, principles and values and strategies and goals are what give our work direction, meaning and purpose. These are promises that we make. This is what we connect with when we join, or help form an organization. And it is our main reason for staying -- because we personally identify with these areas – they represent to a certain degree our own vision, values and goals. If we don’t feel connected here, money or status will not move us to remain, or to do our utmost to be our best selves.

And this is the area that all other areas should flow from and be connected to. A strong understanding of who we are – of what inspires our work, what our values are and what it is we want to achieve, directs our will. This strong sense of identity also and just as importantly allows us to communicate to the world who we are and what we stand for – what our purpose and goals are. We are thus able to interact with the world in an honest and authentic manner – we show ourselves – we can be seen and known for who we are.

Commitment –the polarity - refers to the realm where we fulfill those promises we made in the ideal realm – the material or economic reality – where our action, our performance, counts. This is the realm that we are judged by – we are not judged by what we think, or what we proclaim we will do, we are judged by what we actually do, and how well we do it. This realm is made up of structures and roles, processes and policies, and resources.

Our structures and roles are there to serve our goals and strategies – our processes and policies must be reflective of our principles, and our material resources should be allocated in fulfillment of our vision and mission.

I want to talk now for a minute about policies and processes, and their use. Unfortunately, I think, they often receive a bad rap in our communities. There is fear that structures, policies and processes hollow out, stifle and ignore the ideal and social realities of our communities. I would like to argue that they are in support of, and balance out the other two realms.

Processes and policies that are imbued by, enlivened by and reflective of our ideal realm create predictability, congruence and reliability in managing our work together. We are free in the creation of these, our individual creativity and pursuit of higher ideals should be activated and employed when we come together to determine what processes and policies we create to systematically manage our work. Once these have been agreed upon, they provide the framework within which we maneuver. The principle here being that we remove any sense of arbitrary behavior, or personal or individually-motivated actions that are unfairly or unjustly carried out.

Let’s use a simple example of a teacher who, despite multiple conversations and pleas, has made a habit of coming to class late every day. Hopefully we have a policy in our faculty handbook that we can turn to which states that all teachers must be in class on time. And if we don’t, then this might prompt us to create one.

We don’t have to worry that bringing this policy to their attention will be taken as a personal slight; that the person who brings it to their attention is doing so for any negative, personal reasons.

Rather, presumably it is clear that this policy has been agreed to by the appropriate bodies, and there is nothing personal about calling for accountability. For upholding the agreements that we have made with each other. This is a non-negotiable – we all have agreed that in order to fulfill our mission, based on our mutual values, we must all show up to class on time. Now, I know that the real work is in defining what “on time” is – my “on time” and your “on time” could very well be different things.

And this is where the work of the larger, consulting body comes in. This is where those who are tasked with ensuring these policies are created, and adhered to, must first be sure the group that is being asked to carry them out – namely the teachers - is in agreement on the definition of “on time”.

Like laws, we don’t need policies and processes, until we do. We need them to govern the areas of our working together that lie outside of the realm of ideals, to fall back on. The need to create a policy usually arises when an everyday matter that affects a part of or the whole the school is handled in such an arbitrary manner that the lack of reliability and predictability in carrying it out causes concern or impedes the work of others. Of course, there must be room for discernment and compassion, when circumstances justify an exception.

Processes are the manner   in which we come to decisions   or conclusions. They are made up of interdependent and linked tasks, set in a sequence, that lead to an end. The ability to create processes that are reflective of our values, and further adhere to what most organizations agree solid processes are namely – effective; efficient; obvious – not hard to decipher or understand; and transparent. Transparency of process of course does not mean transparency of content.

Being able to create healthy processes, both for standing needs such as hiring, budgeting, or curriculum development, and for ad hoc purposes as situations arise that need problem solving, or decisions that fall out of the ordinary day-to-day affairs, engenders trust, and creates confidence. Leadership that can nimbly, reliably and ethically guide organizations by creating healthy processes towards finding solutions - and not towards foregone conclusions – time and again is one of the critical elements of a healthy and sustainable organization.

If we know how we are going to approach a problem, if we know how the hiring process is designed and carried out, if we know that the tenets that that last decision was based on are the same that guide all our processes, we can have faith and trust, and feel confidence in the integrity of the process and in those carrying it out. Leadership can build trust and confidence by employing, time and again, such healthy structures for creating processes. This is where predictability in the material realm plays a key role.

Think of the needs of the parents here – how often are we confronted with the complaint that they don’t know who to turn to, or what the process is for addressing their concerns (let’s just work with the legitimate complaints here). And it’s not just the parents we owe it to to create reliable and predictable processes. We owe it our colleagues as well.

I would be remiss if I didn’t emphasize here the importance clarity of roles play. In my work with schools and other organizations, most of the conflicts that arise do so out of a lack of clarity around roles. Job descriptions are vague, decision-making processes are unclear or unreliable, people are not given the time or support to grow into their roles, or there is a culture of feeling that by defining roles, we are somehow stultifying creativity or individual freedoms. A lack of clarity as to who actually has the authority to act and to call for accountability arises out of role confusion.

The crises that this lack of clarity and agreement around roles engender are ones that we are all-too familiar with.

So, we have our direction-giving identity – our “I” - in the ideal realm, and our commitment, and the actions we take – where we come together as “we” – in the economic realm.

The piece missing here is the social realm – where “I” meet “you”, and together we go into the beautiful, messy business of aligning ourselves. This is the area where we attempt to connect the inherent tensions between our vision and our resources. It is in the social realm that we bring alignment between what it is we say we want to do, and what we are actually able bring to earth – what is possible.

And this is real, hard work – aligning our ideal reality with our material reality. We do this through negotiation and dialogue - we come to the agreements on the vision we aspire to – on which set of values and principles we will adopt as a community to guide us - and on the goals and strategies we set in order to carry out our mission. We define our Rights relationship with one another in a collaborative process in this realm. And when I talk about negotiation, I don’t mean a battle of the wills – sitting across the table from each other, or bullying as we are now seeing played out on the national stage. I mean a meeting of interests, partnering, sitting side by side. This is where we create the criteria upon which our decisions are made. Everything that we do must go through this realm, at some point. Like a lemniscate, weaving in and out. We awaken to each other here. And this is where our potential lies – in collaborating in the open middle – dialogue.

Dialogue is the tool we use to reflect upon ourselves – the key to being a learning organization – by which I mean one that is able to, through following processes that incorporate reflection and review, see itself. The ability to reflect in order to see what is.

The people we entrust with guiding the activities of our schools have the responsibilities I just described, mostly in assuring that these activities occur in a healthy, collaborative manner.

They are not necessarily entrusted with making all the decisions themselves, although certainly there will be specific decision-making authority delegated to them. They are entrusted with assuring that the decisions that need to be made are made. That processes are developed and adhered to that embody the values and fulfill the mission of the school. And that the school strives to be a learning organization – that it self reflects, has the courage to acknowledge where it is, and the resolve to commit to activities that bring it forward.

Dialogue assumes we know how to listen to each other, but it also assumes we know how to contribute. It is not just talking, or debating. It needs honest, non-violent engagement, appreciation and respect for differences, the ability to reflect, and commitment to each other an d to fulfilling the purpose and goals of the school.

Leadership leads and guides organizations –not people. We are responsible for leading ourselves.

One expression of this is what Steiner referred to in “Awakening to Community”, which is a series of lectures given in Stuttgart and Dornach in 1923 after the burning of the first Goetheanum, and a crisis of identity ensued, where he talks about what is needed to rebuild the work of the anthroposophical society.

“We must make anthroposophy real by learning to be aware in anthroposophical community life that where people in anthroposophical tasks are together, there they experience their first awakening in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in their fellows. Human beings wake up in their mutual encounter with other human beings. As each one has new experiences between his encounters … and has grown a little …these awakenings take place in an ever new way as people go on meeting.”

He is speaking here about meetings that engage in spiritual study in the anthroposophical society.

He then goes on to say that “When you have discovered the possibility that human souls wake up in the encounter with other human souls, and human spirits wake up in the encounter with other human spirits, and go to anthroposophical groups with a living awareness that only now have you come awake and only now can you begin to grow together…, then the true spirit of community descends upon the place where you are working…”.

He goes on, in the fourth lecture, to speak of the ‘in-turned will’ – which, when applied, “becomes a striving to make one’s ethical-moral and religious being a full inner reality.”.

This becomes the basis for the soul attitude we must adopt when we come together to join in human endeavors. We all know the work involved in shedding our antipathies and sympathies in order to build and strengthen our ethical-moral, higher selves. Compassion, or objective compassion, is at the center of this soul attitude. It is what helps us see the other, accept the other, and extend trust, with the faith that they too are striving to make their ethical-moral and religious being a full, inner reality. Love is of course, what we are talking about here.

For me, an integral part of this soul-attitude, which we strive to adopt when encountering each other, is forgiveness, charity. There is a tragedy that Steiner talks about when a soul is caught between the “…longing for full humanness and soul’s feeling of alienation from the conditions existing in the world today…”, and the pain and suffering that entails. He talks about taking refuge from life’s disappointments in the world of thought – “…thoughts that fly easily to every part of the world and are thus very satisfying. They make up for one’s external life, which is always causing one such justifiable dissatisfaction.”

Yet it is true that “…real human strength can only be developed by

rising above suffering- by making it a real living force – the source of one’s power to overcome.”. The power to overcome one’s suffering, the power to overcome our deep disappointments with our own and each other’s inadequacies and failings, fortifies our ability to come together in the social realm to, as Steiner says, “…apply our intelligence and genius to stiffen and strengthen our will forces.”, in order to create commitment in the material world.

So, it’s all about balance in the three realms – a budget-driven process has no inspiration – holding on too tightly to your principles leads to intolerance – these imbalances lead to unhealthy and unsustainable organizational life.

What do our principles and values mean for our lives – how are they actually manifested?

They are there to guide us, to give meaning to our actions. Alone they serve no purpose. All the elements in the ideal realm must be in

support of our mission. If there are principles that stand in the way of fulfilling our mission – that is, of providing an excellent school experience, then they are no longer serving us. They are hindering us.

We devote ourselves to greater and deeper understanding of the wisdom given to us by Rudolf Steiner and others, let us devote as much of ourselves towards not only creating governance structures that we agree on, but more importantly to living into them – empowering those we mandate with responsibilities with the authority to act.

The verse that contains the line: “Matter is never without spirit and spirit is never without matter” is often cited as an argument that Steiner meant for us to see that all three realms are essential elements to our social order, and one is not inherently more important or essential than the other. In fact, they are only to be seen as an interdependent trio - they are a package deal.

I was asked specifically to talk about administrators and their role in relationship to the principle of collaborative leadership, which I am happy to do.

The questions of leadership, governance structures and the rights relationships between the realms has been the topic and theme for many books and conferences in Waldorf schools around the world for decades. As our world has become more complex, so has the organizational life of our schools. We have had to contend with more and more external pressure as well as changing attitudes of new generations of teachers and parents. These complexities created a great challenge to the health and sustainability of our schools.

Over the last 20-30 years, in response, our schools have recognized that we need to strengthen our ability to manage the material realm, and bring balance to the ideal and social realms, which precipitated the advent of administrators as having a major role in the makeup of the school’s structure. At that time, it seemed they were brought in to be “fixers” – they were turned to just as things were blowing up – the family was on their way out the door or the colleague was failing miserably – with no chance of rectifying the situation. This has changed over the years, as the role they fulfill and its centrality to the healthy functioning of school life has become more accepted. Nevertheless, I would say the role of the administrator is still seen as suspicious – as something to fear…as though they are out to steal the family jewels. We understand that this suspicion and fear has a whole host of roots, and not all of them rising out of misinterpretations of Steiner’s writings on the matter.

We are talking here, of course, about a lack of trust, that somehow the administrators are exercising too much power – even making a grab for it. Or that they are just a proxy of a frustrated board. I would though like to say here that when I have encountered an imbalance or misuse of power, it has usually not been the administrator who has been the culprit. Honestly, more likely than not, they are cowed by a forceful group of faculty members, and thus so cautious in their dealings that in the end they are not able to be effective.

That being said, I have also met some very effective, brave and compassionate administrators who have been integral members of school leadership teams.

I will add here that I feel we owe thanks to that first generation of administrators and the groundbreaking work they did – we know the life of an administrator is short, and by all accounts, that is due to the stress of being held responsible for the performance of the school’s employees – from faculty to administration to grounds and maintenance - yet without being given the requisite authority to actually have an impact.

It’s not a job most of us would want. So, again, thank you very much to those who have braved the waters and jumped in. You have paved the way and brought attention and focus to the imbalances that can afflict our schools.

A vertical definition of the three main pillars of the life of a Waldorf school, namely faculty, administration, and parents / board, has been a picture that most schools have lived with and tried to parse out meaning for in their own schools for many years now. Every type of organization has their own version of these areas of responsibilities.

This picture shows faculty as being responsible for the ideal or cultural life of the school, - the Thinking - , and administration for the social or rights life of the school, - the Feeling -, and parents / board as being responsible for the material or economic life of the school, - the Willing. (I am referring to this model here because it is widely referred to throughout the country – I think there may be other ways to depict the structure of our schools, including the where parents fit in and what the core corresponding task areas are.)

There has been much discussion and many attempts to apply this structure to the decision-making responsibilities of each area. While I see how this definition has helped to bring overall clarity to the structure, especially in a time when administration and administrators were still a fairly new phenomenon, I think we can add to that picture now in order to illustrate the dynamics of what I mean by collaborative leadership and decision-making responsibilities, and how it applies to all areas equally and simultaneously.

Let’s assume that we agree that the three areas of responsibility of leadership are to assure and guide Direction in the ideal reality, Alignment in the social reality, and Commitment in the material reality, within the school.

Let’s then layer these areas of responsibility horizontally across the diagram of the vertical pillars.

This second layer illustrates the interconnectivity and interdependence of those vertical pillars, of the three main sections of the school.

It illustrates the collaboration and partnering necessary in the leading of the school. Each section of the school must come together with the other sections to collaboratively assure that there is Direction, Alignment and Commitment. We all have roles in all three realms, this is what self-administration is all about.

I would like to come to an end with the quote from Socrates “Man, know thyself”, and implore us all to do our work in the identity realm – to understand who we are individually, and understand who we are as a community.

We need to know this so we can be good partners to each other – so that we can truly and honestly collaborate - so a yes can be a yes and a no can be a no.

I need to be able to rely on your commitment, and you must be able to rely on mine. And I can’t truly make that commitment without knowing myself. We must take each other seriously in what we say we will do – and that we will do what we say – fulfill our promise. I think that’s called accountability.

Each of us must be able, out of themselves; to align with what it is we are promising to the world. From the I to the You to the We.

We know that organizations cannot evolve beyond the developmental level of their leaders. So, let’s make sure the people that step up to the plate – the ones that have shown the courage and resolve to help guide our schools – receive our full support, which includes helping them attain and practice the skills and tools necessary to do their jobs, and give ourselves opportunities to practice this work.

Know what is most important to your school body – what core criteria are “must haves” when choosing your leadership, and understand which areas are not their strengths – and provide them either with more training and / or key partners whose skills and talents are complementary.

Look carefully. Choose carefully. Then give them your full support; invest in them, and allow them to do their jobs.

Our communities depend on us to not undermine ourselves.

This is of course the work of the Consciousness Soul in our times. This is why it is so hard and yet so important – and so full of potential for us all!

Below are two diagrams.

The first depicts the archetype of an organization based on Bernhard Lievegoed’s work, as described in the above talk. We call this model the Seven Levels of an Organization, or the Jacob’s Ladder.

The second is a sketch of the two overlapping layers – the three pillars of a school: faculty, administration and board, overlapped by the three realities of an organization: ideal, social and material. We all work together across all three realms.