Talk Back

[malabar]

subtitle: Civility rediscovered

A followup to his earlier book, A Different Drum, this one concerns organisations and how to make them more civil - that is, more like the ideal communities Peck postulated in that previous work.

Peck's version of community rests on three concepts: inclusivity, commitment, and consensus. When he ran community building workshops, they consisted of people having to share personal information about themselves with the others in the group in the expectation that familiarity would breed respect and cooperation. Not that this was an automatic or swift outcome; Peck defines four stages of community building:

* Pseudocommunity: This is a stage where the members pretend to have a bon homie with one another, and cover up their differences, by acting as if the differences do not exist. Pseudocommunity can never directly lead to community, and it is the job of the person guiding the community building process to shorten this period as much as possible.

* Chaos: When pseudocommunity fails to work, the members start falling upon each other, giving vent to their mutual disagreements and differences. This is a period of chaos. It is a time when the people in the community realize that differences cannot simply be ignored. Chaos looks counterproductive but it is the first genuine step towards community building.

* Emptiness: After chaos comes emptiness. At this stage, the people learn to empty themselves of those ego related factors that are preventing their entry into community. Emptiness is a tough step because it involves the death of a part of the individual. But, Scott Peck argues, this death paves the way for the birth of a new creature, the Community.

* True community: Having worked through emptiness, the people in community are in complete empathy with one another. There is a great level of tacit understanding. People are able to relate to each other's feelings. Discussions, even when heated, never get sour, and motives are not questioned.

Peck then describes how various organizations, from medical groups to Fortune 500 companies, have gone through community building workshops and either succeeded or failed to change their corporate cultures in directions of greater civility.

I found the discussions of organizational culture very interesting. I wish I'd had this information when I was working at various places; a lot of things would have made more sense. Peck's style can be a bit irritating at times - his version of Christianity seems a bit self-righteous - but overall a good resource.