Mennofolk: Organization of Flux and Transformation
Mennofolk, a loose cluster of acoustic music festivals throughout the US and Canada, has been in existence for almost twenty years, but in the last five years it has experienced intense growth. How is it that a group without a CEO or even a mission plan can continue to thrive and develop over such a long time? What has seemed like God’s providence can also be understood using a metaphor of organizational existence outlined by Gareth Morgan (2006, p. 241) in Images of Organization. He calls this metaphor, which so fits the Mennofolk experience, “organizations as flux and transformation.”
The dynamics of quantum physics can be viewed from the point of view of the universe or from our smallest particles’ relationships. Mennofolk as an organization fits the metaphor of flux and transformation within its own closed system, and Mennofolk also plays an influencing role in changing the wider Mennonite church which shares its name. I will explore both the micro and the macro unfolding of Mennofolk and its affinity with chaos theory in my final paper. For this deliverable, I will focus on Mennofolk within itself, without going into the wider organized church.
Though Mennofolk began as the brainchild of one man, who decided to bring together young musicians from Mennonite backgrounds for a concert in the late 80’s, it has now sprung up spontaneously in five locations. Each festival has a different motivation for existing, leaders and committees that change over time, and a wide variety of church and secular sponsors. The festivals are by nature grass-roots, organized to meet the needs and expressions of a certain geographic area and context. Yet all of them claim the title “Mennofolk,” making that fascinating connection between a specific ethnic or religious background and the music that comes from the people who have sprouted from that influence. An observer who traveled between the festivals might be amazed to identify a similar ethos, atmosphere, even aesthetic, despite that fact that the people who create these festivals have almost no communication between them and absolutely no master plan.
To truly enter the microcosm of the Mennofolk phenomenon, one must begin with the process of the creation of music. Within the musician something stirs, an urge, a vision, a shimmering form just beyond consciousness. Using the tools of musical training, the composer or arranger reaches into their own subconscious to tap into emotions and images, and makes them real, capturing them on page or instrument. At times, good work reaches the collective unconscious, illuminating archetypes that resonate with human experience wider than the author. One could say that the process of song making creates form, or order out of the chaos of our minds and souls. When a songwriter creates a piece, they bring to that process all their life experience, including the world view of their religious or social community. Employing the theory of autopoiesis, all of reality is thus created, and the artistic process of music simply mimics the mind’s work as it understands and projects the wider reality. In this way, folk music becomes a portrait of the folk, indeed of the projection of the perceived reality of a people within a folkway (cultural or religious) group.
As Mennofolk festivals bring musicians from the Mennonite community together, they form a wider circle of a collective portrait. Musicians are not asked to sing on certain themes, or to profess any specific theology; they are simply invited to do what they do, and express their inner world through music for the benefit of the wider audience. Something very beautiful begins to happen; just as the structure of a song created order out of vague, chaotic emotional, spiritual, or psychic experience, the collection of random Mennonite song-makers create an order, a fabric of song that reflects a community beyond a single artist.
To organize a Mennofolk is a lot of hard work. Money must be raised, venues provided, stages booked, the public invited. Most committees work by dividing up the jobs, and each person reports to the group about progress made on the project. Some decisions must be made collectively, such as payment policies, sponsorship relationships or yearly themes. The grass-roots committees organize themselves according to what is practical for their context. Some meet over kitchen tables, some meet in church offices. Some committee members are volunteers, some are in paid positions which support the festival. Money comes from businesses, congregations, individuals, grants, and ticket prices, though not all festivals charge for tickets or pay their performers. Basically, the “minimum specs” (Morgan, Images of Organization, 2006, p. 257) are few: Mennofolk is a collection of artists from Mennonite backgrounds.
So many variations can be drawn from this minimum order. Festivals have included fine art, crafts, spoken word, musical theatre, and all musical genres. Mennofolk festivals have been in bars, campgrounds, Main Streets or concert halls. Publicity has been scattered on stocking caps, postcards, expensive ads, mainstream folk music magazines, websites and billboards. Graphics might include professional glossy photos, clip art or a simple hand-sketched stave of wheat. To any professional marketing or branding office, the Mennofolk track record for public relations would indeed seem like chaos. Nowhere is there a mailing list, a membership file, or even a media data base. Even the Mennofolk website can be accessed and changed by numberous users, and musicians sign themselves up on it from their personal computers, presenting whatever they choose to represent or define them. From this chaotic, and widely divergent base comes order. Eventually, festivals have formed and built themselves.
Just as Morgan describes (Images of Organization, 2006, p. 251), “attractors” help to mold and change and evolve each festival, keeping things always fresh, always transforming. For those who wish to reach out to the public, a park or an outdoor venue might become more attractive than an indoor campus venue. Stage locations vary almost yearly, even if the home of that festival remains in the same city. One very successful festival ran for four years at a camp in Southern Michigan, peaked, and then died due to lack of visionary leadership. Just as it folded, two more festivals began in other locations, full of new energy, and a fresh audience. Though individual festivals change and even end, Mennofolk as a whole has just grown more widespread.
Through this process of constant flux and change, and transformation, Mennofolk has thrived as an organization. As we create the future through today, we wait for a vision to emerge without a static imposition of predisposed idea of what that future form will bring. In the religious words, we rely on the spirit of God to move in our midst. We use the tools of talent, tenacity and prayer, to participate in a prophetic process.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
To Bot or Not To Bot
To Bot or Not To Bot
The Appropriateness and Effectiveness of ICIM’s Electronic Networks
By Wendy Chappell, Executive Director
A doctor sits down to his email early in the morning. Fifteen messages are there, as usual from the International College of Integrative Medicine, “Someone has viewed your listing on www.icimed.com.”
“Great,” he thinks, “when will the phone start ringing with all these new patients this damn website is promising me?” He idley clicks on one of the announcements and browses his listing, tossing off a quick email to Wendy changing a few details about his office. Sometimes he just clicks return and tells her the weather. At least he knows she’s always there behind those obnoxious emails, ready to answer any questions he has at the moment about what ICIM is up to.
This scenario happens in over one hundred locations across the country almost daily. Our bots tell our doctors when they’ve got a hit. To some of them this is a sign of life and hope that they will be found in the gobbly-gook of cyberspace. To some it is a meaningless waste of email space. After all, it’s just a bot, not a patient. “Give us names and addresses so we can do something about the inquiry,” they plea. But we have nothing but an anonymous click to give. The bots don’t discuss things with the potential patients, and they certainly don’t give in to the doctor’s questions. They quietly do what they were built to do; they follow the rules and nothing more. As John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid write in The Social Life of Information (2002, p. 54)), “bots, in contrast to humans, live a wretchedly impoverished social existence.”
Those bots didn’t come from nowhere. They were built by their godfather Antonio, who is also our webmaster at ICM. In The Social Life of Information the authors argue that technology will not make organizations flatter, as once was thought (p. 28). I would agree with that, however, in ICIM, the hierarchy takes an interesting turn, because on a practical level it is arranged according to technological power. Though I am Antonio’s boss and the ICIM Board of Directors employs me, Antonio is at the top of most of our daily interactions. It is Antonio, our IT department that links me into most of ICIM’s communications, and he also has the power to change major and minor details of how we interact with the world. If he were to quit, ICIM would not be able to carry on until a replacement “Antonio” who had similar intellectual abilities and experience could be hired. I have some abilities to adapt the website and enter data, and members rely on me to update their listings and membership status, etc., so I am next in line on the power scale. Members of our group have only limited abilities to control their profile, so they are the lowest in the hierarchy, relying on me, and ultimately Antonio, to “present” them and represent them in an attractive way to society at large. Hierarchy is alive and well, and based on IT.
What does our electronic office provide? It is a library where members can download forms, power points, schedules, papers, and links to other friendly organizations (http://www.icimed.com/links.php). We post drafts of documents, which are meant to foster discussion and elicit comments and corrections from member doctors. Faxed documents all come by email and can be posted directly to our website. In some ways it would seem quite useful and efficient, but it is static for the most part, with few interactive possibilities. Our one attempt at interacting is a members-only section, and we find most of our members incapable of remembering the password. On page 70 of Wikinomics; How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006), authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams explain why people participate in voluntary production and building of collective websites such as Wikipedia. They claim that the people who are peer producers love participating and feel a sense of pleasure at doing it. Most are also involved professionally in some aspect of their voluntary participation. ICIM has failed to make electronic participation a pleasurable, easy experience for our members.
One exception to this was a project where I wanted to define our specialties as a group. I tried sending out a blanket email and got no response. I tried giving individuals a paper with lines and one word on it, encouraging them to write a definition with no response. Finally, when I was processing membership information and I noticed that a member had a specific specialty, I sent that member a personal email asking for a bite sized definition of his/her specific specialty. I got almost 100% response. Here is a link to view this special page, the only place on our website that has a participatory flavor:http://www.icimed.com/specialty_list.php
Some of the most effective aspects of our website are the bots that find a practitioner based on a person’s zip code, searching in a complete circle around the target area (http://www.icimed.com/member_search.php). The public are looking for alternatives in medicine, and our website is recommended in several popular health newsletters as a place to do just that. This service seems very personalized; the public can even search according to specializations, however, just as described in The Social Life of Information on p. 46 (2002, Brown and Duguid), that is somewhat misleading. There is nothing personal about our bots and they are only as good as the information we feed them, which is not always updated. Though we are a small group and I put a lot of effort into data entry, the public still has higher hopes than web that is a “vast, disorderly and very fast-changing information repository with enormous quantities of overlapping and duplicate information…all its catalogues are incomplete and out of date” (p.44).
In conclusion, I would say that ICIM is in its infancy in using electronic networks effectively. Next week I will enjoy giving some vision for what our networks could be like, but for now, I will end with one small point. When the doctor I described at the beginning of this paper clicks “return” and chats with me in a friendly email, we may be engaging in one of the most powerful potential forces of IT; the old fashioned social aspect of organizations that has held us together from the beginning of time (2002, The Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid, p. 103)
References:
The Social Life of Information:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1578517087/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-7900473-2055206#reader-link
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1591841380/sr=1-1/qid=1173621335/ref=dp_image_0/002-7900473-2055206?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1173621335&sr=1-1
The Appropriateness and Effectiveness of ICIM’s Electronic Networks
By Wendy Chappell, Executive Director
A doctor sits down to his email early in the morning. Fifteen messages are there, as usual from the International College of Integrative Medicine, “Someone has viewed your listing on www.icimed.com.”
“Great,” he thinks, “when will the phone start ringing with all these new patients this damn website is promising me?” He idley clicks on one of the announcements and browses his listing, tossing off a quick email to Wendy changing a few details about his office. Sometimes he just clicks return and tells her the weather. At least he knows she’s always there behind those obnoxious emails, ready to answer any questions he has at the moment about what ICIM is up to.
This scenario happens in over one hundred locations across the country almost daily. Our bots tell our doctors when they’ve got a hit. To some of them this is a sign of life and hope that they will be found in the gobbly-gook of cyberspace. To some it is a meaningless waste of email space. After all, it’s just a bot, not a patient. “Give us names and addresses so we can do something about the inquiry,” they plea. But we have nothing but an anonymous click to give. The bots don’t discuss things with the potential patients, and they certainly don’t give in to the doctor’s questions. They quietly do what they were built to do; they follow the rules and nothing more. As John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid write in The Social Life of Information (2002, p. 54)), “bots, in contrast to humans, live a wretchedly impoverished social existence.”
Those bots didn’t come from nowhere. They were built by their godfather Antonio, who is also our webmaster at ICM. In The Social Life of Information the authors argue that technology will not make organizations flatter, as once was thought (p. 28). I would agree with that, however, in ICIM, the hierarchy takes an interesting turn, because on a practical level it is arranged according to technological power. Though I am Antonio’s boss and the ICIM Board of Directors employs me, Antonio is at the top of most of our daily interactions. It is Antonio, our IT department that links me into most of ICIM’s communications, and he also has the power to change major and minor details of how we interact with the world. If he were to quit, ICIM would not be able to carry on until a replacement “Antonio” who had similar intellectual abilities and experience could be hired. I have some abilities to adapt the website and enter data, and members rely on me to update their listings and membership status, etc., so I am next in line on the power scale. Members of our group have only limited abilities to control their profile, so they are the lowest in the hierarchy, relying on me, and ultimately Antonio, to “present” them and represent them in an attractive way to society at large. Hierarchy is alive and well, and based on IT.
What does our electronic office provide? It is a library where members can download forms, power points, schedules, papers, and links to other friendly organizations (http://www.icimed.com/links.php). We post drafts of documents, which are meant to foster discussion and elicit comments and corrections from member doctors. Faxed documents all come by email and can be posted directly to our website. In some ways it would seem quite useful and efficient, but it is static for the most part, with few interactive possibilities. Our one attempt at interacting is a members-only section, and we find most of our members incapable of remembering the password. On page 70 of Wikinomics; How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006), authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams explain why people participate in voluntary production and building of collective websites such as Wikipedia. They claim that the people who are peer producers love participating and feel a sense of pleasure at doing it. Most are also involved professionally in some aspect of their voluntary participation. ICIM has failed to make electronic participation a pleasurable, easy experience for our members.
One exception to this was a project where I wanted to define our specialties as a group. I tried sending out a blanket email and got no response. I tried giving individuals a paper with lines and one word on it, encouraging them to write a definition with no response. Finally, when I was processing membership information and I noticed that a member had a specific specialty, I sent that member a personal email asking for a bite sized definition of his/her specific specialty. I got almost 100% response. Here is a link to view this special page, the only place on our website that has a participatory flavor:http://www.icimed.com/specialty_list.php
Some of the most effective aspects of our website are the bots that find a practitioner based on a person’s zip code, searching in a complete circle around the target area (http://www.icimed.com/member_search.php). The public are looking for alternatives in medicine, and our website is recommended in several popular health newsletters as a place to do just that. This service seems very personalized; the public can even search according to specializations, however, just as described in The Social Life of Information on p. 46 (2002, Brown and Duguid), that is somewhat misleading. There is nothing personal about our bots and they are only as good as the information we feed them, which is not always updated. Though we are a small group and I put a lot of effort into data entry, the public still has higher hopes than web that is a “vast, disorderly and very fast-changing information repository with enormous quantities of overlapping and duplicate information…all its catalogues are incomplete and out of date” (p.44).
In conclusion, I would say that ICIM is in its infancy in using electronic networks effectively. Next week I will enjoy giving some vision for what our networks could be like, but for now, I will end with one small point. When the doctor I described at the beginning of this paper clicks “return” and chats with me in a friendly email, we may be engaging in one of the most powerful potential forces of IT; the old fashioned social aspect of organizations that has held us together from the beginning of time (2002, The Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid, p. 103)
References:
The Social Life of Information:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1578517087/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-7900473-2055206#reader-link
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1591841380/sr=1-1/qid=1173621335/ref=dp_image_0/002-7900473-2055206?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1173621335&sr=1-1
Monday, March 5, 2007
Bring Them Down; The Cingular Debacle
Preamble: Gentle Readers, this paper is written in the new language of email, inspired by The Cluetrain Manifesto; The End of Business as Usual (2001). According to its authors, Levine, Locke, Searls and Weinberger, email is a human language of the market that is personal rather than professional, that deals with subjective experience rather than academic fact, language that is short, to the point;
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in a language that is natural, open honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakingly genuine. It can’t be faked (p. xxi).
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in a language that is natural, open honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakingly genuine. It can’t be faked (p. xxi).
Bring Them Down; The Cingular Debacle
Phone service companies provide the worst, most horrid examples of “service” known to modern humankind. I don’t know which one I have (just like I don’t know which strain of flu virus I have); once it was Verizon; then I moved and had to change to Sprint which I think is now Embarq. There’s a TV ad in which each of the phone companies are represented by a different geeky guy who are all jealous of this one un-geeky guy who represents…? I can’t even remember who. All I know is that my last delightful interaction with one of these hell-companies took several weeks of being on hold several hours at a time and that I talked to literally 20-30 different “customer service representatives” with all my calls being “recorded for quality assurance.” Not once did I have a conversation. I gave and listened to sound bites and was told everything from “we don’t deal in 800 numbers anymore” to “your Verizon 800 number can’t exist, so how can we transfer it?” By the end of the ordeal, I had contacted The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (by email) to complain. I started explaining my fragile temper upfront to every human who I had the misfortune of confusing between my bouts on hold. I also had two 800 numbers with Embarq, or, er… must be Sprint which is why I consistently get obnoxious yellow bills mailed to me at the wrong address.
I am not at all surprised by Beckie’s experience with Cingular, which she describes in “Consumerists 10 Biggest Business Debacles.” I am not surprised that when I was foolish enough to print out all of the comments Beckie’s experience elicited from sympathetic web-writers, there were twenty-three pages in all (printed on the backs of re-used, redundant paper forms, of course). I am not surprised because I have so much internalized, stopped-up rage within my heart due to my own experience that I know I myself would go to great lengths and spend meager resources to Bring Them Down (BTD) ~ any of them, those phone companies that are all the same, no matter by which geeky name they go.
During my bout with the same enemy as Beckie’s own battle I had such an overwhelming need to tell someone! I wanted Someone to know how absolutely terrible and awfully this business was treating me, if they can even call themselves a business! Enter the beautiful description of “voice” in the chapter “Internet Apocalypso” by Christopher Locke (2001), in which he describes the transition of Joe Six-Pack, who goes from a passive recipient of TV propaganda to an internet surfer who hears laughter and starts thinking, “looking for the source of this strange, new, rather seductive sound (p. 7)”. Locke’s character Joe and many others like him discover their rebellious collective voice that corporations can no longer control. I needed to laugh after those hours on hold. I needed to laugh good and hard and then look around for someone to beat up. I was in the mood to get a voice!
The collective voices answering Beckie gave her abundant advice, objective, even, for the most part. Many shared her frustration, but pointed out that the contract she may have signed gave Cingular the legal right to cut off her service as they did. Some suggested she illegally unlock her phones and carry on, but all agreed that in this unjust situation, the best conclusion can only be a warning that we all need to be better consumers, reading contracts carefully before we sign them. Wise as a grandma, snarky as a little brother, and compassionate as an old friend, these voices of strangers contrasted like color to black and white with the voicelessness of the Cingular corporation.
My friend Paula received an email from her sister which she forwarded on to me this week, a You Tube video clip of the Stephen Colbert show The Colbert Report, in which he is discussing Cingular phone company mergers. The report starts with a sarcastic “Big News in the Telecom Industry…” as Colbert goes on to give a humorous slam of the deregulation of phone companies which results in one mass mess of a product (in other words, no change at all). Entertainment? Humor? Stick-it-to-the-Man Revolution? If the Cluetrain Manifesto is correct in its assertions, Cingular needs to see this web circus as its new public relations department. And the relations aren’t going very well.
References:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/top-10/top-10-biggest-business-debacles-2006-222632.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtFtcp4mNzA
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (Paperback) by Christopher Locke (Author), Rick Levine (Author), Doc Searls (Author), David Weinberger (Author) "You will never hear those words spoken in a television ad..." (more) Key Phrases: networked markets, market conversation, pen chains, Fort Business, Getting F-'ed By My Saturn Dealer, Appian Technology (more...)
(142 customer reviews)
List Price:
$14.00
Price:
$11.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save:
$2.80 (20%)
Availability: In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Phone service companies provide the worst, most horrid examples of “service” known to modern humankind. I don’t know which one I have (just like I don’t know which strain of flu virus I have); once it was Verizon; then I moved and had to change to Sprint which I think is now Embarq. There’s a TV ad in which each of the phone companies are represented by a different geeky guy who are all jealous of this one un-geeky guy who represents…? I can’t even remember who. All I know is that my last delightful interaction with one of these hell-companies took several weeks of being on hold several hours at a time and that I talked to literally 20-30 different “customer service representatives” with all my calls being “recorded for quality assurance.” Not once did I have a conversation. I gave and listened to sound bites and was told everything from “we don’t deal in 800 numbers anymore” to “your Verizon 800 number can’t exist, so how can we transfer it?” By the end of the ordeal, I had contacted The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (by email) to complain. I started explaining my fragile temper upfront to every human who I had the misfortune of confusing between my bouts on hold. I also had two 800 numbers with Embarq, or, er… must be Sprint which is why I consistently get obnoxious yellow bills mailed to me at the wrong address.
I am not at all surprised by Beckie’s experience with Cingular, which she describes in “Consumerists 10 Biggest Business Debacles.” I am not surprised that when I was foolish enough to print out all of the comments Beckie’s experience elicited from sympathetic web-writers, there were twenty-three pages in all (printed on the backs of re-used, redundant paper forms, of course). I am not surprised because I have so much internalized, stopped-up rage within my heart due to my own experience that I know I myself would go to great lengths and spend meager resources to Bring Them Down (BTD) ~ any of them, those phone companies that are all the same, no matter by which geeky name they go.
During my bout with the same enemy as Beckie’s own battle I had such an overwhelming need to tell someone! I wanted Someone to know how absolutely terrible and awfully this business was treating me, if they can even call themselves a business! Enter the beautiful description of “voice” in the chapter “Internet Apocalypso” by Christopher Locke (2001), in which he describes the transition of Joe Six-Pack, who goes from a passive recipient of TV propaganda to an internet surfer who hears laughter and starts thinking, “looking for the source of this strange, new, rather seductive sound (p. 7)”. Locke’s character Joe and many others like him discover their rebellious collective voice that corporations can no longer control. I needed to laugh after those hours on hold. I needed to laugh good and hard and then look around for someone to beat up. I was in the mood to get a voice!
The collective voices answering Beckie gave her abundant advice, objective, even, for the most part. Many shared her frustration, but pointed out that the contract she may have signed gave Cingular the legal right to cut off her service as they did. Some suggested she illegally unlock her phones and carry on, but all agreed that in this unjust situation, the best conclusion can only be a warning that we all need to be better consumers, reading contracts carefully before we sign them. Wise as a grandma, snarky as a little brother, and compassionate as an old friend, these voices of strangers contrasted like color to black and white with the voicelessness of the Cingular corporation.
My friend Paula received an email from her sister which she forwarded on to me this week, a You Tube video clip of the Stephen Colbert show The Colbert Report, in which he is discussing Cingular phone company mergers. The report starts with a sarcastic “Big News in the Telecom Industry…” as Colbert goes on to give a humorous slam of the deregulation of phone companies which results in one mass mess of a product (in other words, no change at all). Entertainment? Humor? Stick-it-to-the-Man Revolution? If the Cluetrain Manifesto is correct in its assertions, Cingular needs to see this web circus as its new public relations department. And the relations aren’t going very well.
References:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/top-10/top-10-biggest-business-debacles-2006-222632.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtFtcp4mNzA
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (Paperback) by Christopher Locke (Author), Rick Levine (Author), Doc Searls (Author), David Weinberger (Author) "You will never hear those words spoken in a television ad..." (more) Key Phrases: networked markets, market conversation, pen chains, Fort Business, Getting F-'ed By My Saturn Dealer, Appian Technology (more...)
(142 customer reviews)
List Price:
$14.00
Price:
$11.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save:
$2.80 (20%)
Availability: In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Organization as Culture: International College of Integrative Medicine
The culture of the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM) is still developing as it comes into its own as a distinct, independent group. In this paper I will explore the emerging culture of ICIM , using Gareth Morgan’s metaphor of Organization as Culture from his book Images of Organization (2006).
ICIM uses the following methods to embed organizational culture: published formal statements, printed and promotional materials, our slogan, the “Pearls and Nuggets” ritual, careful word choices, and stories about the founders of the group.
The ICIM mission statement was carefully worded years ago to be a broad description of the organizational goals of the group. As we re-evaluate our mission statement, I hope to edit the wording to reflect the fact that ICIM is a close community of colleagues and that ICIM insists on scientific excellence.
Our policies and procedures document is a new project which has been co-written over the last year using contributions from numerous board members. The process has been organic, with lots of group revisions. The fact that our P&P document is a constant “work in progress” rather than a static, published set of rules says a lot about our organizational culture! It is also placed prominently on our website, showing that we value complete honesty, democracy and transparency in our office dealings.
Slowly, we are standardizing the design of all of the forms, letterhead and newsletters that we create, using a simple graphic of an “i” surrounded by a circle, and a wave, or as some call it, a “woosh” of blue sweeping across the top of the page. The simplicity of the small letter i surrounded by the symbolic wholeness of the circle expresses that we are a vulnerable group of doctors who are made strong by our commitment to holistic thinking and world class medicine. The curve of blue illustrates our belief that we are riding a wave of the future of healthcare and that we are on the cusp of a movement that will change everything. Even the color blue symbolizes truth and expression, something our organization strives to offer to wider society on behalf of our members. Within the circle around the “i,” our graphic sometimes fades to green, a color which symbolizes healing and healers.
The ICIM slogan is currently “dedicated to advancement in medicine.” I read this slogan as something with sad overtones. It is a reference to the past that we definitely need to replace and update. Culturally, our slogan betrays defensiveness from the rejection experienced by many in our leadership from the larger “mother” group American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM). When some of our founders were forced to leave ACAM it was as if they needed to express that their new group was still “dedicated to advancement in medicine,” and maybe the insinuation was even that we were the group that had the true “dedication” after all. Whatever meaning it had for the committee that first chose it, we must now find a new slogan that is proactive and sets a unique, positive tone to define ICIM to the public and its members.
Each medical meeting ICIM organizes includes a ritual that has become important to the culture of the group. We have a sharing time listed in the program as “Pearls and Nuggets,” During this period, participants are encouraged to describe things they are doing in their practice that are working well, sometimes even simple or surprising treatments. Doctors can also feel comfortable here to mention problems or failures that they have encountered and ask colleagues for ideas and support in how to face these challenges. This portion of the program displays an organizational culture that is supportive and non-competitive, and portrays ICIM, not as a group with insiders and outsiders, but as a community of people dedicated to exploring treatments that work and evaluating what doesn’t work openly with each other
In an emerging field that is struggling for an acceptable definition, linguistic subtlety takes precedent. Our board has spent many hours discussing the proper terms to describe our collective practice of medicine. Some of the words that have been rejected are “holistic” (too wide and vague), “complementary” (something harmless that is an additive to mainstream medicine; we try to offer a whole separate paradigm), “alternative” (sounds like something that rejects all modern treatment, which we do not do), “new age” (non-medical, spiritual, flakey association), or “natural” (insinuates herbs and teas instead of lasers and IVs). We try to avoid these terms to avoid confusion about who we are. ICIM doctors do not want to be seen as backwards quacks or out-of-touch spiritual fanatics. Words that have been deemed appropriate are “integrative” (integrating the wisdom of modern medicine with the acceptance of innovative, multi-cultural, and ancient understandings of healing) and “functional” (helping the body to function properly; doing what “works”) medicine. A standing joke is that, by this description, we are set apart from conventional doctors who practice “dysfunctional” medicine. ICIM doctors want to be viewed as high tech, cutting edge, and scientifically legitimate.
Stories about the founders of the group are fondly told in informal ICIM contexts, and recently we have begun to formalize this at each meeting by starting a tradition of honoring several long time members who have recently passed away. We give a plaque to the current owner of the practice as well as more personal certificate to the widow, signed by multiple friends and associates of the person being honored. Each time we do this, stories are told from the podium about the doctor which remind everyone to appreciate the sacrifices and bravery of these early pioneers in the field. A popular book among ICIM members is Medical Mavericks, by Hugh Desaix Riordan, MD (1988) which describes doctors throughout history who were persecuted or ridiculed for theories and treatments that later became mainstream. ICIM doctors see both themselves and the founders of their group as following in this tradition of medical mavericks.
Based on these specific examples of embedding organizational culture within ICIM, I identify the corporate values of democracy, innovation, community, participation, scientific validity and courage. Our process in creating policies and procedures identifies democracy and transparency. Our passion for innovation is illustrated by our graphic images. Our desire to be a close community will soon come out of our mission statement. Participation is shown to be an essential value through the ritual of “Pearls and Nuggets.” The careful word choice we use in all descriptions of what we do shows the value we put in scientific validity. And the stories and legacy of medical mavericks present examples of the value of courage in our organization.
My impression of the organizational culture of ICIM is that this is a group that is truly holistic in nature, with values that extend beyond medicine and celebrate the individual spirit of each member who identifies with it.
References
Morgan, Gareth (2006). Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.
Riordan, Hugh Desaix (1988). Medical Mavericks, Wichita, Kansas: Bio-Communications Press.
ICIM uses the following methods to embed organizational culture: published formal statements, printed and promotional materials, our slogan, the “Pearls and Nuggets” ritual, careful word choices, and stories about the founders of the group.
The ICIM mission statement was carefully worded years ago to be a broad description of the organizational goals of the group. As we re-evaluate our mission statement, I hope to edit the wording to reflect the fact that ICIM is a close community of colleagues and that ICIM insists on scientific excellence.
Our policies and procedures document is a new project which has been co-written over the last year using contributions from numerous board members. The process has been organic, with lots of group revisions. The fact that our P&P document is a constant “work in progress” rather than a static, published set of rules says a lot about our organizational culture! It is also placed prominently on our website, showing that we value complete honesty, democracy and transparency in our office dealings.
Slowly, we are standardizing the design of all of the forms, letterhead and newsletters that we create, using a simple graphic of an “i” surrounded by a circle, and a wave, or as some call it, a “woosh” of blue sweeping across the top of the page. The simplicity of the small letter i surrounded by the symbolic wholeness of the circle expresses that we are a vulnerable group of doctors who are made strong by our commitment to holistic thinking and world class medicine. The curve of blue illustrates our belief that we are riding a wave of the future of healthcare and that we are on the cusp of a movement that will change everything. Even the color blue symbolizes truth and expression, something our organization strives to offer to wider society on behalf of our members. Within the circle around the “i,” our graphic sometimes fades to green, a color which symbolizes healing and healers.
The ICIM slogan is currently “dedicated to advancement in medicine.” I read this slogan as something with sad overtones. It is a reference to the past that we definitely need to replace and update. Culturally, our slogan betrays defensiveness from the rejection experienced by many in our leadership from the larger “mother” group American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM). When some of our founders were forced to leave ACAM it was as if they needed to express that their new group was still “dedicated to advancement in medicine,” and maybe the insinuation was even that we were the group that had the true “dedication” after all. Whatever meaning it had for the committee that first chose it, we must now find a new slogan that is proactive and sets a unique, positive tone to define ICIM to the public and its members.
Each medical meeting ICIM organizes includes a ritual that has become important to the culture of the group. We have a sharing time listed in the program as “Pearls and Nuggets,” During this period, participants are encouraged to describe things they are doing in their practice that are working well, sometimes even simple or surprising treatments. Doctors can also feel comfortable here to mention problems or failures that they have encountered and ask colleagues for ideas and support in how to face these challenges. This portion of the program displays an organizational culture that is supportive and non-competitive, and portrays ICIM, not as a group with insiders and outsiders, but as a community of people dedicated to exploring treatments that work and evaluating what doesn’t work openly with each other
In an emerging field that is struggling for an acceptable definition, linguistic subtlety takes precedent. Our board has spent many hours discussing the proper terms to describe our collective practice of medicine. Some of the words that have been rejected are “holistic” (too wide and vague), “complementary” (something harmless that is an additive to mainstream medicine; we try to offer a whole separate paradigm), “alternative” (sounds like something that rejects all modern treatment, which we do not do), “new age” (non-medical, spiritual, flakey association), or “natural” (insinuates herbs and teas instead of lasers and IVs). We try to avoid these terms to avoid confusion about who we are. ICIM doctors do not want to be seen as backwards quacks or out-of-touch spiritual fanatics. Words that have been deemed appropriate are “integrative” (integrating the wisdom of modern medicine with the acceptance of innovative, multi-cultural, and ancient understandings of healing) and “functional” (helping the body to function properly; doing what “works”) medicine. A standing joke is that, by this description, we are set apart from conventional doctors who practice “dysfunctional” medicine. ICIM doctors want to be viewed as high tech, cutting edge, and scientifically legitimate.
Stories about the founders of the group are fondly told in informal ICIM contexts, and recently we have begun to formalize this at each meeting by starting a tradition of honoring several long time members who have recently passed away. We give a plaque to the current owner of the practice as well as more personal certificate to the widow, signed by multiple friends and associates of the person being honored. Each time we do this, stories are told from the podium about the doctor which remind everyone to appreciate the sacrifices and bravery of these early pioneers in the field. A popular book among ICIM members is Medical Mavericks, by Hugh Desaix Riordan, MD (1988) which describes doctors throughout history who were persecuted or ridiculed for theories and treatments that later became mainstream. ICIM doctors see both themselves and the founders of their group as following in this tradition of medical mavericks.
Based on these specific examples of embedding organizational culture within ICIM, I identify the corporate values of democracy, innovation, community, participation, scientific validity and courage. Our process in creating policies and procedures identifies democracy and transparency. Our passion for innovation is illustrated by our graphic images. Our desire to be a close community will soon come out of our mission statement. Participation is shown to be an essential value through the ritual of “Pearls and Nuggets.” The careful word choice we use in all descriptions of what we do shows the value we put in scientific validity. And the stories and legacy of medical mavericks present examples of the value of courage in our organization.
My impression of the organizational culture of ICIM is that this is a group that is truly holistic in nature, with values that extend beyond medicine and celebrate the individual spirit of each member who identifies with it.
References
Morgan, Gareth (2006). Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.
Riordan, Hugh Desaix (1988). Medical Mavericks, Wichita, Kansas: Bio-Communications Press.
The Environment Surrounding the International College of Integrative Medicine
In the field of integrative medicine, the environment is one of extremes, with both heroes and villains as characters. I will attempt to describe this environment of my organization, the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM) with a purely subjective viewpoint, expressing hostilities and alliances without neutrality.
The first group I have identified is the community of integrative doctors in the United States, including participants in ICIM sponsored medical meetings, our members, and also those who have no association with us. This group of integrative doctors encounters constant harassment from various government agencies such as the State Medical Boards, the National Federation of State Medical Boards (an independent, private organization that has to answer to no other institutions about its actions or decisions) and the US governmental laws. They are also constantly attacked by “enemy” lawyers, mostly those who work for insurance companies which don’t want to cover integrative treatments, or lawyers who are part of the National Association of States Attorney General, a special interest group that strategizes about how to target integrative doctors to eliminate the field through intimidation.
Independent doctors who choose to practice integrative medicine are making a choice that could cost them their careers, and require a lot of political savvy as well as professional support. The American Association of Health Freedom is a lobbyist group that closely associates with ICIM, integrative doctors, and all other integrative medical associations. AAHF provides lawyers who are trained to defend alternative medicine and integrative treatments. They “fight back” against medical board harassment as well as try to pass laws that protect access to integrative medicine. They are a political action link between the public and the US government as well. When an ICIM member needs legal help, we funnel them to AAHF immediately, and we also encourage all out members to join AAHF, and promote AAHF’s activities.
Integrative doctors come together in many associations to try to educate themselves, do research projects, and gain professional legitimacy. These other groups are competitors with ICIM, and it is our goal to find as many ways as possible to set us apart from what these other groups offer compared to us. At the same time, these other groups are our colleagues and we share similar agendas. Several small organizations connect ICIM with the wider world of integrative medical associations. First, we use a business called Millivox to record our workshops and seminars. Millivox places this material online and lets customers download it. This small company is increasingly winning many of the integrative medical associations’ business, and soon they will host most of the major medical meeting recordings on one website, becoming a virtual shopping center for integrative medical knowledge. I anticipate many more connections and co-publicity between competing associations with Millivox as the catalyst. Secondly, medical students are attending our meetings in increasing numbers, and most of them attend the meetings of multiple groups. As these students start their practices they will bring increased knowledge and networking with various associations to any organization they join. Third, the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicity is an accrediting organization (run by many of ICIM’s board members) that is increasingly being identified as the premier testing body for chelation therapy, a popular integrative treatment. ICIM does the classes and ABCMT tests and approves the doctors to practice chelation. ABCMT also examines doctors who have taken chelation classes with other groups.
ICIM uses the services of an outside accountant. We usually hire an agent to help facilitate our gaining of Continuing Medical Education credits, though sometimes one of our supporting businesses has helped us out if they have accrediting connections. We work closely with various hotels and CVBs to plan our meetings and seminars. We are constantly sending our referrals to our members to the public, who hear about us most often through health newsletters that are also our corporate sponsors and exhibitors.
Just as mainstream medicine has a close relationship with the drug industry, ICIM has a mutually dependant relationship with a network of businesses who provide substances used in our treatments. Compounding pharmacies, business that sell medical testing equipment, nutritional supplement companies and many more of this sort provide the money that pays for our teaching and in return set up booths at our meetings to sell their wares to the doctors we attract. Our corporate friends help us to publicize our meetings, help us find other likeminded doctors who might want to join ICIM, and deal directly with the hotels we work with to create smooth meeting logistics.
Several other bodies that affect doctors of integrative medicine are various international movements and treatments that influence the kind of medicine we know and teach in the US, and research grants such as the National Institute of Health, which bring together doctors in studies to attempt to prove the effectiveness of functional (another word for integrative) medicine. Those studies are sometimes ways in which we find our members, and we can also help gain participants in studies by promoting them from within our group.
In a world of friends and enemies, the environment surrounding ICIM is a dynamic, changing force. We are affected daily by swings in public opinion, state and federal law, legal actions, economic trends, and a climate of competition and passionate commitment to a risky cause. As an organism, ICIM needs to become the opposite of a chameleon, setting itself apart in any way possible to stand as an inspired leader in a dangerous, exciting field, which just might be the path of the future of medicine.
The first group I have identified is the community of integrative doctors in the United States, including participants in ICIM sponsored medical meetings, our members, and also those who have no association with us. This group of integrative doctors encounters constant harassment from various government agencies such as the State Medical Boards, the National Federation of State Medical Boards (an independent, private organization that has to answer to no other institutions about its actions or decisions) and the US governmental laws. They are also constantly attacked by “enemy” lawyers, mostly those who work for insurance companies which don’t want to cover integrative treatments, or lawyers who are part of the National Association of States Attorney General, a special interest group that strategizes about how to target integrative doctors to eliminate the field through intimidation.
Independent doctors who choose to practice integrative medicine are making a choice that could cost them their careers, and require a lot of political savvy as well as professional support. The American Association of Health Freedom is a lobbyist group that closely associates with ICIM, integrative doctors, and all other integrative medical associations. AAHF provides lawyers who are trained to defend alternative medicine and integrative treatments. They “fight back” against medical board harassment as well as try to pass laws that protect access to integrative medicine. They are a political action link between the public and the US government as well. When an ICIM member needs legal help, we funnel them to AAHF immediately, and we also encourage all out members to join AAHF, and promote AAHF’s activities.
Integrative doctors come together in many associations to try to educate themselves, do research projects, and gain professional legitimacy. These other groups are competitors with ICIM, and it is our goal to find as many ways as possible to set us apart from what these other groups offer compared to us. At the same time, these other groups are our colleagues and we share similar agendas. Several small organizations connect ICIM with the wider world of integrative medical associations. First, we use a business called Millivox to record our workshops and seminars. Millivox places this material online and lets customers download it. This small company is increasingly winning many of the integrative medical associations’ business, and soon they will host most of the major medical meeting recordings on one website, becoming a virtual shopping center for integrative medical knowledge. I anticipate many more connections and co-publicity between competing associations with Millivox as the catalyst. Secondly, medical students are attending our meetings in increasing numbers, and most of them attend the meetings of multiple groups. As these students start their practices they will bring increased knowledge and networking with various associations to any organization they join. Third, the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicity is an accrediting organization (run by many of ICIM’s board members) that is increasingly being identified as the premier testing body for chelation therapy, a popular integrative treatment. ICIM does the classes and ABCMT tests and approves the doctors to practice chelation. ABCMT also examines doctors who have taken chelation classes with other groups.
ICIM uses the services of an outside accountant. We usually hire an agent to help facilitate our gaining of Continuing Medical Education credits, though sometimes one of our supporting businesses has helped us out if they have accrediting connections. We work closely with various hotels and CVBs to plan our meetings and seminars. We are constantly sending our referrals to our members to the public, who hear about us most often through health newsletters that are also our corporate sponsors and exhibitors.
Just as mainstream medicine has a close relationship with the drug industry, ICIM has a mutually dependant relationship with a network of businesses who provide substances used in our treatments. Compounding pharmacies, business that sell medical testing equipment, nutritional supplement companies and many more of this sort provide the money that pays for our teaching and in return set up booths at our meetings to sell their wares to the doctors we attract. Our corporate friends help us to publicize our meetings, help us find other likeminded doctors who might want to join ICIM, and deal directly with the hotels we work with to create smooth meeting logistics.
Several other bodies that affect doctors of integrative medicine are various international movements and treatments that influence the kind of medicine we know and teach in the US, and research grants such as the National Institute of Health, which bring together doctors in studies to attempt to prove the effectiveness of functional (another word for integrative) medicine. Those studies are sometimes ways in which we find our members, and we can also help gain participants in studies by promoting them from within our group.
In a world of friends and enemies, the environment surrounding ICIM is a dynamic, changing force. We are affected daily by swings in public opinion, state and federal law, legal actions, economic trends, and a climate of competition and passionate commitment to a risky cause. As an organism, ICIM needs to become the opposite of a chameleon, setting itself apart in any way possible to stand as an inspired leader in a dangerous, exciting field, which just might be the path of the future of medicine.
Following the Inner Voice: Servant Leadership as a Force for Reform
Writing from the turbulent decade of the seventies, Robert Greenleaf (1977) gave us a prophetic analysis of where American society was headed that has come to fruition. Greenleaf makes some assumptions about leadership that not only address what is effective, but also assert what is morally right. I have the good fortune of experiencing one servant leader on many levels: as a boss in the company I work for, as the chairman of the board in the organization I direct, and as a parent- L. Terry Chappell, M.D. My dad, who began his career in the same years that Greenleaf was writing, exemplifies every aspect of servant leadership Greenleaf describes.
Some of the first premises Greenleaf makes clear are that institutions can act as leaders in society, and that we are experiencing a failure of leadership on an institutional level. He quotes his mentor Oscar Helming in saying, “we are becoming a nation that is dominated by large institutions-churches, business, governments, labor unions, universities- and these big institutions are not serving us well” (p. 15). He pleads for even one institution, which could, like an individual, lead all others toward a better way.
According to Greenleaf, leadership dos not have to come from the top, but can be exercised from all levels of an organization, giving Thomas Jefferson as an example of someone who led by withdrawing to a lower level of management where he could be more effective. He also merges the idea of leadership with the concept of reform, believing that people with the ability to lead have the responsibility and ability to serve as “prime movers” in reforming the massive problems in society. Greenleaf assumes that leaders need to be affirmative and prophetic and take initiative rather than maintaining the status quo. Finally, Greenleaf introduces his main thesis of servant leadership, the assumption that “the great leader is seen as a servant first, and that simple fact is the key to his greatness” (p. 21).
Over my lifetime, my parents initiated many projects that have since become independent institutions run by others, institutions that are key players in creating the vibrant small town culture that we enjoy in Bluffton, Ohio. Repetitively, it seemed that they could see into the future and anticipate the joy, healing and wholeness that these organizations could bring to our lives. I remember the whole foods co-op that met in our living room, ordering bulk food, until two young couples were able to make the co-op into a main street store and offer good quality health food to a tri-county region for almost twenty years now. When I was a child, my parents started a group to explore how we could encourage exercise and sport among all ages. They formed a club, the Bluffton Family Recreation, which has now blossomed into a major player in Bluffton, with paid staff, a well equipped facility and programs that touch the lives of thousands.
My parents initiated other local projects, some of which came from their philosophical dedication to the betterment of public schools rather than home schooling for their four children. They started the mini-art program, where community volunteers come into classrooms and give detailed teaching on classic artists. They insisted on a strings program, a meager group of five with a part time consulting teacher which has blossomed into a full time staff position and an orchestra. They held a private training camp for the entire cross country team. What my parents wanted for their children, they were committed to providing for all children, reaching the underprivileged, and enhancing excellence for all people.
My dad has the gift of listening and understanding others. His empathy and compassion toward his patients make him a great doctor, but these listening skills also have made him a great board chairman. There are countless examples of conflict transformation that happened in tense situations of organizational politics where a private conversation with my dad softened anger and brought reconciliation to a divergent board. One on one communication is his forte. I have seen so many patients, irritated, frustrated by their situation, even hopeless, come out of a room after a consultation with Dr. Chappell soothed, encouraged and empowered with new optimism. Once, a young man from my high school class was caught shoplifting and sent to jail. Years later he told me that during that time my dad had written him a letter encouraging him and stating Dad’s belief that he could do so much more. The man told me that letter had changed his life, and he went on to go to school and have a career as a lawyer. My dad has had many conversations with all ages that have changed the course of a life for the better.
There is an aspect to my dad’s life of leadership that is puzzling to me, and in my reading of Greenleaf, he refers to it only briefly: so often servant leadership is not recognized or valued by society. For most of my dad’s career he was never asked to join a service group or a church committee, though he would have dearly loved to be part of such things. He was prevented by the city from a major expansion of his business, simply because of prejudice against his style of medicine. Some of his endeavors have failed; some dreams did not come true. Part of this is that by taking great risks, he also put himself at risk of failure.
Yet, L. Terry Chappell will be remembered as the ultimate servant leader, someone who helped all people whose lives he touched grow as persons, become, as Greenleaf said, “healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more able themselves to become servants”(p. 27).
Reference
Greenleaf, R.K. (1977). Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Some of the first premises Greenleaf makes clear are that institutions can act as leaders in society, and that we are experiencing a failure of leadership on an institutional level. He quotes his mentor Oscar Helming in saying, “we are becoming a nation that is dominated by large institutions-churches, business, governments, labor unions, universities- and these big institutions are not serving us well” (p. 15). He pleads for even one institution, which could, like an individual, lead all others toward a better way.
According to Greenleaf, leadership dos not have to come from the top, but can be exercised from all levels of an organization, giving Thomas Jefferson as an example of someone who led by withdrawing to a lower level of management where he could be more effective. He also merges the idea of leadership with the concept of reform, believing that people with the ability to lead have the responsibility and ability to serve as “prime movers” in reforming the massive problems in society. Greenleaf assumes that leaders need to be affirmative and prophetic and take initiative rather than maintaining the status quo. Finally, Greenleaf introduces his main thesis of servant leadership, the assumption that “the great leader is seen as a servant first, and that simple fact is the key to his greatness” (p. 21).
Over my lifetime, my parents initiated many projects that have since become independent institutions run by others, institutions that are key players in creating the vibrant small town culture that we enjoy in Bluffton, Ohio. Repetitively, it seemed that they could see into the future and anticipate the joy, healing and wholeness that these organizations could bring to our lives. I remember the whole foods co-op that met in our living room, ordering bulk food, until two young couples were able to make the co-op into a main street store and offer good quality health food to a tri-county region for almost twenty years now. When I was a child, my parents started a group to explore how we could encourage exercise and sport among all ages. They formed a club, the Bluffton Family Recreation, which has now blossomed into a major player in Bluffton, with paid staff, a well equipped facility and programs that touch the lives of thousands.
My parents initiated other local projects, some of which came from their philosophical dedication to the betterment of public schools rather than home schooling for their four children. They started the mini-art program, where community volunteers come into classrooms and give detailed teaching on classic artists. They insisted on a strings program, a meager group of five with a part time consulting teacher which has blossomed into a full time staff position and an orchestra. They held a private training camp for the entire cross country team. What my parents wanted for their children, they were committed to providing for all children, reaching the underprivileged, and enhancing excellence for all people.
My dad has the gift of listening and understanding others. His empathy and compassion toward his patients make him a great doctor, but these listening skills also have made him a great board chairman. There are countless examples of conflict transformation that happened in tense situations of organizational politics where a private conversation with my dad softened anger and brought reconciliation to a divergent board. One on one communication is his forte. I have seen so many patients, irritated, frustrated by their situation, even hopeless, come out of a room after a consultation with Dr. Chappell soothed, encouraged and empowered with new optimism. Once, a young man from my high school class was caught shoplifting and sent to jail. Years later he told me that during that time my dad had written him a letter encouraging him and stating Dad’s belief that he could do so much more. The man told me that letter had changed his life, and he went on to go to school and have a career as a lawyer. My dad has had many conversations with all ages that have changed the course of a life for the better.
There is an aspect to my dad’s life of leadership that is puzzling to me, and in my reading of Greenleaf, he refers to it only briefly: so often servant leadership is not recognized or valued by society. For most of my dad’s career he was never asked to join a service group or a church committee, though he would have dearly loved to be part of such things. He was prevented by the city from a major expansion of his business, simply because of prejudice against his style of medicine. Some of his endeavors have failed; some dreams did not come true. Part of this is that by taking great risks, he also put himself at risk of failure.
Yet, L. Terry Chappell will be remembered as the ultimate servant leader, someone who helped all people whose lives he touched grow as persons, become, as Greenleaf said, “healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more able themselves to become servants”(p. 27).
Reference
Greenleaf, R.K. (1977). Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Mennofolk Wheatley Review
I am the "CEO" of Mennofolk. Mennofolk works on magic. I have tried for years to categorize, outline, structure, mission state, committee-ify, legitimize, theologize, and pigeon-hole this dynamic energy. As an organization born of passion, luck, and inspiration, it has thrived despite these things, and left my mind baffled as to the mystery of its unfolding. When I read Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science, I knew I was reading a truth that had already been manifested in my experience. Mennofolk flies on the wings of the three-winged bird of quantum physics: order out of chaos through time, human relationships and God’s grace. As Wheatley states (1999, p. 22), “as chaos theory shows, if we look at such a system over time, it demonstrates an inherent orderliness.”
Mennofolk is an organization which consists of multiple festivals that are run by five autonomous local groups creating gatherings that bring together Mennonite acoustic folk musicians and the people who love them. Each festival is created by grassroots participation and has a unique flavor and focus. But all of them are about opening the circle of the church; not the church as a designated institution, but the church as a people hood, a gathering of souls who have shared the same mind and experience of community, even if just for a season. The “church” of Mennofolk is a loose clump of ideas, dreams, hopes, acts. It encompasses many who the institutional Mennonite church would not admit, and it welcomes newcomers into its atmosphere with no judgment or expectation, allowing them to experience the benefits of that energy those within the circle know well. Mennofolk is about music, but its true purpose is love. Just as elementary particles cluster vaguely in no measurable shape (1999, p. 34), this event relies on uncharted boundaries and unprescribed definitions of what folk music needs to sound like or what Mennonites need to be like. The Wheatley premises at work here are her description of elementary particles as “bundles of potentiality,” (p. 35) and the paradoxical idea that “each organism maintains a clear sense of its individual identity within a larger network of relationships that helps shape its identity” (p. 20).
As an artist writes a song, the first strains of music may be dreamlike, not well defined. Images may start abstract and clarify as the author’s pen begins to write. Fine lyrics and melody lines carry the soul of the musician, and as that song is shared all our souls echo the same themes, the ghost of emotion. The best music carries archetypes that resonate universally. This process mirrors the creation of Mennofolk itself. The tiniest waves of sound are repeated into a song, into a repertoire, into a festival, into a movement, into a web of relationship that change the world and create a culture. Wheatley describes this by saying (1999, p.11) “relationship is the key determinator of everything,” and that “one of the principals of scientific inquiry is that at all levels, nature seems to resemble itself” (p. 162). She confirms that science shows that there are patterns and dynamics in a living system that repeat themselves (p. 144).
In 2003 I was analyzing where the centers of interest and resources were for the expansion of our festivals, and decided that Harrisonburg, Virginia was an obvious choice. I didn’t know exactly who to call to get it started, but I focused my intent on the beginnings of a Mennofolk in Harrisonburg. Two years later for reasons unrelated to Mennofolk, my family moved to Harrisonburg and “Mennofolk Harrisonburg” fell into place, as surely as it had been created within my imagination. Rather than seeing this as coincidence, Wheatley asserts that (1999, p. 41) a scientist’s intent controls the direction that electrons spin in experiments, and it is possible that our intent forms the reality for which we wish.
Mennofolk is a manifestation of relationships. This is what creates its success. For several years Mennofolk Michiana thrived, attracting many musicians, fans, and newcomers. Money came rolling in from donations, both solicited and unasked. People found each other and friendships were woven between the cities and towns that fed into the region. Many people commented on the atmosphere of love, excitement and acceptance it fostered. In later years, Mennofolk Michiana was organized by a person who was not energetically based and who was suffering from a lot of self doubt and depression. Some of the same publicity techniques were used, and the same booking policies continued, but the magic was gone. Just going through the motions did not have the same effect. Eventually funding dried up, the sponsoring conference committee “forgot” to include it in restructuring, and attendance fell by hundreds. The rise and fall of Mennofolk Michiana was based on energy, and all the long-term plans or written policies in the file cabinet couldn’t save it. Applying Wheatley’s analysis of reality, she says (1999, p. 145), “to make a system stronger, we need to create stronger relationships.” She also understood that “all of us, even in rigid organizations, have experienced self-organization, times when we recreate ourselves, not according to some idealized plan, but because the environment demands it” (p. 24).
If I could see a chart of the history of Mennofolk similar to those that Margaret Wheatley published in Leadership and the New Science, I have no doubt that it would look much like any other charted chaos--beautiful, mysterious, and self sustaining for its natural useful life.
References
Wheatley, M.J. (1999). Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Mennofolk is an organization which consists of multiple festivals that are run by five autonomous local groups creating gatherings that bring together Mennonite acoustic folk musicians and the people who love them. Each festival is created by grassroots participation and has a unique flavor and focus. But all of them are about opening the circle of the church; not the church as a designated institution, but the church as a people hood, a gathering of souls who have shared the same mind and experience of community, even if just for a season. The “church” of Mennofolk is a loose clump of ideas, dreams, hopes, acts. It encompasses many who the institutional Mennonite church would not admit, and it welcomes newcomers into its atmosphere with no judgment or expectation, allowing them to experience the benefits of that energy those within the circle know well. Mennofolk is about music, but its true purpose is love. Just as elementary particles cluster vaguely in no measurable shape (1999, p. 34), this event relies on uncharted boundaries and unprescribed definitions of what folk music needs to sound like or what Mennonites need to be like. The Wheatley premises at work here are her description of elementary particles as “bundles of potentiality,” (p. 35) and the paradoxical idea that “each organism maintains a clear sense of its individual identity within a larger network of relationships that helps shape its identity” (p. 20).
As an artist writes a song, the first strains of music may be dreamlike, not well defined. Images may start abstract and clarify as the author’s pen begins to write. Fine lyrics and melody lines carry the soul of the musician, and as that song is shared all our souls echo the same themes, the ghost of emotion. The best music carries archetypes that resonate universally. This process mirrors the creation of Mennofolk itself. The tiniest waves of sound are repeated into a song, into a repertoire, into a festival, into a movement, into a web of relationship that change the world and create a culture. Wheatley describes this by saying (1999, p.11) “relationship is the key determinator of everything,” and that “one of the principals of scientific inquiry is that at all levels, nature seems to resemble itself” (p. 162). She confirms that science shows that there are patterns and dynamics in a living system that repeat themselves (p. 144).
In 2003 I was analyzing where the centers of interest and resources were for the expansion of our festivals, and decided that Harrisonburg, Virginia was an obvious choice. I didn’t know exactly who to call to get it started, but I focused my intent on the beginnings of a Mennofolk in Harrisonburg. Two years later for reasons unrelated to Mennofolk, my family moved to Harrisonburg and “Mennofolk Harrisonburg” fell into place, as surely as it had been created within my imagination. Rather than seeing this as coincidence, Wheatley asserts that (1999, p. 41) a scientist’s intent controls the direction that electrons spin in experiments, and it is possible that our intent forms the reality for which we wish.
Mennofolk is a manifestation of relationships. This is what creates its success. For several years Mennofolk Michiana thrived, attracting many musicians, fans, and newcomers. Money came rolling in from donations, both solicited and unasked. People found each other and friendships were woven between the cities and towns that fed into the region. Many people commented on the atmosphere of love, excitement and acceptance it fostered. In later years, Mennofolk Michiana was organized by a person who was not energetically based and who was suffering from a lot of self doubt and depression. Some of the same publicity techniques were used, and the same booking policies continued, but the magic was gone. Just going through the motions did not have the same effect. Eventually funding dried up, the sponsoring conference committee “forgot” to include it in restructuring, and attendance fell by hundreds. The rise and fall of Mennofolk Michiana was based on energy, and all the long-term plans or written policies in the file cabinet couldn’t save it. Applying Wheatley’s analysis of reality, she says (1999, p. 145), “to make a system stronger, we need to create stronger relationships.” She also understood that “all of us, even in rigid organizations, have experienced self-organization, times when we recreate ourselves, not according to some idealized plan, but because the environment demands it” (p. 24).
If I could see a chart of the history of Mennofolk similar to those that Margaret Wheatley published in Leadership and the New Science, I have no doubt that it would look much like any other charted chaos--beautiful, mysterious, and self sustaining for its natural useful life.
References
Wheatley, M.J. (1999). Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
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