An Armature for Integrative Work |
Implications for Social Transformation |
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Circle of Blue Environment • Traverse City, Michigan • 2010 |
page two of four |
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| When Gail and I started MG Taylor in 1980 were were advised by friends and board members not to use, among several others, the words transformation and design. How we were to describe what we were about sans the concepts specific to the work was a mystery to us. Dialogs in those days were often highly amusing. We were told our language was not in the common paradigm although this also was a word on the no no list. |
| Now of course the condition is just the opposite. Everything is a “paradigm shift” and any change is “transformation.” We are in the “design economy” yet the deep structure of our social institutions remain more or less the same. Frank Lloyd Wright once said that “America was the first society to go from barbarism to degeneracy without a culture in between.” Transformation, suddenly the province of the entire consulting establishment, has gone from non sequitur to cliche without understanding in between. |
| Transformation is a change in form - in structure/process - on many levels of organizational recursion. To be real - not just rhetoric - it must be a practice not merely an intension. The environment of Circle of Blue, and the practices within it, must be the transformation which Circle of Blue intends to bring to the world - in fact, it will be the expression of what Circle of Blue is and is becoming. Wright carved into the mantle of his fireplace “what a man does that he is.” Please forgive the male centricity of this but it was the 19th century at the time. The point remains: philosophy and action are one. Not should be one - are one. Architecture is built philosophy. An organizations structure/process architecture is a true measure of its intent and were it is on the never ending path to becoming the vision which compels it. |
| The physical environment of Circle of Blue - from property line to properly line - and every interaction and process of doing work which takes place within it, is the living demonstration of what Circle of Blue stands for. |
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posted: July 13, 2010 • revised August 27, 2010 • 7:04 AM @ Elsewhere |
copyright© Matt Taylor 2010 |
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