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Communitarian Organization
How to put efforts together, among ideological differences
Introduction to Organization
Welcome to The World Organization Institute, WOI, the first and only state institution focused on the development of the “Organization” as a natural science.
Why is it important to learn how to organize?
Because Organization is present in everything we do and depending on how well we get organized, the outcome might be a success or a disaster. It doesn´t depend on how good or bad the idea that inspires the project is.
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For example, through the universal language of the event's organization, we can rebuild our beliefs, carry out rituals and revitalize our culture. It is through community organization, during crisis and disaster scenarios, that we can save lives. It is through our personal organization that we can give rhythm and harmony to our life and the life of those around us; and through business organization, we can deliver our products to any part of the world.
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Organization is present in all things we do, so learning how to get organized can help us change every aspect of our lives.
Basic Concepts
Let us start with some basic concepts
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What does organization mean?
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why is it so important to understand Organization as natural science?
Organization means continuity. We say something is organized when it flows and disorganized when it gets stock again and again.
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We are always looking for continuity in our life; continuity with our couple; continuity with our friends; continuity at our jobs.
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Organization means Continuity
"Organization understood as natural science teach us to build continuity conditions among discontinuity situations"
Why is so important to understand Organization as a natural science?
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Because nature is the purest model of organization, we are part of nature and nothing can be above the natural order. Therefore, if we are going to learn about organization, it is better to do learn it using the natural order as a source of study.
When we learn a natural science, we know that the knowledge can be applied in any scenario; this means that the same principles used when organizing an event, can be used to organize people in a disaster scenario, or in a business or in the community, or in our life.
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So get ready to enter into a new world where the power of organization is based on participation; get ready to discover how to put together human potential with the evolutive moment of the planet in a universal context.
Conclusions
Many of us wake up when we heard about continuity as an organizational concept because we can understand the powerful meaning in our daily lives, either because we have seen broken our continuity due to others' beliefs, any type of problems wars, or climate change, or because we are aware of the feeling that continuity brings, or both.
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The important thing is to understand that we can learn how to provide continuity to our lives, our relations, our projects, or our communities, in a natural way, considering that nothing can be among natural order, which behaves through cycles.
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Learning our first steps
There are many ways to start learning about Organization; we can learn it during crises and disaster scenarios; we can learn it while we build a company; we can learn it while we govern a community. In any case, the organizational principles will be the same as Organization is a natural science. It´s like math, once you learn how to add, you can use ads for anything you want.
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If you ask me through which field I prefer to learn and teach organization, I chose "Event - Organization" because through celebrations we can not only discover the discipline, but we also remember that the most important things in life are based on small details linked to feelings and meanings.
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The universal language of human celebrations, unify us, no matter what do believe, which part of the world we are, or how much money we have.
The Universal Langauge of Human Celebrations
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So let's use celebrations to learn and teach organization, understood as natural science.
First Step: Finding The Meaning
We always start organizing with what lies under the project, “the meaning”, as the lack of meaning is often the main obstacle to achieving any project´s goals.
Motives, or meanings, that drive us to achieve something; they are part of our conduct; in other words, they are the core of self-decision at the reach of our hands, related to beliefs. So, the very first thing we have to learn is to fight against some of our own prejudices.
The best way to understand a "meaning", is to feel it, and to do so we made stories, songs, dances, rituals, around feelings.
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The power of storytelling.
Behind the narrative of a person, a company, or government, we always find motives. Storytelling is powerful because that is how we align our feelings with our ideas to reach our beliefs.
That is why when we start any kind of project, we have to pay attention to the storytelling of each participant, so the merge of all the personal storytelling will be the storytelling of the project, and for sure, that is reason enough to carry out the passion of any initiative.
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A story is composed by:
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A scenery: the place surrounded by conditions that justify the story.
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Actors: characters that can be persons, animals, or things that represent actions.
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Actions: the manifestation of a meaning through which we are able to find principles (values). Here is where organizing changes everything, it is where the values proposed to build storytelling, are based on continuity.
Example about the power of storytelling
Let me tell you how storytelling can change from simple to complex daily conduct.
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I was filming some material for Pearson Editing House; Lety, a team member, held a rude attitude. She was always late, in a bad mood, and most of the time, she left running when the clock marked the end of the journey, while the rest of the team stayed extra time to compensate for distractions during the day.
Tired of her attitude, I decided to call my editor to ask him to remove her from the team because I felt she was interfering with the rest of the group. Then my editor told me part of her the story. Do you know that Lety lives four hours away from the filming location? - no - I answered. Lety leaves at five o´clock sharp because otherwise and due to the traffic, a four-hour journey would turn into a six hours one. Consider that when she arrives to her home, at nine, she spends time with her kids that have been with their grandma; she cleans her house, cooks, and goes to sleep about eleven, to wake up again at three in the morning, so she can leave home at four and arrives at site at eight.
After listening to the story behind Lety, I understood it was not a bad attitude, Lety was only tired! Then I proposed a change in a postproduction position, Lety had to have a training program. We offered then a two-month course that Lety did in only one; she was able to stay home, take care of her kids, sleep better, she became one of the best and happiest members of the team.
I wouldn´t have known the story behind Lety, If I would´ve never realized the real motive of Lety´s bad mood, and I would´ve continued to relate it to a life attitude and even to an aggressive meaning.
Behind everything and everyone, there is a story that we have to learn to see before any project starts, so we, as organizers, can understand the continuity needs of each one. When I improved Lety’s continuity, the conditions of the whole team improved, and I got extraordinary results.
Finding The Meaning (cont)
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Let´s go now to learn about the power of events.
An event is the representation of a story.
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In the beginning, humans discover the power of a story, but after a time, he realizes that a stronger impact could be achieved when the story becomes alive, as a ritual, than becomes an event.
An event is not many people drinking or praying; no, an event is an expression of life´s celebration when we can find a story behind it.
Through an event organization, two important things happen.
1. We build ties.
Because when we interact through an organizational experience seeking continuity, we transform ourselves in continuity, and that feeling is great, as beautiful as love.
2. We find the true meanings.
The event itself allows us to understand much more than we are willing to represent, and as we try.
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This is why it is proposed to use events as a model for learning organization.
Excersise
So let´s apply what we have just learned.
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Exercise 1: Find Stories Around You
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1. Make a program. Close your eyes and try to imagine how would you like things to happen. For example:
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I. Give some time to welcome and thank your guests.
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II. Give visibility, give some time to review the program.
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III. Give some time to your guest to present themselves.
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IV. Then start asking for someone to share her or his story, (be prepared to be the first one).
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2. Once you have the program, find a day, hour, and space to make your small event.
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3. Invite a small group, ask your friends and people that you know, and gather for a "storytelling" event.
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4. Prepare the space accordingly with the moment, meet the conditions. Think that it will be where participants will open themselves and their hards, to share meaningful experiences, feelings, and maybe hard moments. Try to have a candle, or make a fireplace to see the stars or the moon.
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5. Run the program but the important thing here is to trust your intention, on your feeling pureness, that will let others feel confident, happy, and secure to open their heart to what is important for them.
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6. When you reach the emotional part, pay attention to the rhythm of the gathering, don´t be so strict to follow the hours and minutes of the program, let the soul speak.
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Notes:
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Don´t feel the responsibility of reaching any place, or statement, or nothing, understand yourself as the person who is building conditions for others to open, do, work or learn.
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" Take in mind that an Organizer is the one who builds continuity conditions over discontinuity situations "
After the exercise . . .
Ask yourself and other ones:
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What did you learn?
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How does knowing others' stories, change the way you think about them?
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What kind of discontinuity do you have to fix in order to give continuity to your initiative?
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How do others' stories contribute to enriching your and your project story?
Final Conclusions
As you can see, behind any life initiative, the challenge is a story needed to be told, because through stories we can find, give, and change meanings.
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Any time you start any project, any relation, any community meeting, give time and build conditions to hear a story.
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In the following classes, we will see how to use this methodology into a project, as well as method to "open the heart" of others, so the can get in contact with important feelings.
I want give special thanks to:
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Lourdes Mora who helped us translate this topic from Spanish to English.
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Our students in Refugee Honey Center at Uganda.
After Class Summary
March 12, 2022
1: We have to change our thinking platform instead of control; we must learn to think on CONTINUITY. We will use Organization understood as a natural science to achieve this change because nothing can be among it. We need a new way of thinking based on collective learning instead of one person.
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2: In the natural order, there are no problems; you won't find an animal understanding in terms of problems its interaction with the environment. In the natural order, continuity and discontinuity exist as part of the evolution behavior.
3: Discontinuities are linked to evolutive sequences, which we have to make. If you make the right changes when they have to be done, you flow. Still, if you decide not to change or to change something different, you compress energy (like a string). After a while, anything can trigger the deployment of that energy so that evolution is carried out in a "mandatory way," without options.
4: Organization, understood as natural science, teaches us how to learn to identify, relate and transform discontinuities to the correct evolutive sequence, so we don't have to suffer while we evolve.
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5: Organizers are people who build CONTINUITY conditions, during discontinuity situations, using scientific knowledge, methods, and communication techniques to align motives and focus others' participation, step by step into a correct sequence, until the conditions are reached.
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6. To learn how to build CONTINUITY we can use many activities as Organizational Principles are the same. So if we can, we prefer to choose ·events· because celebrations are a powerful way of learning while we put people together.
In the lesson is taught, the first steps of organizing a small "storytelling event" and if it can be done, adding music and dancing.
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During the following lessons, we will learn how to use the same organizational methodology used on events, in other fields as building a business or organizing communitarian activities. Also, we will see how organizations teach us to manage cultural differences.