Community refinement is a looping process. Business terms like “continuous improvement” (see as well the Japanese term, Kaizen, or “change for the better” for those with a business background).
Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy. It also underscores the importance of receiving feedback and ideas from team members (often employees in a business context). Small, incremental changes often end up with significant future benefits.
CR2 recognizes benefits from approaches of this nature. CR2 sees benefits arising from creativity arising from the interplay of Reimagine and Rethink in Community.
This isn’t particularly ground-breaking or anything new if we study how life operates. Put 5 or 10 people around a table (or a fireplace or a beach campfire), treat one another as peers (this is important!) and allow the creativity to flow around a topic or area of need. “Brainstorming” if you prefer, or other synonyms: ideation, envision, imagination, or buzz session.
Musicians understand this without a lot of coaching. They call it a jamming session or just jamming. Yes, they will use defined principles (like a choice of a different pitch on a music scale: “Hey band, let’s go to the next pitch up …”) to get the music just right. But they will rely, heavily, upon their feelings and imagination as they flow with the music and the group. They will feel the music.
It’s the same in graphics. We might have a color wheel built on a base color wheel (RGB, HSB, LAB) that spawns colors using rules (e.g., Analogous, Complementary, Triad, etc.) within the chosen color harmony. But the choice of colors for your color palette will have an element of feeling in it (“That color and shade feels right! I like the look of it.”). Off we go to the paint store or we do our thing in Photoshop or Canva. We don’t need to know all the nuances of color (HSB vs HSL vs whatever). We went with our feelings—we went and jammed with our team. But the color wheels create a foundation for us—they are valuable.
Community refinement is a dance just like music, or color, is a refinement process. Yes, we use principles. But it is when the team (your Community) flows together, with the creative input (Reimagine, Rethink) of everyone, that the best solutions emerge.
Yes, we need engineers, technologists and project plans. But a focus on just logic, “left-brain thinking” (yeah, we know this term gets debated) is a pathway to failure. Undue focus on the more rigid worlds of accounting and legal systems invites failure into Community.
Oddly (sort of), we often see departments like Administration and Finance calling the shots in an organization. That’s an excellent way to destroy life in an organization: vitality does not come from a focus on money, margin and profits. It comes from the most valuable asset: Reimagine and Rethink flowing into your people.
Yes, we know how boards of governance operate and how individuals with lots of those jingly coins try to call the shots. It’s that old suspect rule: “He that has the gold makes the rules.” It’s a bogus rule, but many with wealth practice it. It’s a rule that works well for those higher on the food chain of wealth, but it isn’t a long-term outlook on Community. It’s short-term. It won’t last. Wealth-holders and wealth-managers: feel free to differ, but check out the next paragraph.
Sometimes this reality doesn’t come home to roost until an individual is in hospice care getting ready to hang up the hat of life. Talk to the dying about their perspective on wealth. Or, as the old military saying goes: “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
Big organizations often lose sight of the power of the creative flow in their people. Their policies and procedures cripple those seeking the betterment of the organization and society. We see this in Big Government, Big Business, and even Big Churches and Big Non-Profits. We see it in Big Government Departments and Big Military. “Let’s see … Policy and Procedure XY-2456.67 Revision 2,384.” We see it in Big Law and in Big Pharma. We see it in Big Farms. We see it in Big Politics and Big Bosses. We even see it in Big Crime where the head of the crime organization calls the shots.
It’s like there’s a door leading to liberty and freedom in the organization, but the Big-Whatever-Whomever acts as a Gatekeeper. They end up putting the brakes on good ideas and initiatives.
Proper and just management of Big is not something we are against. But, as history has shown us, this doesn’t always happen. Instead, we end up with Big-Bungling and Big-Boo-Boo’s.
Hear the Little People in your organization. Hear their suggestions. Level the playing field: make Little People = Big People. Talk to them. Invite them to your cocktail parties. Hear their heart. Many of them are longing to be heard and their opinions valued.
It’s called respect. Respect goes a long way to bring Refinement to Community.
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