Self organisation

This page describes a concept which is part of our glossary

All organisations working in accord with the manifesto exhibit this aspect of self development so that all the organisation is supporting its members in their own goals and needs. We have a vision for the seamless integration of personal goals, visions and everyday tasks with organisational ones, by facilitating the formation of groups and organisations comprising people with aligned goals and values. When an organisation is a platform, the members can see how personal and group activities relate by navigating knowledge through a consistent and unified framework.

Current approaches compared

Two of the leading approaches for how to go about self organisation are principle-based and productivity-based. The difference is which area of life they use as a starting point. Principle-based methods focus on defining personal high level goals,vision and principles (or habits). A popular example of this approach is Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". By maintaining a small number of specific habits, Covey maintains, people can achieve a balanced life and enjoy success. He does not cover in any great detail how to organise daily activities, projects or to-do lists.

Productivity-focused self organisation, in contrast, is about helping people organise the "stuff" in their lives: the projects they are involved with in private and professional life, tasks, appointments, in-boxes, filing systems, etc. Only after these things have been organised into a coherent, trusted system is the work on high level goals and values introduced. One of the leading thinkers in this area is David Allen, who pioneered the "Getting Things Done" system for self organisation.

Summary

Top-down leadership

Covey applies a w:top-down approach, beginning with the creation of a personal mission statement and instilling 7 key habits in one's life. These habits may be sub-divided into three areas:

• 1. Private victory, or the the movement from dependence to independence. Having achieved mastery of the self, which is focused on being proactive, having clear goals and managing one's time effectively, one can then move on to...
• 2. Public victory, moving from independence to interdependence. The second area focuses on how to communicate and work with others for maximum mutual benefit.
• 3. Sharpen the saw, being able to sustain productivity depends on looking after one's health, learning new skills, taking time out to replenish one's energy stores. The activities discussed here cover the spiritual/mental/social and physical aspects of being.

Covey comes from a leadership (big picture) paradigm and does address important issues like lifetime goals and deeper underlying principles for guidance, however it is lacking in practical hands-on information on how to empty one's inbox, organise files and just "get stuff done".

Bottom-up management

Enter David Allen's "Getting Things Done", often shortened to "GTD". His approach is centered around emptying one's mind into "100% leak-proof, trusted external buckets and inboxes" to achieve "stress-free productivity". Allen's approach can be called w:bottom-up since it focuses on the the "stuff" in various inboxes and how to create processes and filing systems to manage one's commitments and handle ever-changing workloads. Allen's advice is highly practical and goes right down to recommending how to set up a filing system and scheduling system. He has inspired many productivity blogs, websites and even online GTD services like w:Nozbe.

At the core of Allen's system lies a workflow which has five phases:

• 1. Collect
  • Capture anything that has your attention (paper notes, emails, voice mail) in leak-proof, external buckets
  • Have as few of these buckets as possible and as many as necessary
  • Empty buckets regularly (process and organise)
• 2. Process
  • Make decisions about what you have collected
    • If not actionable
      • Throw out
      • "Tickler file"
      • Reference file
    • If actionable
      • Less than two minutes - decide on next action and do
      • Delegate - "waiting for" list
      • Defer - action list, calendar
      • Project - project list
• 3. Organise
  • Group the results of processing into appropriate action categories and contexts
    • Projects
    • Calendar
    • Next Actions
    • Waiting for
• 4. Review
  • Review calendar and action lists daily
  • Conduct a weekly review to maintain, tidy up and develop the system
  • Review longer term goals, visions and values as often as necessary to keep project list complete and current
• 5. Do
  • Allen recommends choosing what to do based on what you can do (context), how much time you have, how much energy you have and what your priorities are - in that order of priority.
  • There are three main types of work that need to be done: predefined work, work "as it shows up", and defining one's work. Allen's system is designed to help deal with interruptions and surprises, because one knows what is being put off.
  • He recommends following one's intuition in deciding what work to do but recommends doing regular reviews of high level goals, making sure the various levels are aligned and build on each other:
    • Runway: Current actions (daily)
    • 10,000 feet: Current projects (weekly)
    • 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility (monthly)
    • 30,000 feet: One-to two-year goals (quarterly)
    • 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions (yearly)
    • 50,000 + feet: Life (yearly +)
  • As expected, Allen recommends working from the bottom up, to ensure current action lists are complete, because working from the top down while there is pressure to get stuff done can cause frustration.

The missing link

From what I have seen so far, there is no clear connection between personal organisation and (self-) organising groups of people, so this is where a wiki-based personal organisation system could be a valuable addition to the above mentioned systems. I could easily share certain contexts or projects with others.

Goals

Current goals are to apply elements of both the top-down and the bottom-up approaches and document the process. Once this is working well, I want to figure out how to run such a system in a wiki and devleop it further in there. I want to investigate whether this can form the basis for organisational wiki systems and peer-based applications.

See also

• Platform
• Self Organisation Notes
• Wikipedia:Self development
• Notion