Connection

Agile organizations don’t come from a manifesto, framework, or guru. They evolve by xiang: aligning networks of mutual benefit.

12. Mutual Benefit (lxi/xxxv)

As flowers attract bees,
Markets connect businesses
To their mutual benefit.

Opening markets to smaller players
The large benefit from their supply.
Opening markets to larger players
The small benefit from their support.

As plants feed and shelter animals,
Animals fertilize and propagate plants.
In alignment, each benefits
By connecting the others.

13. The Bow (lxxvii)

Mutual benefit is like drawing a bow.
As the top descends, the bottom rises.
As the gap decreases, the range increases.
As each gets more than they give,
It’s a positive sum game.

Where leadership rewards competition,
Making the many work to benefit the few,
That’s like aiming a bow at the sun.

14. Shared Outcomes (lxv/lxiv)

Agile leaders don’t preach mutual benefit
Or call it a virtue
And themselves its masters.

They just share the rewards of shared outcomes
And stop rewarding competing ones.
Then, like water steeping into tea,
Mutual benefit infuses an organization with ease and trust.

Agile leaders share the rewards of shared outcomes
Without preaching alignment
Because words generate politics
And politics divides community
Where ease and trust align it.

15. Tact (lx)

Agile leaders align people gently
As if cooking a delicate fish,
Using tact to keep trust intact.

Tact eases agreement
And easy agreement connects channels of trust;
As these channels knit together,
Competition is displaced
And community takes its place.

As people share outcomes over time,
The trust in their community strengthens.
Joining them to each others’ benefit,
Community weaves their pasts and futures together.

16. Command and Control (xviii/xix)

Where competition is rewarded,
Community is divided.
As people work against each others benefit,
Owners and managers gain control.

Where community is divided
Courts and lawyers take command,
Parties and politicians,
Priests and princes.

Where we control command and control,
People will share and collaborate;
Outlaw laws and taxes,
Trade and markets multiply;
Eliminate roles and responsibilities,
Privilege and corruption disappear.

But that’s patching symptoms
Where real remedies treat causes.
To increase throughput,
Open bottlenecks,
Simplify workflows,
And minimize wastes,
Share the rewards of shared outcomes.

17. Out of Alignment (xxxviii/liv a)

Lose alignment and community remains;
Divide community and trust remains;
Break trust and justice remains;
Corrupt justice and fear remains.

Communities don’t divide themselves
Or fall into compromise and conflict
Without losing alignment first.

Where mutual benefit serves trust,
And justice compromises it to serve it,
Power compromises it to serve itself.

18. Supplant Fear (xxxviii/liv b)

Power is as difficult to uproot
As fear to stamp out
As each generation
Seeds it in the next.

The weed of fear binds justice and community
Into a matrix of struggle
With hope for the flower of alignment
At its root.

Alignment roots in trust, not hope,
Yielding food, not flowers.
So cultivate the one
To supplant the other.

19. Priests and Princes (xxxix/xxxii)

Priests give hope for a heaven
Where the sky is always blue,
The ground always sure,
The valleys green,
The rivers full,
The soil fertile,
The people wealthy,
And the king almighty.

Yet the sky must darken
For, without rain,
The ground cracks,
The valleys brown,
The rivers stop,
The soil blows,
The people starve,
And overthrow the king.

Princes depend on peasants
As priests on followers,
Each claiming to be smarter, stronger,
Or closer to heaven,
To keep people in their power.

20. Power To The People (xxxix/xxxii)

Were priests and princes truly ordained by heaven,
All nature would obey them;
Sweet rains would fall
To quench their every thirst.

As nature has no true form,
No one can truly control it;
Princes only control systems of forms
All subject to change.

So agile leaders control their own power
To empower people to collaborate and trade
Like rains feeding rivers,
And rivers the sea.

21. Controlling Power (xxviii)

Accept power without applying it
To open channels of trust
And plant the seeds of alignment.

Share benefits without privileging them;
To weave communities of trust
And nourish the roots of alignment.

Master politics without playing it
To cultivate a culture of trust
And share the harvest of mutual benefit.

22. A Culture of Trust (liv)

Trust is a child
Nourished by a family
Prospered by a community
Developed by a culture
Sustained by an ecosystem.

Trust aligns responsibilities
As family aligns constraints,
Community aligns agreements,
Culture aligns learnings,
And nature aligns ecosystems.

To cultivate their trust,
Feed their children.