What I Believe.

I believe that the first organizations began to emerge when peoples started to understand themselves and so to organize themselves more than just as a family or tribe but what is now described as city states, nations, empires or civilizations likened to those of Mesopotamia: the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians; or, the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and those that followed – which is to say nation states. All of which in order to protect and or add to their territorial, economical wealth, power, and political interest developed large armies (the military).

I believe that all organizations past or present started with someone’s idea – Sargon the Great 2335-2279 BE or Steve Jobs Apple Computer Inc. Then with time and effort, organizing that idea emerged as and became a small business. With time and luck accompanied by successful styles of leadership (whose role/task is to inspire and to chart the course for ongoing success and growth presently measured by size, asset accumulation minus liabilities alongside profit equal net worth) and management (whose role/task is to assure that all efforts whether they be the labor of employees and their machines along with those of the interconnected systems/processes of doing things toward ongoing production) are directed toward that small business’s success whatever that may be: that of becoming a larger company, or a corporation with many subsidiaries which today in many cases are global corporations.

I believe that these examples demonstrate the marvelous capacity, ingenuity for and the ability that human beings have to not just work with one another but to self organize in order to do the seemingly impossible. Consider for example not only the great pyramids of Giza but as well the many civilizations that have come and gone along with those of today the United States and other nation states to come.

I also believe that like all ideas organizations founded upon one substantial idea or many ideas whether it be a family farm/business, a corporations like Macintosh or Microsoft, a government, or a nation state, any one and with time all will come and go in the flash of a moment. For example, presently AIG a multitrillion dollar organization, even with government financial assistance – the tax payer’s money/capital, is desperately struggling to survive. And not to forget on December 24, 1991 the Soviet Union was officially dissolved. When pressured by groups wanting more democratization, President Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

In the end I believe like grains of sand or by whatever metaphor that may best symbolize the organization, whether it be culture, a machine, systems thinking or a political system; still, they come and go with the passing of time. Perhaps it is that they have fulfilled their purpose and now yield to the future needs and wants of the following generations to come. But as with most things, if not all things…time will tell.

Say It Aint So!