How to Build an Effective Organization

This is a col­lec­tion of near­ly all of the writ­ing that Alco­holics Anony­mous co-founder Bill W. wrote in the month­ly jour­nal The Grapevine. Includ­ed is a lot of his­to­ry from before recov­ery from chem­i­cal depen­den­cy became the indus­try it is today.

Mod­ern-day man­agers and lead­ers could do a lot worse than to read this book. The Twelve Steps that Bill W. helped to devel­op may be of great help to alco­holics, but the less­er-known Twelve Tra­di­tions designed to pro­tect Alco­holics Anony­mous from dis­trac­tions, con­tro­ver­sies, and per­son­al ambi­tion could serve as a mod­el, or at least inspi­ra­tion for orga­ni­za­tion­al mis­sion state­ments. Alco­holics Anony­mous’s tra­di­tion of refus­ing gifts and dona­tions from out­side sources, for exam­ple, may seem extreme to those who think their project should get help wher­ev­er it can be found, but clear­ly this pol­i­cy ensures that the orga­ni­za­tion can­not be hijacked by out­side inter­ests. These peo­ple pay their own way and take finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty for themselves.

I could­n’t expect every com­pa­ny or non-prof­it to have a set of prin­ci­ples so restric­tive, but on reflec­tion I won­der what the world would be like if more com­pa­nies, clubs, orga­ni­za­tions, even gov­ern­ments had guide­lines that kept their focus to a pri­ma­ry pur­pose, that assert­ed the author­i­ty of demo­c­ra­t­ic rule, that explic­it­ly stat­ed that there would be no opin­ion on issues out­side the pri­ma­ry pur­pose, and that there would be no pro­mo­tion of itself, allow­ing inter­est­ed par­ties to take part only if attract­ed to the cause or orga­ni­za­tion. What if lead­ers in all areas respect­ed their roles as trust­ed ser­vants and the cap­tains of indus­try felt an oblig­a­tion to place prin­ci­ples before personality?

These are rad­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion­al ideas, but well-proven by the longevi­ty of Alco­holics Anony­mous and the many oth­er recov­ery groups that align them­selves with these sets of prin­ci­ples. They will nev­er be adopt­ed by gov­ern­ments or cor­po­ra­tion for one rea­son: they place the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion above per­son­al gain. I think it sounds won­der­ful: if Coca-Cola stripped itself of every­thing except excel­lence in cola could any oth­ers com­pete with them? Well, who knows? Because the exec­u­tives would all leave; eight-dig­it salaries are more impor­tant than pro­vid­ing an excel­lent prod­uct. We live in a soci­ety ruled by cap­i­tal­ism, the phi­los­o­phy that all val­ues are mea­sur­able against legal ten­der. We do not live in a soci­ety ruled by ide­al­ism, a phi­los­o­phy that places right and wrong in the cen­ter of importance.

The world could use more groups that val­ue some­thing above per­son­al gain, influ­ence, or fame. Any­thing, even if it were sodapop. Plac­ing recov­ery from addic­tion ahead of per­son­al gain is a good start though, at least for those peo­ple whose lives depend on it.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to me in Lan­guage of the Heart was the cor­re­spon­dence between Bill W. and Carl Jung, and a few arti­cles writ­ten about Dr. Jung. I found it inter­est­ing, con­sid­er­ing Dr. Jung’s life­long fas­ci­na­tion with the num­ber 23 and with sym­met­ri­cal man­dalas, that Bill W. chose Jan­u­ary 23, 1961 to write his first let­ter to Dr. Jung. 1961 is the same upside down as it is right side up, and visu­al­ly forms a sort of framed, invert­ed yin-yang arrange­ment, while 1 – 23 car­ries obvi­ous sig­nif­i­cance. Did Bill W. choose this date on pur­pose? I have to wonder.

Final­ly, if you think that the prin­ci­ples that guide a group whose sole pur­pose is per­son­al recov­ery can­not apply to busi­ness or man­age­ment, I urge you to take a look at The Recov­er­ing Leader, a site ded­i­cat­ed in part to the idea that fail­ures in lead­er­ship can be over­come by refo­cus­ing one’s goals around prin­ci­ples and per­son­al integri­ty. David Peck has some valu­able insight, but don’t take my word for it. Check it out for your­self and let me know what you think of it.

31^st book read in 2007