Visionary OrganizIng for Personal Growth, Community Building, and Organizational Health
What is Visionary Organizing?
Visionary Organizing involves experimenting to create practices and systems that equally emphasize our material needs for survival and non-material needs for things like recognition and connection. It results in communities, institutions, and organizations that exist differently than we have for the last 400 years because these practices and systems are equally committed to our material and non-material needs.
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How does VOL teach Visionary Organizing?
Existing differently means we have to unlearn patterns of thinking, doing, and being that support a world where material needs are what matters most. Visionary Organizing Lab's programs are containers for unlearning these patterns and learning new patterns rooted in the components of Visionary Organizing.
Components of Visionary Organizing
Locating ourselves & communities in history
I. Human history is anywhere between 50,000 and 2 million years long. Locating ourselves and communities in history means recognizing this history has been characterized by the rise and decline of numerous historical systems and recognizing that we are currently in the midst of a transition from one epoch of human history to another.
AFFIRMING DIGNITY
II. Creating practices and spaces that make people feel loved and respected, and that who they are matters without having to earn it.
recognizing & nurturing interdependence
III. The systems that organize our lives are made up of a massive network of interconnections. Recognizing interdependence means being aware of these interconnected relationships and nurturing them in ways that make them transformative sources of power for creating a dignity affirming and sustainable world.
imagining new possibilities
IV. Imagination is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being, yet only children are encouraged to imagine. Imagining possibilities means reclaiming the ability to imagination to put forth visions of the kind of communities and organizations we want and need that meet our material and nonmaterial needs.
trusting our collective inner widsom
V. Human beings live less by instinct and more by reason and reflection than any other species. However, we do have inner-wisdom (or intuition) that allows us to determine what is right or wrong in a given situation. When we connect with it, we are able to see positive results within our own lives and within our communities. Trusting our collective inner-wisdom happens when groups of people come together and let that inner-wisdom lead them.
experimenting with transformation
VI. Experimenting with transformation means starting small to meet our material and nonmaterial needs in ways that make visions for the communities and organizations we real and develop into new systems.