Guidelines for Workshops on Internal Communications
An Incubator for Structures and Principles
Part 0: Reflection, Mediation, Organization
TL;DR Get people to communicate, and then get out of their way.
A fulfilled organization, like an individual, must be capable of self-reflection.
Self-reflection is one of those human activities where there is no separation between capability and action: either it’s happening, or it’s not. There’s no ready state between preparing and doing; as far as I’m concerned self-reflection only ever has two possible states, on or off, 1 and 0, etc. Even if you halt everything you’re doing and stop to reflect, well either you weren’t reflecting before and are now reflecting, or you were already reflecting without being aware of it and are continuing to reflect. Thus, for an organization to be capable of self-reflecting, it must also be engaged in self-reflection. To understand how this is possible, I must establish a foundational definition for organizations.
Organizations, at their core, are composed of humans in various relationships with each other. Parallel to this “core network” of human relationships are various human-generated structures (and beyond that nature-generated structures but that’s out of scope for this essay). These human-generated structures serve as a medium for interaction. Thus, one of their functions is to mediate communication between humans.
Sometimes an etymology works as well, if not better, than a definition:
from Etymology of "mediate" by etymonline
mediate(v.)
1540s, “divide in two equal parts” (a sense now obsolete), from Latin mediatus, past participle of mediare “to halve,” later, “be in the middle,” from Latin medius"middle" (from PIE root *medhyo- “middle”); from 1640s as “occupy a middle place or position.” Meaning “act as a mediator, intervene for the purpose of reconciliation” is from 1610s; that of “settle by mediation, harmonize, reconcile” is from 1560s, perhaps back-formations from mediation or mediator.
Even today, different mediums “divide” us and “occupy a middle place or position” between us. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely reading it on a screen. Between the hardware in the screen and the text rendered on the page is an entire little world, assembled cunningly. The text itself is composed of an alphabet which encodes phonemes into visual forms. The visual forms, assembled in our imagination, become words of a language.
Language, so core to the experience of being human, is itself a medium. Exploring and understanding what it is exactly that language mediates between is a subject worthy of a lifetime of study, but for now I’ll say that language, both verbal and written, is the “core medium” of human interaction. For the scope of this essay, all human interaction occurs through spoken or written language, whether in their corresponding “pure” mediums of sound and printed/drawn text, or through their “derived” mediums of audio and rendered text. (Not entirely accurate, but once again, just for the scope of this essay…)
Mediation occurs both on a physical level as well as an emotional/logical level. Without straying too far into philosophy, I place the emotional and logical on the same “level” because they both originate in the human mind, emerging from the conditions of experience that manifest themselves there.
We tend to project the logic and emotion of our mind onto the natural world and its structures because otherwise it would be utterly foreign and unsympathetic to us; wild, chaotic, dangerous, oppressive, etc. Likewise, we project logic and emotion unto the human-made, organizational structures that we encounter, inhabit, uphold, resist, criticize, support, etc. When we are unable to do so, the human-made world appears to us as a dystopia, colder and crueler than the natural world which, despite its capacity for mass disaster, we deem as innocent.
Another etymology is in order:
from Etymology of "dystopia" by etymonline
dystopia(n.)
“imaginary bad place,” 1952, from dys- “bad, abnormal” + ending abstracted from utopia. Earlier in medical use, “displacement of an organ” (by 1844), with second element from Greek topos “place”… Dystopian was used in a non-medical sense in 1868 by J.S. Mill
Another way to think of dystopia-as-displacement is dystopia-as-misalignment. Total misalignment. Nothing, in the complete network of all organizational structures, is where it should be. In a complete dystopia, the very notion of “should” loses its original meaning. All obligations become based on, at their core, illogical and emotionless principles, and anything derived from these obligations can only be a false image of the logical and emotional.
I thus consider a healthy, useful organization to serve as a sanctuary from all the inhumane structures of nature and civilization; structures which are often outside of our control but with which we are forced to negotiate with, for both our survival and our humanity.
In a humane organization, the structures that “occupy a middle place or position” between us do not “divide” us based on illogical and emotionless principles, but on correct and true principles. These principles, just like the language(s) in which they are expressed, are not static, inert, final, dead; but dynamic, active, becoming, living. Otherwise, how could they be reflective of the human beings who live by them? And though division, like opposition, seems inherently oppressive, it’s actually necessary for the continuation of all living beings, down to the level of cell mitosis. Division is not necessarily isolation.
Thus, there is no separation between discovering/identifying these principles and upholding these principles. They are a structure which no medium(s) alone can uphold without the imaginative and interpretive power of the human mind. Without the presence of the human mind, the medium cannot “occupy a middle place or position” because there is no “middle” to occupy.
An individual, alone, can reflect upon a principle and have it sit between themselves and… well, themselves? It gets philosophically complicated! But it’s much clearer in the case of an organizational principle, which can only be reflected upon, and thus truly upheld, when it occupies the space between two or more human minds.
The best way to give life to organizational principles is to facilitate communication between two or more human beings.
The best way to facilitate communication between two or more human beings?
In my humble opinion: provide the minimum necessary structure, make sure at least two human beings are communicating, and then stay out of their way.
This is the philosophy behind my approach to Internal Communications Workshops. Obviously this has yet to cover the details of what happens in such a workshop, but, at its core, that’s really it.
Get people to communicate, and then get out of their way.