By Filippo Causero for Enlivening Edge Magazine
While travelling around Italy on business, I had the good fortune to meet some fantastic people: people who actively work to improve organizations for a sustainable world of work, focused on the welfare of stakeholders.
If these people were united, if they knew each other, they would have an important potential to express to transform Italy.
With this idea in mind, I looked for a way to unite them but, not knowing how to bring together people from distant regions, I decided to create the first group of visionaries in Udine as a start.
We met for the first time in spring 2018. The group of Visionaries soon became a community with the aim of developing a systemic vision together. The meetings of these two years were dynamic, in the sense that anyone in the group could organize an event or a course for the others.
So we learned and applied U Theory about ourselves, Gestalt Coaching, Teal organization, analysis of the forms of nature, as well as defining the key points of our group thanks to the Canvas community.
From this community came the first Teal Organizations course in our region, Friuli Venezia Giulia, completely financed with public funds and held by 4 visionary professors. Twenty people attended the course and subsequently joined the community.
Last year, I took part in an online course at Campus Co-Evolve, led by George Pór, where I learned how to build an international community. One of the principles was “working out loud”, a new and (frankly) slightly risky working methodology. Basically, if you want to carry out a project, before defining it in detail, ask the world and the world will answer you…
So I decided to write a public post on Linkedin asking the world who might help me to create a series of events on the evolution of capitalism.
I wanted to introduce the companies that are already working beyond the current socio-economic system to the whole of Italy. I wanted to introduce Teal companies – organizations with no hierarchies, where the separation between the capitalist-proprietor class and that of workers is very thin. I wanted to introduce “steward ownership” companies in which the separation between the two classes, i.e. companies owned by the people who work there, completely collapses.
The post experienced unexpected success: 7000 views and 40 people who wrote to me saying that they wanted to help. I created a LinkedIn chat with these people and we started having weekly meetings online.
Together we created a series of events called at first Evolutionary Leadership and then People R-Evolution. They were supposed to be physical events done simultaneously in different cities but, because of the current emergency, we turned them into online events.
The first event was held on March 12th on Teal Organizations and was a huge success, with 150 participants online, all of them on Zoom. During the event, I interviewed Francesco Mondora, Co-CEO of the software company Mondora, one of the most interesting Teal organizations in Italy. Francesco told us how they adopted the principles of evolutionary purpose, wholeness, and self-organization within his company.
In parallel to these events, we created an online community which brings together everyone interested in the evolution of society, organizations, and individuals. There are currently 500 members. Within the community, we create and post articles, posts and interviews on topics such as new organizational models, the economy of the common good and the development of individual awareness, as well as our personal stories.
The aim is to cultivate awareness, passion, and responsibility for an interdependent evolution of individuals, organizations, society, and the environment.
The community is international, so most of the articles and posts are in English. We have also created a group of Italian speakers within this community. Hence, we can have international events in both English and Italian.
We would like to find representatives from other parts of the world and create other groups in different languages. If we want to evolve capitalism, we need to do it together.
The group of co-organizers of the events and community of People R-Evolution has recently decided to experiment with Sociocracy, an organizational system in which decisions are made with the method of consent. This is an interesting method as it recognises the objections and reactions of everyone, and then makes appropriate decisions with which we can move forward. This demonstrates a new way to eliminate polarities and proceed together towards an evolutionary path.
Recently, we organized one event on Benefit Corporations and one on co-ownership of companies. The next events will most likely focus on Otto Sharmer’s U Theory, Sustainable Development goals, awareness development and then – who knows! Volunteers in the community will be able to propose subjects.
The community is open and anyone can access and participate even in the organizers’ team. If you would like to give us a hand or just take a look, go to: https://www.peoplerev.com/
We look forward to seeing you!
Filippo Causero is the CEO and founder of the startup Foxwin. He is an Italian industrial engineer with an MBA. His passions are technologies and next stage organizations. His scope is to help people self-fulfill in their work.
