How Does “Thank You” Look Like on an Ecosystemic Level?

This article was originally published on Cocooners #6.

We’ve started this journey years ago. In fact, we’ve never measured the creation of value in terms of time spent on tasks, we’ve designed our governance to allow flows of contribution to be visible and nurtured, we’ve chosen steward ownership entrepreneurial principles so as not to focus too much on scarce resources like money.

These choices embody the need for embracing the complexity behind human flows of value, without oversimplifying it by mechanistic measurement of quantitative variables. In other words, we were already aware that what people do is not always objectifiable in a standardized measurement system.

Now, if you consider that the global capitalist economy is based on scarcity of resources, you have a clear frame of the problem we are facing: the invisibility of the real and deep ecology of our value exchanges. And it is very hard to nurture what you are not aware of.

The flows of non-scarce resources like trust, faith, support or generosity are invisible beyond the persons directly involved in their exchange. Those persons just say “thanks” to each other but then those flows cannot be noticed, shared and have exponential effects.

That’s what we want to offer to our ecosystem: a way to track non-scarce value exchanges so that they can emerge and reclaim their true place in an economy of value.

A way to track all those things for which we just say “thanks” but that disappear a moment afterwards. Actually, that’s exactly what we want to track: the Thanks. Or, if you are nostalgic of the old financial jargon, the THX.

The THX is a new current-see (way more than a currency) based on all those things that usually make the difference but are not visible because of our traditional monetary economy focused on the transaction and accumulation of scarce resources. A tool to track the value of all those generative and nurturing resources flowing within an ecosystem that multiply when shared.

Each player who uses it is recognized for the value generated and, according to her operational reputation, the value of her THX can grow or decrease.

We believe it is necessary to allow a new kind of emergent, value-driven economy. We are in beta already, so if you’re interested, let us know!

We have already tested it with some pre-totype, and we have noticed that people catch the value in it and just fall in love with this concept. We have received lots of interest in developing an app that people can use, and that’s what we are working on now, a way for growing “eco” instead of “ego”. The journey has already started.

We are going to organize a hangout with people interested in this topic. If in reading this article something resonated with you, keep in touch and write to [email protected]

Cocoon Projects is a next-generation company devoted to fostering real value creation in the world-wide work ecosystem. It’s been designed to be effective, emergent, open and adaptive. Its customers are organizations in need of evolving their socio-technical work methodologies.