A tool to create enterprises of Trust where synergy is normal
In 2015 I created the first version of the Trust Manifesto for a project I stewarded called Big Blue Sky.
We all know that bringing people together around a project they care about and creating trust, flow, synergy , and co-creative brilliance is not easy.
We often get clashes of worldviews, values, opinions, and judgements. Ego’s grab for power. Gossip fueling fracturing. These clashes usually end badly. In my case, all my previous projects until Big Blue Sky ended this way. Why?
Human relational design is complex!
I spent a few decades attempting to create projects that all ended up in a messy human heap.
You might have had a similar experience.
For the Big Blue Sky project I knew I could not use the same approach again and expect a different result. So what made Big Bleu Sky different? I created the Trust Manifesto using ideas from many sources.
We got the Trust Manifesto into the legal Trust of Big Blue Sky. It was the recognised law and lore of Big Blue Sky.
When I wrote the Trust Manifesto, I used my years as a consultant coach in large corporate enterprises with teams and leaders as the thought fabric. This included the need to ensure that everyone understood the words and language equally. I wove in ideas from Reinventing Organisations, Integral Life and Robb Smith and David Martin.
As a result of the Trust Manifesto of Big Blue Sky, a team of random and diverse strangers worked together for six months to co-create a world-class event without a single upset and entirely self-managed.
This approach is now at the core of all Syntropic Enterprises. Below is an outline of the key steps needed to create a Syntropic Enterprise Trust Manifesto, all of which are based on the Syntropic principles I teach in the Syntropic Enterprise Masterclass.
Get the proper context for the major words used in your enterprise by describing them
Unless we provide the meaning of the key words, we might have the same Trust Manifesto being interpreted by people very differently.
In Syntropic World, we clearly define words like synergy, community, wholeness, responsibility, tensegrity, tools and artefacts, emergence and systems as we want to be sure everyone is in the same conversation about each of these.
State the critical ingredients of the enterprise clearly at the beginning
1. What is the purpose of the enterprise? How do you state this in a straightforward sentence absent ambiguity?
At Syntropic World, our purpose is to have Syntropic Enterprises become business-as-usual
2. What is the idea being brought into form towards the purpose that people need to act upon?
At Syntropic World, the idea was to create an education and whole community platform to teach, support and case study the creation, design and building of Syntropic Enterprises.
3. Each idea has a source: A moment or moments in time when the idea arrived for someone. Go back and remember this time and describe in detail the idea and its unique qualities, particularities and non-negotiables — the Pattern Integrity — that were present when the idea arrived.
https://syntropic.world/pattern-integrity-and-source-idea-as-sacred/
The Pattern Integrity of Syntropic World includes:
- integrity inside out and upside down
- being the exemplar
- zero exploitation, extraction to extinction and colonisation
- beauty
- designing polarity into everything
- the leader as steward
- applying the laws and lore of Universe to enterprise design and human coordination.
State what is needed for people to move from passive observers to active participant working within the enterprise. Invite people to cross a threshold.
Suppose we do not ask people who want to become a part of what we are creating to agree to how we behave within the enterprise, how we treat each other, how we manage disagreement and upset, how we honour multiple dimensions of value, and how we assign roles and become accountable and responsible. In that case, we open the door to any behaviour.
Think of your enterprise like a home. Do you agree to someone coming into your home and destroying the place or disrespecting your partner or children?
At the same time, we want to offer people clear choices. People in our enterprise do things like this. If you are delighted by how people like us work together, fantastic. If we are not your tribe, wonderful. We hope you find your tribe.
In Syntropic World, the active participant must sign the Trust Manifesto for Syntropic World and complete the Synergistic Audit .
https://syntropic.world/synergistic-accounting-extraordinary-teams/
Consider the behaviours that you desire to see as standard within your enterprise.
Each enterprise will have its own culture. When we add the Source Idea’s desired behaviours to the Trust Manifesto, we create the architecture for the culture to take shape. This unique culture is bespoke to the idea and purpose that is being manifested.
Do you want self-management?
Accountability?
Responsibility?
How will your enterprise respond to disagreement and upset? How will you make decisions?
What information is open to everyone, and what information needs to be held within the enterprise?
What behaviours are non-negotiable?
How are roles defined and assigned?
In Syntropic World, we aim for self-management, high levels of accountability and responsibility, high transparency, clear dispute resolution processes and Clean Communication as non-negotiable.
https://syntropic.world/?s=clean+communication
How do you structure leadership and the leadership team?
What type of leadership structure is best for the stage the enterprise is at?
We speak of the Steward Leader and the leadership team at Syntropic World. We also have an Integrity Council to ensure the Steward Leader maintains their integrity and is stewarding the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea.
https://syntropic.world/steward-leadership-needed-now-for-a-world-with-a-future/
https://syntropic.world/we-all-need-our-integrity-council/
How is the money handled? And how is the enterprise provisioned?
The money conversation needs to be crystal clear. Any blurred lines around money erode trust.
In Syntropic World, we use the Synergistic Audit and are comfortable with transparency, with an open book policy for all active participants. Anything to do with money is not a secret.
Who are the beneficiaries of all the work everyone is actively and wholeheartedly doing?
Include the customers, the future, the people doing the work, the Earth, and Earth’s creatures. Whatever your enterprise touches could be considered beneficiaries. Also consider the enterprise’s precessional beneficiaries.
https://syntropic.world/the-principle-of-precession/
At Syntropic World, the beneficiaries are Earth, all her creatures, and our collective future.
Optional.
1. You might also consider rights and responsibilities.
Who has rights to what, and what are the responsibilities for those rights?
Optional.
2. Add your own. For example, how do you ensure diversity of skin colour, ability and cultural unbringing?
In summary
What I know from the application of the Trust Manifesto in partnership with the Synergistic Audit in both my own enterprises and those of the Syntropic Community is that this enterprise architecture enables the following.
- Incredible ecologies of synergy — where people are better together
- Self-managed teams with high accountability and responsibility
- No more messy human heaps.
- No more brilliant people wasting their brilliance on managing human relations dysfunction.
- Light touch Steward Leadership as a result of the enterprise architecture — The Trust Manifesto — being tailored for the enterprise and its purpose.
- Development of all active participants, including the Steward Leader, through the Trust Manifesto and Synergistic Audit being lived in the application daily.
- Flow states are regular and routine.
- Synchronicities and harmonic Kairos timing evidence of the enterprise architecture resonating with the enterprise’s needs at this moment in time.
- https://syntropic.world/kairos-time-the-clock-of-the-heavens/
- People bring their best selves to work and love what they do.
- Provisioning and currency flow with relative ease.
The world faces serious whole-systems issues requiring human coordination and collective action. We believe we can make it if we take the time to get the human relational architecture healthy before we throw ourselves fully towards the tasks at hand. Not only make it but thrive working together towards a world with a future.
I invite you to download the Trust Manifesto for Syntropic World here.
https://syntropic.world/trustmanifesto
And adapt it to create your own to use with families, community groups, social enterprises, not-for-profit and for-profit enterprises and institutions.
Any human endeavour or partnership will be better for a version of the Trust Manifesto.
Please let me know how you go with this project. I would love to hear from you.
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Syntropic World is a global education and community of practice applying the organising principles of nature to enterprise design and human coordination. Creating ecologies of trust, ensuring integrity in everything, enabling collective sense making, and organising around a central purpose — how to create a world that works for 100% of humanity without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone.
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