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Founders: #42 One From Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

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What I learned from reading One From Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock --- Walking away at the pinnacle of success was the hardest thing I have ever done (0:01) Through the years, I have greatly feared and sought to keep at bay the four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper – Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition. In 1984, I severed all connections with business for a life of isolation and anonymity, convinced I was making a great bargain by trading money for time, position for liberty, and ego for contentment – that the beasts were securely caged. –Dee Hock (4:14) Visa was little more than a set of unorthodox convictions about organization slowly growing in the mind of a young corporate rebel (9:03) Dee's first jobs (21:44) Learning how mechanistic, Industrial Age organizations really function (28:17) Useful questions to ask in your organization (34:30) A failure at 36 years old (38:33) The environment from which Visa emerged (46:41) Healthy vs Unhealthy Organizations (55:19) Focus on how your product or company "ought to be" and nothing else. (57:30) I had held fast to the notion that until someone has repeatedly said "no!" and adamantly refuses another

[00:00:00] It is 1993, nine years since I abruptly severed all connection with the business world for life on the land. It is still hard to believe, after 16 years of intense conflict with industrial age, command and control corporations, after 35 years dreaming of new concepts of organization and experimenting with them, after two impossible years bringing one of those dreams into being, after 14 grueling years leading it to maturity, after all that, turning my back on Visa in 1984 and walking away at the pinnacle of success was the hardest thing I have ever done. The reason is still…

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