This shift from autocracy to democracy didnât occur spontaneously, nor was it led from the top. Instead, it was the work of a sprawling confederation of philosophers, protesters, and patriots who were inspired by the promise of self-government.
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If our organizations are inhuman, itâs because we designed them to be soâwhether consciously or not. Every institution is an assemblage of choices about how best to organize human beings in light of some particular goal. The premise of this book is that most of these choices can and must be revisited.
We must be no less radical in rethinking the foundations of human organizations. Like our forebears, we must do our part to emancipate the human spirit. It is here we find a cause worth servingâto build organizations that give every human being the opportunity to thrive.
Yet what Thomas Paine said of monarchy in 1776 is equally true of bureaucracy today: âA long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
As the former editor of the American Journal of Public Health observed in a piece summing up AAâs first seventy-five years: âFrom what looks like anarchyâtraditions rather than rules, maximum local autonomy and independence, and absence of centralized or layered tiers of authorityâemerges consistency and stability.â Thatâs the power of community.
Wresting authority from central functions was a challenge, yet several plants made progressânone more than Olsztyn. The key, local managers realized, was to win permission for a targeted experiment and then use the results to gain further autonomy.