Relation to activity

• Activity is primary

• In Grand Rapids city administration participation is engaged as a way of doing work because it is the appropriate way to do the work rather than because the city administrators expect “great gobs of gratitude.” Using participation in this way is about learning how to solve problems better and developing a community capacity for problem solving rather than about doing it right.

• In a choir, singing becomes primary. People are there to sing more than to perform, to become famous, etc.

• Managers creating workplaces where activity of working is also the activity of building an active community and meeting intrinsic challenges of organizing in interesting ways.

Orientation to process/outcome

• Balance of present and future

• Process is outcome

• In a billing unit of a hospital, the unit emphasizes play and playfulness as a part of the doing of work, where the process of playing becomes central, all the while moving the unit toward high performance in terms of their outcome measures as well.

• A work group in which doing the work in different ways is encouraged and rewarded, even in light of the fact that the experimentation will sometimes yield sub-optimal results.

Relation to self/other

• Individuality surrounded by community

• The presence of others is helpful

• Helping becomes a taken-for-granted way of interacting to get things accomplished, rather than a display of weakness or having a social cost.

• A work group engages in many different ways of recognizing people’s contributions, as a regular part of members’ work, not solely as a managerial task.

• In a choir, practices like the conductor using a toothpick as a baton help members to sustain attention to self-in-relation and to their place in the whole community of sound

• Through the doing of interdependent work, people induce positive states/feelings in others around them

Relation to context

• Claiming & reclaiming

• A unit decorates its work space in ways that reflect the changing seasons or personalize the “standard gray cubicle” office environment.

• The workplace is a place in which humanity and integrity are enacted in relation to other employees, to oneself and to people external to the organization.

• Problem-solving not blame