After Decentralization, Why Do We Still Need to Stay Together?

00:00 Let me try to explain

00:02 decentralization and Teal organizations,

00:04 and how they relate.

00:09 Though I don't know

00:11 much about decentralization,

00:14 based on my limited understanding,

00:17 I think decentralization,

00:20 compared with Teal organizations,

00:23 is more about structural design.

00:29 For example,

00:30 it focuses on

00:33 how power and decisions are handled.

00:40 A Teal organization, to me,

00:42 is a living state of an organization,

00:46 or, to use a more formal term,

00:49 an organizational paradigm.

00:52 It includes decentralized design,

00:57 but goes beyond the design itself.

01:02 I first learned about Teal organizations

01:07 through a WeChat article, I think.

01:11 Then I looked up

01:13 more about them.

01:15 They have three main elements.

01:19 Those three are:

01:22 self-management,

01:24 wholeness,

01:26 and evolutionary purpose.

01:30 Specifically,

01:33 from the standpoint of decentralization,

01:41 an organization may be very decentralized,

01:46 yet member relations may be transactional.

01:51 They do not care about

01:54 the wholeness of anyone but themselves.

01:58 And the way

02:01 the organization operates—its purpose,

02:07 the purpose of the DAO—

02:09 is decided by token-holder votes.

02:13 That means those with more tokens

02:15 may have a greater say.

02:20 In itself, that doesn't seem

02:23 fully decentralized.

02:27 A Teal organization, meanwhile,

02:31 has

02:34 a very typical structure.

02:37 The organization is still there,

02:40 along with internal autonomy.

02:45 In some organizations I joined,

02:49 internal autonomy took

02:51 the form of project-based management.

02:55 This kind of flat management

02:58 is one expression of a Teal organization.

03:04 To sum it up,

03:06 decentralization focuses on

03:10 who makes decisions:

03:11 token holders can decide,

03:15 and more tokens mean a bigger say.

03:19 Teal organizations instead ask:

03:22 why do we

03:25 come together in this organization?

03:27 How do we relate

03:30 to the other people in it?

03:33 And where is the whole organization going?

03:37 So a Teal organization

03:40 includes a decentralized structure,

03:44 but

03:45 that structure alone

03:47 falls far short of explaining it.

03:52 Then I thought of some classic

03:55 Teal organizations in China.

03:59 One is Yichu Academy.

04:02 This organization—

04:04 if you know it,

04:06 you probably know

04:08 what kind of work it does.

04:12 If I look at an organization like this

04:16 through the Teal framework,

04:21 using those three keywords,

04:24 I would break it down like this.

04:27 First, self-management:

04:29 students can decide

04:33 what their own schedule looks like.

04:36 They customize their own schedules

04:39 and learn at their own pace.

04:42 They can also choose not to make one

04:46 or attend classes.

04:50 Then there's wholeness.

04:53 Within this organization,

04:55 students receive respect and acceptance.

05:00 Teachers also give them

05:02 what those students need.

05:05 And the teachers in the organization

05:08 discuss what they have

05:11 noticed or felt from students that day.

05:17 In other words,

05:19 they believe every child

05:21 has their own potential

05:23 and their own wholeness.

05:25 Then the third principle:

05:27 evolutionary purpose.

05:28 The organization

05:32 accepts students facing difficulties.

05:35 But in the real world,

05:40 difficulty itself

05:43 can't be quantified.

05:46 It is also

05:47 chaotic,

05:48 and constantly changing.

05:52 So the organization's goal may not be

05:55 to make sure, within a set period,

06:00 that a child returns to school.

06:04 Instead, it becomes

06:06 a more open-ended direction:

06:09 how can the child,

06:11 during their time with us,

06:16 find a way to grow that suits them?

06:19 Or find a goal that suits them?

06:24 Whether helping them find

06:26 their own way to grow,

06:28 or find their own goal,

06:31 there is no time limit at all.

06:35 Their work has no KPIs

06:41 and no presets of any kind.

06:45 And every direction they take,

06:48 every path they explore,

06:49 will change

06:51 as teachers understand the child better.

06:56 That's roughly how I see the organization

07:00 through those three concepts.

07:08 I think organizations like this

07:10 are extremely rare.

07:15 They also ask a great deal

07:19 of the people within them.

07:23 For example,

07:25 the teachers there:

07:28 how do they manage themselves,

07:32 their relationships with students,

07:36 and their own

07:37 pursuit of meaning, for example?

07:41 This also requires

07:48 an alignment with their own wholeness.

07:51 They have their own inner drive.

07:54 And what is that drive?

07:56 In most organizations,

07:58 it may come from

08:00 goals tied to success,

08:04 security, and so on.

08:06 But in a Teal organization like this,

08:12 each person's drive comes from meaning.

08:19 They ask themselves,

08:20 "Does what I'm doing matter?"

08:22 If it does,

08:23 they will do it well

08:26 and keep at it.

08:32 Then it struck me:

08:35 Teal organizations...

08:38 I truly envy

08:39 organizations like this.

08:40 Because I think

08:43 my personality is well suited

08:45 to living and working in one.

08:48 For example,

08:49 my first job was

08:53 at a newly founded school.

08:55 During that school's

08:58 first two years,

09:00 I was genuinely happy.

09:02 Everything was still chaotic

09:04 and uncertain.

09:08 The internal structure

09:09 was not yet fully formed.

09:11 But I could be happy then

09:13 because

09:15 I believed the organization's work

09:17 was meaningful

09:18 and valuable.

09:19 So I put

09:22 all my motivation and drive into

09:26 the work I was doing.

09:29 But later,

09:30 there was—

09:32 you know,

09:33 a school needs to scale.

09:36 Order emerges step by step.

09:39 Once that order takes full shape,

09:44 it begins to constrain

09:46 every individual in the organization,

09:48 and no one is exempt.

09:51 So during the transition

09:54 to a larger scale,

09:56 I felt it constrained me.

09:59 In the end, I decided

10:00 to leave the organization.

10:03 I really felt that

10:05 if it had allowed me

10:10 to act with fewer constraints,

10:16 I could have stayed.

10:20 Coming back to decentralization,

10:22 I actually think

10:25 complete decentralization doesn't exist.

10:29 As I mentioned, for example,

10:34 people with tokens

10:36 vote on decisions.

10:39 In that case,

10:41 people holding many tokens

10:43 naturally have more say.

10:46 So

10:47 well,

10:48 how is that any different

10:50 from a shareholders' meeting?

10:53 There isn't much difference, right?

10:56 So DAOs

11:02 may be truly ideal in theory,

11:05 but in practice

11:07 they inevitably face constraints,

11:09 especially around tokens.

11:11 Token holders themselves

11:14 are an obvious flaw.