The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock

Getzendanner also began to realize that Hock was a discouraged man. He clearly was passionate about the principles he'd used at Visa. But he didn't seem to think that anyone would care. That, as much as anything, was why he'd left Visa : for all of the organization's success, Hock insisted it had implemented only 25% of the idea. He'd gotten tired of beating his head against a stone wall. Except that now, in 1993, Getzendanner could sense that Hock really did want to talk about his ideas. "So I became determined to provoke him into doing something about his beliefs," he says.

The first step, obviously, was to convince Hock that there were people willing to listen. With some effort, Getzendanner persuaded him to come to the Joyce Foundation that October, when a group of grantees would be talking about how to design a system for welfare recipients to accumulate assets and work their way out of poverty. "So Dee gave this 15-minute speech about Visa and organizations," says Getzendanner, "and he was saying that we were going about this backwards -- that we were trying to devise something complicated instead of something simple. Well, it just blew my meeting apart."

The participants scrapped the rest of their formal agenda and spent the meeting talking about Hock's ideas. Hock was intrigued, says Getzendanner -- but not yet hooked. So his campaign continued, mostly via long-distance telephone:

Getzendanner: Dee, what is keeping you from spreading your word around?

Hock: Joel, I've done my bit. Besides, it's ridiculous to think about massive change.

Getzendanner: Is it any more ridiculous than the questions you asked about payment systems in 1968?

Hmmm. Hock had to think about that one. After much pondering, he called Getzendanner back. He'd have to see four things :

First: At least five or six large, extremely successful examples of chaordic organizations. And not just in the banking industry, but also in such diverse areas as education, government, social services, and environmental management.

Second: Complex, four-dimensional models of chaordic organizations would have to be developed -- the fourth dimension, Hock said, was "ethical and spiritual." And computer models would have to be built to demonstrate how institutions can self-organize.

Third: The models would need an impeccable intellectual foundation -- economic, scientific, political, historical, technical, and philosophical documentation for the inevitability of a shift to chaordic organizations.

Fourth: A "global chaordic institution" would have to be created. Its sole purpose would be to accelerate the implementation of the principles of chaordic organizations.

If all four of those things happened within the next decade or so, he told Getzendanner, then there would be a chance for fundamental change. But of course that was impossible. Institutional collapse was all but inevitable.

Getzendanner: How do you know? You didn't know that Visa was possible until you tried!

Hock: Joel, why are you so committed to this?

Hmmm. Getzendanner had to think about that one. "I said it was because every social issue I've run into in my time at Joyce had several things in common," says Getzendanner. "One is that the institutions just aren't up to the challenge. Two is that we don't have all the answers. The pieces aren't there yet to solve these problems, and we need a way to harness human creativity to find those pieces. And three is that the current system is locked in. There's so much inertia that you can't change it even when the system isn't working. So there needs to be some way of unlearning the system. And that's exactly what Dee was talking about."

And so the campaign continued, says Getzendanner. "From the fall of 1993 until early 1994, I was trying to get Dee to take our money -- and he was reluctant. I think he was afraid he might discover the four objectives were possible and become obsessed with trying to realize them. And if that happened, he would give it 110%. After the Visa experience he had no illusions about the price that would exact -- it would devour his life. He just hadn't yet reached the conclusion that this is what he wanted to do."

In fact, says Getzendanner, it was February 1994 before Hock finally called and said okay. He'd decided he couldn't face his seven grandchildren if he didn't give it a try. If the Joyce Foundation would cover his travel expenses, he would spend a year exploring his conviction that the four objectives were impossible. If he changed his mind, he'd suggest to the Joyce Foundation what it would take to set them in motion.

Done! The formal presentation to the Joyce Foundation trustees came at the end of March 1994. Hock told them that the whole idea was crazy. If he were in their shoes, he'd say no. So of course they said yes: Hock got a grant of $135,000.