There are certain goals that, to me, emanate directly from the MG Taylor Mission: that we develop (as necessary) the tools required for individual and corporate transformation; that we employ these in our work and transfer these tools to those we work with until ubiquity is achieved; that we, as individuals, act as Transition Managers; and as an organization we exemplify and demonstrate the kind of network organization/economy we believe to be valid for today’s transition period; that we become - while serving and accomplishing our Mission - financially successful and build an organization that has vitality beyond the founders.

HOW we accomplished these goals is, of course, determined by specific circumstance. By definition, accomplishing them completes the first iteration of our Enterprise. It brings up the question if there is need for and capability for the next cycle of work. Completion of these goals means that one full expression of the work we set out to do EXISTS (the infamous “Level One”). It means that the books (financially and otherwise) are balanced. It means what has been learned has enjoyed broad distribution.

It may - or not - mean that an enterprise takes on the next iteration. It means that this is a choice. It means that failure to finish this first expression of the idea is not an option. It is done or not - and, not-done remains out of enterprise scope. Freedom comes from completing what was set out to be done.

The Mission of an Enterprise, once established, is not up for grabs because of changing circumstances. It does not come with qualifiers such as “if it pays...” “as long as I am happy...” “if the world agrees...” unless, of course, those are mission critical elements. The Mission IS the Mission. It is to followed until done or until proven to be not-useful. One can legitimately FAIL on a Mission - but not quit.

Therefore, one should be prudent in making a mission statement. More prudent when joining an organization that has one. Is THIS how you want to spend a major portion of you life? Any mission statement worth the doing is going to pose a major challenge to the team taking it on. Not all of the implications can be understood up front. By definition, the mission-driven elements cannot be compromised. You take the good with the bad as the thing unfolds. That said - with the BEWARE sign prominently posted - there are few things more satisfying than taking a critical Mission on - and succeeding.

The WORK of an organization may - and is likely to - change as it pursues it’s Mission. The organization, itself, may - and is likely to - go through change and restructuring. The work focus of MG Taylor is changing as the ValueWeb takes on more of the Enterprise’s production role. The organization is changing in response to this shift and as we learn what we need to be in order to do the Mission in the circumstance of today’s world.

It is, as I write this, 23 years from the date we arrived in Boulder to establish a BUSINESS based on our ideas. On one hand this seems like a long time - on the other it is a brief period for launching a revolution.

Our task, in retrospect, was a large one: we had to develop a technology and a product. We had to develop a market. We had to develop IP. We had to develop an organization to deliver our “goods” to that market. We had to develop a corporate structure that could have continuity, raise money, make money and compensate contributors. We had to do this while we, ourselves, were subject to the same changes and perturbations as our customers and clients have been.

We have accomplished a number of this tasks and made progress on all of them. It is in the realm of Business Model, however, that our greatest challenge remains. Even here we have accomplished one giant step. We have tried a number of paths and have systematically eliminated all of them. It turns out that conventional business attitudes and processes are deadly to our business. Our periods of greatest business failure have been when we tried to be a business. Our own work has evolved an alternative model, the ValueWeb. We have failed at being a conventional business and we have failed, so far, at making an alternative model work.

As of the end of 2002, we have accomplished a great deal. We have built a position in our chosen field that is strong. In some application areas we are becoming preeminent. Our tool kit while not complete is robust with the DesignShop and NavCenter offerings enjoying wide credibility and application. The economics of our work has achieved proof of concept demonstrated by the success that many clients and partners have had with ROI. A beginning NETWORK of several hundred - all over the world - who can do this work has been built. Our ability to quickly and economically design and build environments is mature and we are now starting to do this beyond the narrow domain of specially facilities build just to do our work.

We have done all this with a few hundred thousand in investment and 5 million in debt. Economically, this has been an earn-as-you-go effort that has accumulated a negative cash flow of about 10% over 23 years. About 50% of this debt we owe to ourselves in loans and unpaid compensation.

We have failed, however, to bring understanding to this organizational process. We have set false goals and adapted incorrect measures. We have “failed” to meet what was not possible to do and then suffered the consequences of upended expectations. In the process, we have experienced profound loss, from time to time, of our organizational and financial integrity. We have failed to develop a credible alternative Business Model and we have failed to organize and manage to the alternatives we have proposed. We have failed to design, develop and run our business with the same creativity and precision we employed to develop our products and services - that are successful because of the integrity and efficacy of of their process.

However, we have survived. We have paid out over 50 million dollars in wages, for contract work and the purchase of goods. We have operated profitably more years than not. We have been able to invest in and develop products that major organization have tried and failed to do. MG Taylor has been the vehicle that launched several successful businesses and careers. And, most importantly, it is what we have NOT done that stands as our greatest accomplishment. We have not compromised our values nor the work that we set out to do. We have not cheated and exploited even when that was being done to us. We owe money but we have not folded our tent (as so many have) and run away from these obligations the minute there was no payroll to be had. We have not given up the quest for finding a model that resolves the many “conflicts” between our Mission and the goal of also being a successful business enterprise.

In all of this we have been very fortunate. Had we been just a bit more successful we may have missed the turn-in-the-road before us. We might have missed the opportunity to truly be as innovative with our organization as with our work. An easier success may have made us complacent. Now, it seems to me, we are being “forced” down an organizational path that logically IS the extension and application of our work. And, to quote Mae West, “honey, luck had nothing to do with it!”

When two conditions existed we prospered financially and grew. These were when we put all our attention on delivering work to clients and none into the formal “organization” of the enterprise along traditional forms. When we hired “management” and established boards we lost money (with the exception of one year where we only wasted a great deal) and we distracted ourselves. We easily spent, between 1995 and 2000, several million on the accruements of organization with a net out of zero. The business plans, models and marketing plans produced zip. The massive legal fees produced nothing other than some very disastrous contracts that in turn cost us more money. Every attempt at reorganizing the business caused more confusion and problems than existed before.

Bad luck. No, “bad” - or conflicting - “memes.” Was it the people? Not really. they were competent and worked hard. But they never understood the business we were in. Or, to put it another way, how what we were in could become a business. Our great organizational failure has been that we have not been able, except for a few exceptions, to “manage” the enterprises with the same creativity, work processes, rules-of-engagement, and precision as we do our client/customer work.

In addition to these “mistakes,” was the issue of timing. We were very early into the market with a set of radical ideas and offerings. Because we were unable to come up with a Business Model that would facilitate investment, we had to bootstrap everything. This put enormous demands on us financially. All of our investments were dependent on future revenues to pay them back. We never had the money up front to grow or to create new products. Because our work was radical, we found that we had to demonstrate it before people would buy it. This drove our risk profile - most of the time we landed on our feet, but not always. All this did, however, drive us in one direction consistent with our philosophy and methods. We become extremely good at rapid-prototyping and using each client work opportunity as a means of advancing our products and services. Along with the specific products and services we offer today (DesignShop, NavCenter, PatchWorks), this is without question the expression of our greatest capacity and value. And, again, to drive the point home: it is the direct result of us using our own methods in our own development.

The missing piece in this saga has been the development and the application of the ValueWeb architecture. We began the Enterprise with a the design assumption that the organization of the future would be network-based. We based our entire methodology on this premise. We did not have a Model of a ValueWeb until 1985. And, it was not until 2001 that this model was fully developed into a formal system and method, integrated with our other materials, and submitted as part of our patent. ValueWeb, now, is more than metaphor and is ready for full-scale testing. In our present re-organization, the ValueWeb architecture will, for the first time, be an explicit structural element and the organizational processes will be the embodiment of the appropriate rules-of-engagement.

It cannot be known if this is “it” and we have found our appropriate organizational schema or if we a one or two or a few iterations away from success. It can be said that this time we are consistent with everything we have learned about what generates success in our Enterprise. And, having lived through it, it is clear that, given the dna we established in the beginning, we HAD to solve this problem along with many others that we took on.

Solving our own organizational issues is not only consistent with our Mission it is demanded by it. It is a requirement of our originating goals. It is part of the work not a thing separated from and subordinated to it. And, just as we knew when we started, in principle, what kind of environments we needed to create, we had to discover in specific what to make, when and how to make them - so it will be in terms of our “end-state” organization.

We are not done with our product/service development, of course. We do know where we are with it and we do know how to develop these market offerings, sell them and service them. While we do not have the conventional skills associated with marketing (these are tangled up in the organizational issue), we have a legacy of work accomplished (despite ourselves - or because of our approach?) we have accumulated a position and body of ongoing work that is growing under its own dynamic at its own rated of development. This means that by just doing the work well - that we already have - we “inherit” year to year a multimillion dollar cash flow.

The reorganization we are undertaking, today, is different from past attempts in several respects. In the first place, we are successful in the marketplace today. There is demand for what we do and we consistently satisfy our clients and partners, maintain long relations with them and make a fair profit from doing the work. We successfully transfer our capability to them in the process of helping them with the specific challenges that they face. In terms of these natural (legacy) opportunities, we have enough business to serve our customers well and continue the development of our offerings. We have enough work to keep our essential capacity in place assuming we watch our costs and function as a ValueWeb. This does not mean, however, that we have the ability to sustain the organization nor to persist beyond the founder’s involvement. In principle, we have the people who can do this. We do not yet have the organization that can support them in doing so. In addition, while a 5 million dollar deficit is remarkably small for what we have created, it is too great a burden - as a short term debt - for us to service given our present cash flow base. To attempt to extend that base beyond its natural growth curve is too likely to take us down another distracting and expensive path. And, as I have pointed out, we are presently organized in a hodgepodge combination of old and new organizational form-factors that are at odds with one another. We have tried the old way, numerous times; We have little choice, now, but to commit to a serious attempt at the new. Last, this remains the remaining necessary piece of DEMONSTRATION that is a requirement for “completing” the Mission as one full iteration of work. Having done this, we can explore a number of developmental or exit strategies with leisure and tranquility. The simple bottom line is this: the market is now coming to us. We have numerous opportunities to develop and expand our work. The best STRAEGY is to go slow, respond intelligently and avoid mistakes. We do not have to MAKE anything happen - not now. We have to shed any and all no longer useful organizational HABITS. This is not a passive approach. It is simply that we are at harvest time - the harvest of nearly a quarter of century of innovation, risk and hard work. Before we “move on” we need to reap this harvest and develop from there what is essentially a new base. We will not KNOW the full implications of having done this until we do it. For this reason, our reorganization will be executed in two steps: first, a reforming based on what we have learned about the nature (outlined below) of our Enterprise and aimed at resolving the issues outlined above; and then, another step as is deemed necessary to those who will carry on the Enterprise - assuming that is the decision - based on the conditions generated by having completed the first cycle.