Why The Way We’re Working Together Isn’t Working

Being human is hard. Working together is harder. 

Many of us share a vision of the world we want to see, but the way we are working together to create it is not working. 

As we co-create the liberated world we deserve, our lives, our leadership, and our organizations are limited by habits and structures that we have learned from the very systems from which we long to be liberated. 

The systems that have created ecological devastation, enlisted us in a never-ending physical, economic, and spiritual war against one another, and severed us from the deepest layers of our interconnected humanity, are also the very systems that have taught us how to understand ourselves, treat each other, lead, hold power, and create organizations.

We’ve learned about organizational strategy from armies. We’ve learned management techniques from enslavers. We’ve learned how to hold power from conquerors. We’ve learned how to lead from dictators and monarchs. We’ve learned about our human worth from marketplaces. We’ve learned about our identities from advertisers. 

These learnings make it harder to work together in the ways we truly want. 

Our strategies replicate the very patterns of extraction and domination we’re trying to transform.

Our management techniques leave us unseen, unappreciated, and undervalued.

Our attempts to hold power turn into competitions for domination.

Our leadership attempts replicate patterns of white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonization, and bring us into conflict with the very people with whom we long to build and live in a liberated world. 

Our human worth is measured by the price of what we produce, not the inherent creativity of our hearts, minds, and bodies.

Our full identities get collapsed into billboards and slogans, treating each of us as categories and labels instead of being celebrated for our unique gifts and whole essence. 

This is no mistake.

It is the natural outcome of political, economic, and cultural systems that were built to objectify people and our planet in service of extraction and consolidation of wealth, power, and energy.

Even though there are identifiable agents that have intentionally created, reinforced, and benefited materially from these systems of oppression, our hearts know that even these agents were acting out the delusions of superiority, separateness, and fear that they inherited from the complicated and traumatizing story of human history.

Now, here we are…

In the process of liberating ourselves from the scarcity, violence, and trauma of the past in order to create an abundant, peaceful, whole present that is our birthright. 

For liberation, we need to learn new ways of being, leading, and working together.

Ways of being that make our communities, our children, and our ancestors proud. Ways of being that honor our differences, connections, and interdependence, and bring out our deepest and most transformative gifts.

Ways of leading that foster the strength, resiliency, and cohesion of groups. Ways of leading that collaboratively share power and care for and cultivate our humanity by calling us all into the fullest version of ourselves. 

Ways of working together that allow us to see each other’s truths and tend to each other’s hearts that make us shine in each other’s light. Ways of working together that make our visions of liberation real right now.

So, as Harsha Walia says, “Our journey toward liberation can be liberating.”

Many of us share a vision of the liberated world we want to see, but the way we are working together to create it is not “working together.” 

At Harmonize, we believe the journey to liberation can be liberating when we work together in harmony. 

We harmonize how humans work together through Comprehensive Organizational Development & Analysis (CODA™), our unique, customizable suite of tools, frameworks, processes, and practices, that brings our shared vision into sharper collective focus and develop analysis and practices that enable us to create the liberated world we want to see together. 

Learn more about CODA or contact us.