---
author: "[[Bob Marshall]]"
tags:
  - blogpost
publish: 2026-02-06
sources:
  - https://flowchainsensei.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/the-quintessential-mindset-79-essential-organisational-memes/
---
## The Quintessential Mindset: 79 Essential Organisational Memes

What makes a truly exceptional software development or collaborative knowledge work organisation? Over fifty years of experience has taught me that it’s not about processes, tools, or even technical skills. It’s about the collective assumptions and beliefs—the “memes”—that define an organisation’s culture. In my book _Quintessence_ (Marshall, 2021), I presented a blueprint for highly effective organisations by examining 79 key memes that shape how work gets done.

This post summarises each meme from the quintessential perspective—the perspective of organisations that achieve effectiveness levels some five times higher than the average. Think of this as a map of the ideal future state for your organisation, an “idealised design” in Russell Ackoff’s terms. Rather than telling you how to get there, this guide shows you what “there” looks like:

These foundational memes establish the context for quintessential thinking.

#### 1. Change

Quintessential organisations regard change as their friend and constant companion. Rather than resisting or merely managing change, they embrace it as a source of innovation and opportunity. They organise their work to accommodate change easily, building it into business-as-usual rather than treating it as an exceptional event. Change is the oxygen of their existence.

#### 2. Discussion

Discussion, dialogue, and conversation are the lifeblood of quintessential organisations. They constantly seek open, candid exchange of ideas and knowledge, recognising that speaking one’s mind can be challenging. These organisations invest heavily in developing capabilities for skilful dialogue, using techniques like Nonviolent Communication to handle difficult topics and inevitable conflicts.

#### 3. Undiscussables

There are no taboo topics in quintessential organisations. Even when discussions make people feel nervous or uncomfortable, everyone recognises the necessity to work through such feelings and help each other in tackling difficult subjects. The most challenging topics are often the most worthy of discussion, and these organisations maintain zero tolerance for undiscussability.

#### 4. Courage

Quintessential organisations value courage highly—courage to speak out, take risks, challenge convention, and question each other’s assumptions. They understand that the psychological limits of leaders become the psychological limits of the organisation. Courage means acting when much is at stake, though not recklessly, and showing transparency and radical candour in all interactions.

#### 5. Needs

These organisations recognise that people have needs and celebrate this essential aspect of humanity. They understand the power of attending to folks’ needs and build this understanding into all policies and practices. The wide range of human needs—from autonomy and mastery to safety and belonging—guides their efforts, connecting directly to effectiveness and the bottom line.

#### 6. Who Matters?

Quintessential organisations carefully identify and track “The Folks That Matter”—customers, staff, investors, suppliers, and others whose needs are central to how work works. They invest significant effort in understanding stakeholder symmetry and finding the appropriate balance of competing claims. All work is geared towards meeting these folks’ needs whilst maximising the amount of work NOT done.

#### 7. Collective Mindsets

These organisations embrace the idea that groups and organisations have collective mindsets—sets of interlocking assumptions and beliefs that strongly influence success. They act intentionally on their collective mindset, understanding that organisational effectiveness is a function of these prevailing beliefs. They know that shifting mindsets requires wholesale replacement of one memeplex with another.

#### 8. Success

Success is defined as achieving the organisation’s purpose whilst meeting the needs of all the Folks That Matter. It’s not a binary condition but a sliding scale, measured operationally with clear, quantified definitions. Quintessential organisations balance success across short, medium, and long-term horizons, ensuring no key stakeholders’ needs go unattended.

#### 9. Culture

Quintessential organisations view culture as a read-only manifestation of collective assumptions and beliefs. Rather than trying to “change culture” directly, they shift the underlying assumptions and beliefs to better align with purpose. They recognise that when assumptions and beliefs are misaligned with ambitions, success becomes elusive, and they work to harmonise these elements.

#### 10. Structure

Structure is seen as a lever for effectiveness, with fluidity being paramount. Quintessential organisations prefer self-organising, adaptable structures that can morph as circumstances demand, much like an octopus. They avoid fixed hierarchies in favour of distributed decision-making, flat organisations, and value stream orientations. Any fixedness of structure is considered antithetical to business agility.

#### 11. Coevolution

These organisations understand that innovations in mindset must coevolve with changes to rules, policies, and procedures. Old rules that were designed to bypass old limitations will block the benefits of new thinking. They remain constantly alert to the need for simultaneous evolution of assumptions, beliefs, and operating procedures.

#### 12. Talent

Quintessential organisations have an ambivalent relationship with talent, recognising Deming’s insight that 90–95% of performance comes from the system, not individual ability. They value individuals and their rate of improvement but prioritise interpersonal relationships and interactions over individual talent. They approach talent obliquely, focusing on expanding the organisation’s capacity to create its future.

#### 13. Relationships

These organisations believe that relationships between people—not people themselves—are their greatest asset. They prioritise time and resources for studying motivation, engagement, sociology, and psychology. Relationships are loving and altruistic rather than transactional, with people seeking what’s alive in each other and attending to everyone’s needs.

#### 14. Remuneration

Quintessential organisations understand that compensation is a form of extrinsic motivation with deleterious effects on knowledge work. They pay people according to what they need rather than arbitrary criteria, and invite employees to set their own salaries and rates. This removes one of the workplace’s most contentious issues whilst treating people like trusted adults.

#### 15. Flow of Value

Flow of value is an essential operating principle, with these organisations seeking economies of flow rather than economies of scale. They monitor the rate of flow, lead times, cycle times, and process cycle efficiency, constantly working to improve continuous flow through reducing WIP, making flow visible, and applying Theory of Constraints principles.

#### 16. Waste

Whilst not ignored, waste is seen as less significant than improving flow. Quintessential organisations define waste peculiarly: sacrificing some folks’ needs without effectively meeting other folks’ needs. They remain conscious of Shingo’s seven (eight) forms of waste, particularly the eighth waste—wasted human potential—whilst prioritising flow improvements over waste reduction.

#### 17. Purpose

These organisations have crystal-clear, collectively-defined purposes that evolve regularly with input from all the Folks That Matter. They understand that purpose—”attending to the needs of all the Folks That Matter”—is more than words on a page. Purpose permeates all corners of the organisation, from overall organisational goals to individual sense of meaning.

#### 18. Case For Action

Quintessential organisations use Cases for Action to answer “Why are we doing this?” and improve clarity amongst everyone involved. These systematic approaches to building shared understanding of current business challenges enhance their ability to adapt and reorient quickly. They believe that if people believe in the “why”, they’ll accomplish any “what”.

#### 19. Vision

Vision provides shared understanding of what the organisation desires to achieve in five to ten years. It helps inspire employees, aids decision-making, attracts talent, improves focus, and communicates purpose. These organisations invest heavily in involving everyone in building and keeping the vision current through consensus, dialogue, and communication.

#### 20. Effectiveness

Quintessential organisations strive for effectiveness—doing the right things—regarding efficiency as a pernicious distraction. They’re some five times more productive than organisations focused on efficiency, believing it’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. They recognise that the greatest risk in software development is doing the wrong things altogether.

#### 21. Efficiency

Whilst not ignored, efficiency is viewed with suspicion because focus on it detracts from effectiveness. These organisations understand the crucial distinction between the two and believe efficiency can lead to dysfunctional behaviours like keeping teams busy unnecessarily. They balance measures of efficiency with measures of effectiveness, with “needs met” being the quintessential measure of both.

#### 22. The Role of “The System”

Systems thinking permeates all aspects of quintessential organisations. They understand that the way work works—”the system”—governs organisational performance far more than individual efforts. They differentiate between “the system” (how work actually gets done) and “the process” (how work is intended to work), focusing on the interactions between parts rather than parts taken separately.

#### 23. Part/Whole Thinking

These organisations regard dividing organisations into parts and managing them separately as folly. They understand that local optimisation of parts inevitably leads to sub-optimisation of the whole. Having examined the risks of vertical silos, they choose flat, whole-organisation models like horizontal value streams over functional departments.

#### 24. Innovation

Innovation means implementing more effective strategies for attending to folks’ needs. Quintessential organisations regard innovation in how work works as paramount, believing this leads inexorably to product innovation. They delegate innovation to workers who own the way work works, making innovation a daily occurrence through kaizen. Innovation is the oxygen of their existence.

#### 25. Variability

These organisations understand what unpredictable variation does to business costs and make Statistical Quality Control a cornerstone of their approach. They make variability visible and reduce it wherever sensible, recognising that the major cause lies within the system. Understanding variation changes management theory so fundamentally as to make it unrecognisable from what came before.

#### 26. Learning

Learning is seen as essential to long-term competitiveness, but only when behaviour actually changes. Quintessential organisations are archetypal learning organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create desired results. They allow time for reflection, recognise that learning depends on embodied experiences rather than opinions, and understand that organisational learning happens through shifts in collective assumptions.

#### 27. The Nature of Work

Work is defined as the application of knowledge to developing and delivering products and services. Quintessential organisations make no distinction between work and serious play, trusting people to attend to needs voluntarily rather than through obligation. Work serves multiple social functions beyond economic necessity—providing community, identity, self-esteem, and purpose.

#### 28. The Way the Work Works

In quintessential organisations, the way work works is owned by the people doing the work, not their managers. This enhances buy-in, motivation, innovation, autonomy, and sense of community. Workers answer two questions: What needs are we attending to, and what means will we use to meet those needs? They’re trusted to make changes that may seem contentious or alien.

#### 29. Improvement

Improvement means any change to the way work works that results in better meeting folks’ needs. These organisations place significant emphasis on continuous improvement (kaizen) of effectiveness rather than process improvement. They understand the connection between improvement and quality, pursue both incremental improvements and radical kaikaku, and collectively seek Big Hairy Audacious Goals.

#### 30. Play

Quintessential organisations believe there’s a central place for play—activity voluntarily engaged in for enjoyment. They encourage people to play rather than work, trusting them to align play with organisational needs through shared purpose. Combinatory play is seen as essential to productive thought, and having a licence to play contributes significantly to effectiveness.

#### 31. Utilisation

These organisations regard slack as desirable and busyness as wildly dysfunctional. They understand queueing theory: as utilisation increases, delays increase exponentially. They coach people in working fewer hours and focus on achievements rather than busyness. Utilisation has a place only at the constraint or bottleneck; elsewhere, slack capacity is actively maintained.

#### 32. Doctrine

Quintessential organisations value having an explicit, ever-evolving doctrine shared by everyone. Doctrine provides guidance towards common purpose, promotes productive debate, articulates principles for decision-making, aids recruitment, and enables harmony with stakeholders. Specific elements include organising intent, main effort, and critical vulnerability drawn from auftragstaktik concepts.

#### 33. Quality

Quality is the result of a carefully constructed cultural environment and must be the fabric of the organisation. These organisations follow Crosby’s Four Absolutes: quality is conformance to requirements, the system is prevention, the performance standard is zero defects, and measurement is the price of nonconformance. Quality and continuous improvement are woven together into one eternal golden braid.

#### 34. ZeeDee

ZeeDee (Zero Defects) means the only acceptable number of errors is zero—getting things right first time, every time. This philosophy requires a collective shift in assumptions about quality and leads to pride in work, improved relationships, increased effectiveness, and more satisfaction. Quality is free because prevention costs less than inspection and rework.

#### 35. Cost of Focus

Cost of Focus is the cost incurred when failing to include all needs of all the Folks That Matter in the Needsscape. Quintessential organisations are vigilant in ensuring they attend to all relevant needs, minimising the likelihood of overlooking key individuals and groups. They regularly discuss how scope decisions are made and invite practices to track and update the Needsscape.

#### 36. Cost of Delay

Cost of Delay calculates the impact of time on value creation and capture. These organisations use it to prioritise decisions, understanding that delays in meeting needs have tangible financial costs. All commercial resource-allocation and delivery-prioritisation decisions use Cost of Delay numbers, maximising the economic benefits of their portfolio and helping evaluate queues, capacity, batch sizes, and variability.

#### 37. Risk

Risk is viewed as a friend signalling opportunity. Rather than just identifying and managing risks, quintessential organisations explicitly identify and manage the opportunities risks signal. They believe in the risk-reward equation and invite everyone to train in risk appreciation, opportunity management, and exploitation. They systematically identify, assess, monitor, control, and report on risks.

#### 38. Quantification

These organisations improve and clarify communications by inviting quantification of all things, especially folks’ needs. Pervasive quantification enables more meaningful discussions less obscured by subjective language, increasing the probability of delivering what people actually need. Quantification aids clear thinking and good communication even without subsequent measurement.

#### 39. Metrics and Measures

Quintessential organisations have a love-hate relationship with metrics. Measures collected by those who own their work can illuminate issues and track progress, but measures collected by others cause significant problems. They measure very few things, focusing only on those relevant to decision-making, and continually review their selection as things change.

#### 40. Hierarchy

These organisations place themselves far towards the flat end of the hierarchy spectrum. They embrace self-organisation and self-management, seeing little need for traditional management or hierarchy. They believe hierarchy dissuades innovation, promotes compliance, enables dullards to hide, damages morale, and causes good people to leave.

#### 41. Management

Quintessential organisations see no need for traditional management or managers. As organisations transition to quintessence, managers relinquish control and embrace roles of enablement, resourcing, and support. Eventually, the term “manage” ceases to be relevant, and there are no managers at all—only people working together to attend to needs.

#### 42. Single Wringable Neck

These organisations choose group accountability over individual accountability. Understanding the deleterious effects of blame and accountability, they dwell instead on joy, voluntary action, and nonviolence. The concept of the single wringable neck—having one person to blame—has no place. People find joy in service and delight in attending to each other’s needs.

#### 43. Ownership and Control

Assigned or delegated ownership implies accountability, which quintessential organisations avoid. People voluntarily take on things that need doing to delight the Folks That Matter, without feeling accountable in the conventional sense. When conflicts occur, people work things out through mutual exploration, skilful dialogue, and Nonviolent Communication.

#### 44. Teams

These organisations believe people collaborating together are more effective than individuals working alone. Key factors for performance include attentiveness to needs, camaraderie, dependability, shared purpose, achievement, and personal fulfilment. They embrace novel approaches like ensemble collaboration and mob programming, understanding that team success depends on setting team goals above personal self-interest.

#### 45. Silos or Value Streams

Quintessential organisations recognise that value flows horizontally through value streams, making vertical silo structures nonsensical. Silos lead to delays, queues, bottlenecks, and narrow specialisms. They structure themselves horizontally, understanding that an organisation’s major deficiencies arise from how parts interact, not from actions taken separately.

#### 46. Projects, Products or Other

These organisations eschew projects in favour of flow, embracing #NoProjects. They believe running temporary projects is highly ineffective for building sustainable products. Instead of continually creating and disbanding teams, they have standing teams and long-running value streams, moving work to people rather than people to work.

#### 47. Time Horizons

Quintessential organisations consider multiple time horizons when looking to the future, believing there are significant benefits in balancing attention to current performance and opportunities for growth. They use frameworks like the Three Horizons model to inform this perspective, ensuring they don’t sacrifice long-term success for short-term gains.

#### 48. Speed

Speed has its place as a consequence of the needs of the Folks That Matter, but there’s no point doing things faster than needed. These organisations regard naked emphasis on speed as detracting from the social dimensions of community. They’re more comfortable with natural rhythms and rely on effectiveness to achieve the pace required rather than exhortations.

#### 49. Homogeneity

Quintessential organisations embrace diversity—of thought, approach, experience, and demography. They see diversity as contributing to innovation, market growth, joy, and performance. Whilst encouraging groups to harmonise diverse assumptions and beliefs, they actively discourage uniformity and regimentation for its own sake, relying on the wisdom of crowds.

#### 50. Reuse

These organisations are sceptical about reuse promises, having sufficient experience to know that significant investment is required for effective reuse—often a dubious proposition in terms of ROI. They neither bias towards rejection nor embracing of reuse, preferring to evaluate and decide on the merits of each specific case.

#### 51. Software or Not

Quintessential organisations deliberate on the most effective means to address needs rather than automatically assuming software is appropriate. They help customers first develop manual solutions using simple physical means before considering software automation. They ensure they have skills to supply a broad range of solutions, particularly those that forego software.

#### 52. Cadence

A strong, regular cadence provides confidence, accomplishment, improved morale, psychological safety, and encourages collaboration. These organisations invite collaborative groups to adopt rhythms derived from the needs of the Folks That Matter as one aspect of self-organisation. They believe choice of cadence from needs is more effective than imposed or arbitrary cadence.

#### 53. Decision-making

Quintessential organisations give control to employees at every level through the Advice Process. They recognise that for people to make effective decisions, they must be aligned with purpose and understand goals and decision-making criteria. They use mechanisms like “I intend to…” statements, thinking out loud, and the Three Names rule to decentralise decision-making.

#### 54. Evidence

These organisations insist on and rely on evidence to make decisions—specifically, evidence collected by those directly involved. They value sound, critically-appraised, non-partisan evidence over cargo-culted management ideas and personal experience, which are susceptible to errors and bias. Effectiveness is due in no small part to evidence-based decision-making.

#### 55. Transparency

Quintessential organisations champion radical transparency, publicly sharing information including diversity data, growth metrics, pricing, processes, hiring, salaries, strategies, revenues, and financials. Benefits include engaged employees, increased autonomy, more trust, improved feedback, clarity, alignment, and open relationships. Radical transparency is a multiplier for effectiveness.

#### 56. Technical Competencies

These organisations value skills but not traditional software skills as much. They favour skilful dialogue, relationship building, Nonviolent Communication, evidence-based decision making, compassion, attending to needs, and administration. They enumerate necessary technical skills and invite employees to acquire them with organisational support, postponing or declining assignments when skills are absent.

#### 57. Mudballs

Quintessential organisations keep on top of the internal state of all their products, understanding the value and risks of technical debt. They know that poor internal state constrains their ability to respond to market changes, slows development, and negatively impacts morale. They use technical debt strategically, balancing Cost of Delay with debt interest.

#### 58. Financials

These organisations reject standard cost accounting in favour of Throughput Accounting and eschew separate finance departments. They orient financial planning towards front-line decision-making needs, embrace Beyond Budgeting principles, and use financial resources to drive competitive position improvements. Business units become smaller, more numerous, and more entrepreneurial.

#### 59. Governance

Governance is seen as an opportunity to add effectiveness by staying on top of investments and mitigating risks. These organisations apply principles of joy, volunteerism, and constructive conflict. They ensure strong, high-functioning collaborative governance groups whose members trust and challenge one another, creating a culture of open dissent and nonconformance.

#### 60. Workplaces

Quintessential organisations provide a range of workspace options matching groups’ and individuals’ collaboration needs: ensemble collaboration spaces, individual offices, discussion areas, kitchens, meeting rooms, obeya spaces, and remote options. They understand the benefits and costs, invite staff to define and design spaces, and allow people to choose what suits their current mode.

#### 61. OrgCogDiss

Organisational Cognitive Dissonance—having different belief systems present simultaneously—is recognised as a major risk. These organisations anticipate the risks of balkanisation and conflict, inviting people to prepare mitigating actions. A major risk is people deciding to leave rather than adapt their existing assumptions and beliefs.

#### 62. Violence

Violence includes the intentional use of power or threat of force resulting in psychological harm or deprivation. Quintessential organisations invite people to reject workplace violence—including threatening behaviour, verbal abuse, physical attacks, psychological bullying, and subtle coercion—in favour of nonviolence and volunteerism. Violence is a frequent topic maintaining folks’ alertness.

#### 63. Nonviolence

These organisations believe social change, relationships, and interactions flourish when people refrain from harming others. They promote nonviolence as a fundamental operating principle and enthusiastically promote Nonviolent Communication. Nonviolence makes a major contribution to peaceful resolution of conflicts without rancour or residual ill-feeling.

#### 64. Engineering

Quintessential organisations recognise the value of an engineering approach, particularly set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). They see building technically successful products as insufficient—products must meet the full set of relevant needs. Software is seen as an occasionally necessary evil to minimise and eliminate, with core business being providing solutions, not writing software.

#### 65. PowerPoint and Slide Decks

These organisations eschew slide-based presentations in favour of more effective means like interactive dialogue sessions, World Cafe, master classes, collaborative learning, and structured socialising. They avoid situations where one person presents to an assembly, believing speaking and presenting are poor means for conveying ideas and information.

#### 66. HR

Quintessential organisations recognise the dysfunctions of partitioning human resource management into a separate silo. Wishing to improve effectiveness, they distribute most functions into their value streams. Only a very few functions—payroll, legal support, complaints, and administrative hiring support—are collected into an internal service value stream.

#### 67. Recruiting

The key question for each candidate is “will they fit?” These organisations are acutely aware of their collective assumptions and select new hires with complementary beliefs. They eschew conventional recruiting in favour of making “bad hires”—hiring for fit six months to a year hence rather than now, so new hires move culture forward rather than reinforcing the status quo.

#### 68. Batch Size

Quintessential organisations believe the most effective form of flow is single-piece continuous flow, making the optimum batch size most often one piece. Smaller batches reduce feedback delays, afford more improvement opportunities, help decision-making, and reduce the impact of sunk cost bias. Larger batches lead to longer cycles and longer waits to learn how well needs were met.

#### 69. Theory of Constraints

These organisations know every system has a limiting constraint and that focusing improvement efforts on this constraint is the fastest and most effective way to improve. They pursue effectiveness via the five steps of TOC: identify the constraint, exploit it, subordinate everything else, elevate it, and repeat. They embrace TOC’s thinking tools and core assumptions throughout.

#### 70. Beliefs About People

Quintessential organisations hold clear Theory-Y beliefs: people are concerned for others, capable of learning, intelligent, naturally self-motivated, take pride in good work, and enjoy challenges. They believe people find joy in attending to each other’s needs and that love and compassion feature large in relationships. They strive to avoid demotivation from Theory-X postures.

#### 71. Morale

These organisations pay constant attention to morale across the organisation, measuring, tracking, and visualising it. They understand impacts on morale from organisational behaviours and decisions. Positive factors include needs attended to, fellowship, equity, camaraderie, fulfilling work, accomplishments, purpose, autonomy, trust, mastery, alignment, clarity, resources, dialogue, and positivity.

#### 72. Motivation

Quintessential organisations pay close attention to folks’ motivations out of concern for wellbeing, not to extract more work. They seek to enrich jobs with opportunities for mastery and achievement. They reject the search for discretionary effort as exploitation, believing all effort is discretionary and voluntary. Obligation to achieve minimums smacks of violence.

#### 73. Engagement

These organisations do not seek “engagement” or engaged employees, regarding the concept as an irrelevant distraction. Their approach to manifesting the highly effective organisation naturally results in what others might describe as employee engagement, making it a consequence rather than a goal.

#### 74. Psychological Safety

The question of explicit psychological safety is moot given their predilection for nonviolence and attending to needs. If issues manifest, their propensity for dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution comes to the fore. They see psychological safety as a consequence of culture, not something requiring explicit address, whilst remaining mindful of amygdala hijack during stress.

#### 75. Giants

Quintessential organisations look up to people who occupy special places in their thoughts and from whose works their collective assumptions arise. They have shared role models—giants like Deming, Goldratt, Ackoff, Ohno, Senge, Seddon, and Rosenberg—whom they revere and acknowledge regularly, widely, and publicly, standing on their shoulders to see further.

#### 76. Meetings

These organisations acknowledge the egregious waste caused by conventional meetings and strive to keep formal, structured meetings to a minimum. The few meetings that occur serve only to make decisions, not discuss or share information. They use alternative forms like walks, fikas, and Lean Coffees. As Jeff Bezos noted, if you need more than two pizzas to feed everyone, there are too many people.

#### 77. Complexity

Quintessential organisations choose to look at situations as if they were always inherently simple. By proceeding as if reality is simple and harmonious, they’re less likely to get trapped seeking sophisticated explanations or complicated solutions. They embrace Inherent Simplicity as a practical approach, believing clear thinking comes from examining cause-effect relationships systematically.

#### 78. Status

These organisations have a distinctly Scandinavian feel regarding status distribution, embracing Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. They align with egalitarian cultures featuring flat structures, decentralised decision-making, participative management, and emphasis on power distribution. They believe egalitarian cultures enable more effective collaboration.

#### 79. Conflict

Quintessential organisations see conflict as a consequence of people having different preferred strategies for attending to needs. They see disagreements as positive when illuminating different underlying assumptions and beliefs. Productive conflict is equivalent to a strenuous workout—it builds strength and resilience. They invite folks to engage in productive conflict through challenging questions and mining for conflict.

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### Conclusion

These 79 memes form an interlocking system—a memeplex—that defines the quintessential organisation. Each meme reinforces the others, creating a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. The journey to quintessence isn’t about implementing these ideas piecemeal, but about a rolling _wholesale_ replacement of one memeplex with another.

The question isn’t whether these ideas are “right” or “wrong” in some absolute sense. The question is: how wide is the gap between your organisation’s current collective assumptions and beliefs, and those of the quintessential organisation? That gap represents the challenge—and the opportunity—ahead of you.

As Russell Ackoff observed, the most effective way of creating the future is by closing or reducing the gap between the current state and the idealised design. May this guide illuminate that ideal for you.

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### Further Reading

Ackoff, R. L. (1999). _Re-creating the corporation: A design of organizations for the 21st century_. Oxford University Press.

Ackoff, R. L., Magidson, J., & Addison, H. J. (2006). _Idealized design: Creating an organization’s future_. Wharton School Publishing.

Marshall, R. W. (2018). _Hearts over diamonds: Serving business and society through organisational psychotherapy_. Falling Blossoms. [https://leanpub.com/heartsoverdiamonds](https://leanpub.com/heartsoverdiamonds)

Marshall, R. W. (2021). _Memeology: Surfacing and reflecting on the organisation’s collective assumptions and beliefs_. Falling Blossoms. [https://leanpub.com/memeology](https://leanpub.com/memeology)

Marshall, R. W. (2021). _Quintessence: An acme for software development organisations_. Falling Blossoms. [https://leanpub.com/quintessence](https://leanpub.com/quintessence)