Chaordic Leadership, Dee Hock & the history of VISA

Inspiration for Our Collective

VISA is currently the largest payment processor in the world, an independent company is owned by its users. It collects and delivers payments, authorizations, & more via technological innovation

Dee Hock

was born in North Ogden, Utah, in 1929 to a Mormon family. His father, Alma, was a utility lineman, and his mother, Cecil, was a homemaker. Hock attended Weber State University, where he graduated with a two-year degree in 1949

VISA was born as a decentralized network of competing banks. Bank of America in California started issuing cards, and started a franchise program that connected banks across the country. The transactions would be resolved by phone calls, which presented multiple issues

Dee Hock proposed an independent company, owned by the collective of banks, with new technology to connect to all the banks, authorize transactions, collect and distribute payments

The new structure used collaboration to improve competition, as every member bank & consumers benefits from a larger network

Chaordic Leadership

By chaord, I mean any self-organizing, self governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organization, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order

Loosely translated to business, it can be thought of as an organization that harmoniously blends characteristics of competition and cooperation; or from the perspective of education, an organization that seamlessly blends theoretical and experiential learning

VISA's principles

The collective used principles to govern, encourage creativity, make decisions quickly an stay focused

Adaptability requires that the individual components of the system be in competition. And yet cohesion

Some of those principles have evolved over the years, and include a few like:

Lead courageously

Obsess about customers

Collaborate as one Visa

Execute with excellence

Operational resilience

Cybersecurity

Data Privacy

A role model on collective action, technological excellence, and customer obsession

Our Vision

Inspired by examples like these, we believe that collaboration can lead to better business

Our vision is to use technological innovations, and reliable tools to create a sustainable ecosystem that benefits everyone involved

Empowering the Collective: Our fair pricing structure finances better operations and improvements for our members

Investing in Technology: By using and supporting open-source tools, the community votes in the roadmap

Supporting the Community: Revenue from our services goes toward hosting events, supporting artists, and expanding craft and coworking spaces

Marketing & Advertisement: Will feature our participating stores and agencies by members & friends

Empowering Creativity: Improve our existing solutions or propose new ones in Github & new community forums

A Future Built on Shared Values

By aligning our goals with the needs of the community, we’re creating a sustainable, innovative, and inclusive ecosystem

We must cultivate equity, autonomy, and individual opportunity.

"Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things."

The governing structure must not be a chain of command, but rather a framework for dialogue, deliberation, and coordination among equals. Authority, in other words, comes from the bottom up, not the top down.

[CHAORDIC LEADERSHIP By Dee Hock]