The values are held in common.
These nine principles are held by the Institute and by doáb. How they are translated into a particular team, culture, and country is the work of the people doing it.
One set of principles, many translations
The translation is the work.
We fundamentally believe that the future of humanity depends on our capacity to undertake great collective endeavors. The Institute’s role with universities, governments, and health ecosystems is to orchestrate, never to govern. Each partner remains fully itself.
01
The capacity of every person
Every human being has the capacity to contribute to the betterment of their community. Work is organized so that it develops people, not merely uses them.
02
Protagonists, not recipients
People and communities are the protagonists of their own development. No one develops anyone else; conditions are created in which capacity can grow from within.
03
Learning as our mode of operation
Action, reflection, consultation, and study move in continuous cycles. Plans are held humbly; experience is documented honestly, including what does not work.
04
Coherence between values and operations
What an organization professes and how it hires, decides, compensates, and operates must be one thing. Coherence is examined continually, not assumed.
05
Individual and collective transformation together
The growth of persons and the progress of organizations are one movement. Neither is pursued at the expense of the other.
06
Enterprise in service of the common good
Ventures exist to create real value in coherence with a community’s purpose. Viability is honored; extraction is not.
07
Unity in diversity
Unity is not sameness. Difference of background, experience, and thought is welcomed as the way truth is found. A team becomes one by seeing more together, not by thinking alike.
08
Justice in economic arrangement
Splits are published, surplus is shared, governance rests on one member, one voice, and access is opened for those who would otherwise be excluded.
09
Knowledge as a common enterprise
Access to knowledge, and participation in its generation, application, and sharing, belongs to everyone. Pathways to deeper learning remain open to all.
The commitment
Time and space for meaningful conversation.
These questions are not answered in passing. Every cohort makes deliberate time for studying together, reflecting on experience, and consulting on what the principles ask of them here.
Conversation that does not give rise to action has not yet completed itself; action that is not examined teaches little.
How are we hiring?
Whom are our doors open to, whom are we developing, and does the way we bring people in build capacity or merely acquire it?
Is our culture coherent with our values?
Do our daily operations, the way we treat one another, and the way decisions are made express what we profess?
Do our economics express justice?
Compensation, pricing, ownership, and the treatment of surplus: do they match the principles we claim?
How are we learning?
Are we acting, reflecting, and consulting in real cycles, and contributing what we learn back to the commons?
Are our people growing as the enterprise grows?
Does each person’s capability, judgment, and scope of service expand through the work itself?
The Institute holds the knowledge. doáb, the cooperative, holds the practice. The value stays where it is created.
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