Olivia: Imagine you’re 55 years old. You’re the founder and CEO of a global behemoth you built from scratch—an organization that would become VISA. You're at the absolute pinnacle of success. And then, an inner voice, one you can no longer ignore, tells you to walk away. Not just from the company, but from the entire business world. To sever every connection and disappear. Jackson: That's not just retiring. That's a full-on vanishing act. It's the kind of decision that makes you question everything we're taught about ambition and success. And it’s the central mystery behind the book we're diving into today: One From Many by the founder of Visa, Dee Hock. This isn't just a business story; it's the story of a man who saw the modern corporation as a soul-crushing machine and decided to build something entirely different. Olivia: Exactly. His writing is almost poetic, and he thinks so deeply about organization. He asks these three huge questions that drove his entire life: Why are our institutions failing? Why are we so alienated from them? And why are society and the biosphere in such disarray? Jackson: Heavy questions. And his answer wasn't a simple fix; it was a complete reimagining of how people can work together. Olivia: And today, we're going to unpack his revolutionary ideas from three perspectives. First, we'll explore Dee Hock's 'Rebel's Dilemma' and why he felt the need to escape that corporate machine. Jackson: Then, we'll discuss the 'Birth of the Chaordic,' unpacking the radical, nature-inspired principles behind VISA's creation. Olivia: And finally, we'll focus on 'The Human Element,' looking at how leadership, spectacular failure, and trust were the true cornerstones of this incredible story.

Olivia: To understand why a man like Dee Hock would walk away from a multi-billion dollar empire, you have to understand what he was running from. And for him, the disillusionment started early in his career with a project that sounds almost comically mundane: putting up some signs. Jackson: This story is an all-time classic of corporate absurdity. It’s a perfect microcosm of everything he came to despise. Olivia: It really is. So, a young, still somewhat naive Dee Hock is working in the marketing division of a finance company. His boss, a man he describes as pompous and unctuous, gives him a critical assignment: visitors are getting confused about where the senior executives' offices are. Hock’s job is to fix it. Jackson: A 30-minute job, right? Call a sign company, get some nice brass plaques, install them. Done. Olivia: That’s what Hock thought. But his colleague, a brilliant, cynical man named Dick Simmons, stops him. He puts his hand over the phone and says, "That will never do. You've been assigned a project. Important projects always take time." Jackson: (Laughs) Oh, the wisdom of the disillusioned. Simmons had already figured out the game. Olivia: Completely. Simmons then orchestrates this masterpiece of bureaucratic theater. He tells Hock, "What you don't understand is that in companies like this, procedure is more important than purpose, and method more important than results." Over the next few weeks, Simmons guides Hock on a tour of eliciting conflicting opinions from every executive, gathering different sketches and samples, and ensuring no decision is ever made. He complicates it further by suggesting a magazine story about executive secretaries, which ignites a political firestorm over whose secretary gets included. Jackson: He’s weaponizing the organization's own dysfunction against itself. He’s not lying or misleading anyone; as Hock says, he "simply left murky minds unrated and petty minds free to fuss." He’s showing Hock that the system rewards the appearance of work, not the actual work itself. Olivia: Exactly. And Hock eventually synthesizes the lesson decades later: "In industrial age organizations, purpose slowly erodes into process. The doing of the doing is why nothing gets done." He saw this everywhere. He tells another story about visiting a major U.S. Army command and asking different groups how much time and energy was wasted on senseless rules. Jackson: And the answers are so telling. The young, idealistic non-commissioned officers said 45-85% of their time was wasted. The senior commissioned officers, the managers, said 20-40%. But the grizzled, veteran sergeant majors? They said only 5-20%. Olivia: Right. And when Hock questioned them, a sergeant major just laughed and said, "Hell, that’s easy. We been gittin’ around dumb rules all our lives, and we damned well ought to know how to do it without wastin’ time." Jackson: There it is. The two organizations. The official one, on paper, with all its rules and procedures. And the real one, the implicit one, where experienced people have figured out how to actually get things done in spite of the system. Hock realized that most of our institutions are designed to be fought against, not worked within. No wonder he wanted out.

Jackson: So if the old model is a rigid, top-down machine that prioritizes procedure over purpose, what's the alternative? This is where Hock's genius really shines. When the credit card industry was in a state of absolute chaos in the late 1960s—a 'house of cards,' as he called it, with hundreds of millions in fraud and losses—he didn't try to impose more control. He did the exact opposite. Olivia: He let go. He had this profound insight, inspired by his lifelong love of nature. He saw that nature is complex, diverse, and interconnected, but it’s self-organizing. As he put it, "There's no Blackbird principle pecking away at the rest of the flock. There's no teacher tree lining up the saplings and telling them how to grow." Jackson: So he coined a word for his new concept: "Chaordic." A portmanteau of chaos and order. It’s the idea of a system that can exist on the edge of chaos, with just enough structure to create order, but enough freedom to allow for spontaneous, adaptive change. Olivia: And the first real-world test of this was the launch of the BankAmericard program at his bank. It was a complete mess. They had no space, inadequate training from Bank of America, and only ten weeks to launch. So what did they do? They commandeered the bank auditorium, creating a chaotic, open-plan workspace they nicknamed "The Zoo." Jackson: I love this story. It’s the antithesis of the "Sign Project." When their high-tech printing machinery failed just two weeks before launch, threatening the entire project, they didn't form a committee. The manager, Bob Cummings, saw a push broom, and had an idea. They literally used broom handles as axles to manually feed the paper through the printer all night long. Olivia: And it gets better. They had over a hundred thousand mailers to proofread and stuff with cards in just a few days. The small staff couldn't do it. So they invited the bank's senior officers—the executive vice presidents in their suits—to come down to "The Zoo" and stuff envelopes alongside the clerical staff. It became this "upside-down party" that broke down all hierarchical barriers. Jackson: That’s the chaordic principle in action. You're not commanding people; you're creating an environment where everyone, from the janitor to the CEO, is united by a common purpose and empowered to contribute. Hock developed a simple theology for it: "Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rule and regulation." Olivia: He believed the organization's 'genetic code' shouldn't be a rigid rulebook, but a set of shared principles. Things like irrevocable rights of participation, distributive power, and a seamless blend of cooperation and competition. The idea was to create an organization that could evolve on its own, just like a rainforest. Jackson: Which is exactly what Visa became. It wasn't a single corporation in the traditional sense. It was a consortium, a network of members who were simultaneously its owners, customers, and competitors. The core of Visa didn't control them; it enabled them. It was a radical idea that flew in the face of every established business practice of the time.

Olivia: But building this 'chaordic' utopia wasn't a smooth, philosophical exercise. It was messy, emotional, and deeply human, which brings us to the final, and perhaps most important, piece of the puzzle: the power of principle and trust. Jackson: You can have the most brilliant organizational chart in the world, but if the human element is broken, it's all for nothing. Olivia: Precisely. And there's no better story to illustrate this than the one about the "Golden Cufflinks." By 1974, Hock was trying to unite all the international licensees into a single global organization, which would become Visa International. But the meeting was deadlocked. The Canadian delegation, in particular, was refusing to compromise. The entire effort was about to collapse. Jackson: A classic corporate standoff. This is usually where the lawyers take over and everything grinds to a halt for six months. Olivia: But Hock did something completely unexpected. He adjourned the meeting and invited everyone to a special dinner. At the dinner, he gave each committee member a pair of custom-made golden cufflinks. On them was a Latin inscription. He explained that after two years of struggle, he realized their success always came down to two things: the will to succeed and the grace to compromise. Jackson: And the Latin inscription? Olivia: "Studium ad prosperandum, voluntas in conveniendum." The will to succeed, the grace to compromise. He told them that if they couldn't find that spirit again, the effort was over. The next morning, every single member came to the meeting wearing the cufflinks, and they resolved every single issue. Jackson: That's incredible. It’s a lesson in leadership that has nothing to do with authority or power. It’s about appealing to a higher, shared purpose. This gets to his core belief that the first and paramount responsibility of a manager is to manage oneself—one's own integrity, character, and ethics. The cufflinks were a physical manifestation of that principle. Olivia: It also speaks to his belief in the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. But he was also brutally honest about his own failures. He talks about a massive software development project that went millions over budget and had to be canceled. He didn't blame the team or the vendor; he took full responsibility. He said it was a leadership failure because he hadn't been clear about the company's core purpose. Jackson: That's a rare quality. And it’s tied to his biggest regret, which was his fight against "duality"—the idea that banks could issue both Visa and MasterCard. He was convinced it would lead to a monopoly, killing competition and innovation. He fought the Department of Justice for years, even receiving death threats for his stance. Olivia: And in the end, he lost. The DOJ, as he put it, was "fat on data and information and starved for understanding and wisdom." They denied his request, and just as he predicted, the industry consolidated into the duopoly we see today. He writes, "To this day I wonder if the implied death threats affected my courage and judgment... I shall never know." Jackson: It's a powerful reminder that even the most visionary founders are human. They struggle, they have regrets, they fail. But Hock's ultimate success wasn't just building a company; it was in creating a new idea of organization—one that trusted people, embraced chaos, and was built on a foundation of deeply held principles.

Olivia: So we have this incredible journey: from a young rebel, a "bloodied sheep" as he called himself, rejecting the soul-crushing corporate machine... Jackson: ...to a visionary architect, building a revolutionary "chaordic" organization modeled on the principles of nature, not the factory floor... Olivia: ...and finally, a philosopher-leader who understood that the entire, sprawling, global enterprise was held together not by rules or contracts, but by intangible things like trust, shared purpose, and the grace to compromise. Jackson: His story leaves you with such a powerful question to reflect on. He forces you to look at your own organization, your own team, your own work, and ask: Are we building a machine or are we cultivating a garden? Are we operating in his version of heaven, with purpose, principle, and people? Or are we stuck in the hell of rule and regulation? Olivia: It’s a profound question. And as Dee Hock's story shows, the answer has world-changing, multi-billion-dollar consequences. It proves that sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is let go of control and trust in the chaos.