Presented for the first time in book form, the source principles breathe energy, clarity and creativity into the development of every project. The source person is someone who gets an idea and then takes initiatives and risks to realize it. The source person's main task is clarifying what the next step in the development of the project should be. When she needs support, she invites other people to participate; they in turn become source of specific parts of the project. This is the way all our collectives are born. In life, people take on several source roles: the manager is invited to become the source of a team, the employee to be the source of her tasks, the musician to be the source of his performance, the sportswoman to be the source of her good condition. Wherever there's a project, there's a source. The source principles shine a light on the way we engage with our own initiatives. The clarity they offer boosts our dedication and our capacity to encourage those around us to embark on their own source itinerary. Source principles invite us to live out a more inspired management style, they stimulate our creative involvement, and they give new meaning to our professional and personal alliances.

The author, Stefan Merckelbach, is a self-designated philosopher-manager and source of the Ordinata company in Switzerland. Peter John Koenig is the father of the source principles set forth here and has written the afterword. Vincent Delfosse is corporate life biologist at Ordinata and source of the photography. Chapter 2
The source person's work

UNDERSTANDING what the words mean is an indispensable first step, but the real challenge is putting them into effect. All the more so for the source person, whose role is explicitly defined by taking an initiative that chiefly consists of setting actions in motion. Instead of standing paralysed in the face of her idea, the source person gets things going to make her initiative happen. She has something to accomplish-the ancient Greeks called this task an ergon, meaning an item of work, an action, a doing that flows into an output. It's like a work of art by a poet or painter. For a source person, her ergon is both an implementation path (the work) and the work's result (the output). But the source person's work is more complex than a simple fabrication. Unlike mechanically following an instruction manual or putting an Ikea bed together, it requires setting a course, making adjustments according to the ups and downs of the experience, and continually aligning the implementation with the chosen course. As a result, the source person's action is both very strong and very fragile. A formidable surge propels the source person to undertake, develop and complete her initiative, but the undertaking is also very delicate. It is constantly susceptible to being buffeted by unpredictable and unmanageable circumstances, and to being influenced by her own imperfections as a source person. To move her initiative forward, she learns not only to explore the power of her actions, but also to grapple with their inherent weaknesses, and to address her own shortcomings.

So what exactly does this work, this ergon, consist of? The source person's three main tasks correlate with her three main roles:

1. To actualize the intuitions (ideas, vision) she receives, the source person initiates actions and undertakes risks. This is the role of source as entrepreneur.

2. The source person launches her initiative into the future-an arc that continues throughout its evolution. She does this by constantly clarifying, and then communicating, the next steps to be taken. This is the source's role as guide.

3. The source person ensures that the project's framework-its values and vision-is respected. This is the source's role as guardian.

Let's look at these three roles, and their corresponding tasks, a little more closely.

1. The source person as entrepreneur. As explained in the previous chapter, the source person is someone who takes an initiative based on an idea. Peter Koenig notes that throughout the life of an initiative, the source person continues to receive ideas, insights, inspirations, and the energy to make them happen. We may now add the dimension of risk-taking, which inevitably accompanies the initiative-itself more or less a dive into the unknown. At every source person's core there lies a bold "fool", whose faith in her initiative can overflow the limits of what's reasonable. She seems to cloak herself with a certain naiveté, or as Mark Twain might have put it, she didn't know it was impossible, that's why she did it! Taking risks is crucial to her role as an entrepreneur: if she can't take risks, she becomes an obstacle and handicaps her initiative.

Looking back over my twenty years as the source of Ordinata, it appears that risk, or lack of it, has correlated with periods of development and stagnation. Initiatives taken during the company's development phases have been accompanied or even triggered by taking risks, while periods of stagnation have all been characterized by not doing so. Realizing this in hindsight has been a great help in resuming the risk taking when needed. Having lived through the interconnections between initiative, risk and development, I can say that a company's greatest risk is... to stop taking risks. Lack

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