Last week Maddie and I had our first public conversation about the Humanize book at the ASAE Annual Meeting in St. Louis. We did an unofficial session in their “flash learning lounge” with about 15 people during the last time slot at the conference. It was really fun, I must say, to be talking about it. We laughed at the fact that while we were writing the book (which focuses on things like openness and transparency) we weren’t really allowed to talk about it. So it’s energizing to engage people on these topics that have been in our heads for six to nine months.

Prior to the session, I asked blog readers to vote for which of the four human elements (open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous) would be the focus of the discussion. Trustworthy won the voting, but towards the end of the conversation, someone asked to hear more about Generative. I will say, in my informal conversations, that’s the one people ask the most about, because the word just isn’t as universally understood as open, trustworthy, and courageous.

Generative means to be capable of producing or creating. As a species, human beings are generative in that we are biologically wired to reproduce and propagate. But beyond the biology, human beings are generative in that we are called to create things, to develop, to grow. It’s not a one-time thing. Being generative is an ongoing spiral of growth, change, and creation. It’s a part of being human.

It has also been integral to social media. One of the principles behind the growth of social media has been the notion that what you are creating today will likely morph into something else down the road. Twitter started as a platform for sending text messages within an organization but grew into much more than that. Social media is generative, growing and changing constantly.

But organizations…not so much. We tend to seek stability, to be the same as we were the year before. We like consistency and predictability. Change is hard, right? This is a problem in today’s economy, and that’s why Maddie and I argue that human organizations need to be generative. They have cultures that value inclusion because diversity is prerequisite for creativity, innovation, and change. They ensure their processes support collaboration because that is the engine that drives creation. And at the behavior level, they support relationship building, both interpersonally and in networks. The book, obviously, will have more on how to do all that.