“We must begin to think in a fundamentally different way about how our civil justice system can work. We must be open to re-examining conventional attitudes and assumptions and, possibly, to reshaping the fundamental elements of the system.”

This paragraph is found in a green paper report prepared by the BC Justice Review Task Force entitled The Foundations of Civil Justice Reform.[1] The purpose of this green paper is to kick start a dialogue on civil justice reform in British Columbia. It is interesting to note how the report is looking for a “new way” for the civil justice system “to work”

The old way of doing civil justice is adversarial. Conflicts are resolved through a winner take all approach. This old way is creating huge problems in administering justice. The system is simply grinding to a halt. Instead of justice for all, it is no justice at all.

So reform is called for. Yet, the paper notes, reform has been made secondary to or marginalized by the dominant justice model of adversarial relations. So the paper states:

“Too often our efforts at reform do not go far enough. They are limited to tinkering with existing formats or making minor modifications to long established procedures. Reform at this juncture must involve more than tinkering. We need to re-examine the paradigms informing our justice system and deal with them at the culture level.”

This is exactly what I am calling for in the New Way to Work. It is a way of working that is informed by a new paradigm for work, a paradigm that places work in a different setting than our society and the dominant culture sees work.

The justice reform paper frames this discussion with a quote from a symposium on Trial Courts of the Future: “As one panelist so aptly suggested, imagine there is no existing court structure and that one must be developed. What would that system be like without the constraints of protecting any existing positions?”

These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking not only of our justice system, but of our entire economic system. What would that system look like if the existing constraints were removed? What would work look like if it was informed and driven by a different agenda than the one that currently drives our work?

This is my challenge in marketplace mission. To imagine a new way to work and then to embody it in the way I work and in the way my company works.

Is anybody else thinking about this?  If so, please let me know. I'd like to hear about what others are doing to work differently.