Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

by Frederic Laloux

(today in Western cultures, the Pluralistic/Postmodern stage makes up around 20 percent of the population, with 30 to 40 percent still Modern/Rational, 40 to 50 percent Mythic, and 10 percent Magic).

“a person who has ambition, but is not ambitious.”

as human beings, we are not problems waiting to be solved, but potential waiting to unfold.

Team members must appraise each other every year, based on competency models they can devise themselves.

Teams make yearly plans for initiatives they want to take in the areas of client care and quality, training, organization, and other issues.

Their motivation is to serve their clients well and, in the face of Chinese competition, to maintain and when possible increase the number of jobs the factory can provide.

Incidentally, at FAVI, sales orders are always discussed in terms of employment, not in monetary terms; so there is no “we got a $1 million order,” but rather “we got an order for 10 people’s work.”36

The organization that believes that mankind is good”).

Teal Organizations reverse the premise: people are not made to fit pre-defined jobs; their job emerges from a multitude of roles and responsibilities they pick up based on their interests, talents, and the needs of the organization.

ESBZ’s

Almost all organizations in this research use, in one form or another, a practice that AES called the “advice process.” It is very simple: in principle, any person in the organization can make any decision. But before doing so, that person must seek advice from all affected parties and people with expertise on the matter. The person is under no obligation to integrate every piece of advice; the point is not to achieve a watered-down compromise that accommodates everybody’s wishes. But advice must be sought and taken into serious consideration. The bigger the decision, the wider the net must

He stated that managers hold one of two sets of beliefs concerning employees: some think employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work whenever possible (Theory X); others think workers can be ambitious, self-motivated, and exercise self-control (Theory Y). Which set of assumptions is true?

People can debate this topic endlessly. McGregor had a key insight that has since been validated time and again: both are true. If you view people with mistrust (Theory X) and subject them to all sorts of controls, rules, and punishments, they will try to game the system, and you will feel your thinking is validated. Meet people with practices based on trust, and they will return your trust with responsible behavior. Again, you will feel your assumptions were validated. Expressed in terms of developmental psychology, if you create a strong Amber-Orange structure and culture, people will end up responding in Amber-Orange ways; create a strong enough Teal context and people are likely to behave accordingly.

Colleagues can make all business decisions, including buying expensive equipment on company funds, provided they have sought advice from the colleagues that will be affected or have expertise.

In a first phase, they sit together and try to sort it out privately. The

initiator has to make a clear request (not a judgment, not a demand), and the other person has to respond clearly to the request (with a “yes,” a “no,” or a counterproposal). If they can’t find a solution agreeable to both of them, they nominate a colleague they both trust to act as a mediator. The colleague supports the parties in finding agreement but cannot impose a resolution. If mediation fails, a panel of topic-relevant colleagues is convened. The panel’s role, again, is to listen and help shape agreement. It cannot force a decision, but usually carries enough moral weight for matters to come to a conclusion. In an ultimate step, Chris Rufer, the founder and president, might be called into the panel, to add to the panel’s moral weight.

Present proposal: The proposer states his proposal and the issue this proposal is attempting to resolve. Clarifying questions: Anybody can ask clarifying questions to seek information or understanding. This point is not yet the moment

for reactions, and the facilitator will interrupt any question that is cloaking a reaction to the proposal. Reaction round: Each person is given space to react to the proposal. Discussions and responses are not allowed at this stage. Amend and clarify: The proposer can clarify the intent of his proposal further or amend it based on the prior discussion. Objection round: The facilitator asks, “Do you see any reasons why adopting this proposal would cause harm or move us backwards?” Objections are stated and captured without discussion; the proposal is adopted if none surface. Integration: If an objection is raised, the facilitator leads an open discussion to craft an amended proposal that would avoid the objection while still addressing the proposer’s concern. If several

objections are raised, they get addressed in this way one at a time, ...

every few years, people are ready to put

creating emulation, a healthy form of peer pressure. When teams perform similar tasks—like the nursing teams at Buurtzorg or the automotive teams at FAVI—results are easy to compare. In

I have researched are employee-owned; the question of employee ownership doesn’t seem to matter very much when power is truly distributed.

In Teal Organizations, profits are a byproduct of a job well done. Philosopher Viktor Frankl perhaps captured it best: “Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.” This idea is another great paradox: by focusing on purpose rather than profits, profits tend to roll in more plentifully.

most fundamental question: what is our purpose? After much discussion, when the obvious but superficial ideas had been discarded, the answer emerged with clarity. FAVI has two reasons for existence, two fundamental purposes: the first is to provide meaningful work in the area of Hallencourt, a rural area in northern France where good work is rare; the second is to give and receive love from clients. Yes, love, a word rarely heard in the world of business, a word few would expect in a blue-collar manufacturing environment. At FAVI, it has taken on real meaning. Operators don’t just send products to their clients, they

They were excited by the beauty of the seemingly impossible: to shape pure copper. After two years of tinkering, they succeeded. And as they had imagined, a market came knocking at their door. Pure copper rotors have interesting properties in electrical motors, now an important business for FAVI.