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

by Frederic Laloux

Archaic, Magic (Tribal), Mythic (Traditional), Rational (Modern), Pluralistic (Postmodern), and Integral (Post-postmodern).

a majority of the really nasty cultural problems faced by humanity are the result of the Mythic-literal structure—from ethnocentric “chosen peoples,” to female oppression, to slavery, to most warfare, to environmental destruction.

And thus, as much as the Postmodern/Pluralistic stage wanted to see itself as being “all-inclusive,” it still essentially abhorred Rational and Mythic values; but the Integral stage actually did include them, or embrace them, or make room for them in its overall worldview. It was the emergence, for the first time in history, of a truly inclusive and non-marginalizing level of human consciousness. And

There are five basic dimensions in this Framework—quadrants, levels of development, lines of development, states of consciousness, and types.

Cognition, for example, moves from sensorimotor intelligence, to images, then symbols, then concepts, then schema, then rules, then meta-rules, then systemic networks.

But the absence of dominator hierarchy is not the same thing as the absence of any hierarchy.

actualization hierarchies can flourish when dominator hierarchies are removed.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

We can’t quite understand how people in the Middle Ages believed Aristotle’s claim that women had fewer teeth than men. And yet, it seems we can be prisoners of our thoughts just as much as they were.

could it be that our current worldview limits the way we think about organizations?

sounds plausible

None of the recent advances in human history would have been possible without organizations as vehicles for human collaboration.

Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers simply go through the motions. We have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions that dispossess doctors and nurses of their capacity to care from the heart.

An increasing number of us yearn to create soulful organizations, if only we knew how.

How can we have meetings that are productive and uplifting, where we speak from our hearts and not from our egos? How can we make purpose central to everything we do, and avoid the cynicism that lofty-sounding mission statements often inspire? What we need is not merely some grand vision of a new type of organization. We need concrete answers to dozens of practical questions like these.

come. It is probably no exaggeration, but sad reality, that the very survival of many species, ecosystems, and perhaps the human race itself hinges on our ability to move to higher forms of consciousness and from there collaborate in new ways to heal our relationship with the world and the damage we’ve caused.

every time humanity has shifted to a new stage, it has invented a new way to collaborate, a new organizational model.

This next stage involves taming our ego and searching for more authentic, more wholesome ways of being.

What do organizations molded around the next stage of consciousness look and feel like? Is it already possible to describe their structures, practices, processes, and cultures (in other words, to conceptualize the organizational model) in useful detail, to help other people set up similar organizations?

perhaps we are now finally ready to see them for what they are: not merely as friendly but awkward outliers, but as pioneers of our collective future.

how did this recognition typically happen in the past

Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.

throughout history, the types of organizations we have invented were tied to the prevailing worldview and consciousness.

Fahrenheit and Celsius recognize—with different labels—that there is a point at which water freezes and another where it boils.

While Red Organizations can be extremely powerful (especially in hostile environments where later stages of organizations tend to break down), they are inherently fragile, due to the impulsive nature of people’s way of operating (I want it so I take it).

Present-centeredness makes Red Organizations poor at planning and strategizing but highly reactive to new threats and opportunities that they can pursue ruthlessly. They are therefore well adapted to chaotic environments (in civil wars or in failed states) but are ill-suited to achieve complex outcomes in stable environments where planning and strategizing are possible.

the relationship to the environment and the resulting shape of the organization is interesting

Authority to define what is right and wrong is now linked to a role, rather than to a powerful personality (as was the case in Red); it’s the priest’s robe, whoever wears it, that defines authority.

Any major change of perspective, like the change from Red to Amber, is both liberating and frightening.

To feel safe in a world of causality, linear time, and awareness of other people’s perspectives, the Amber ego seeks for order, stability, and predictability. It seeks to create control through institutions and bureaucracie...

At the individual level, people operating from a Conformist-Amber paradigm strive for order and predictability; change is viewed with suspicion.

Planning and execution are strictly separated: the thinking happens at the top, the doing at the bottom.

Red Organizations are wolf packs. In Amber, the metaphor changes: a good organization should be run like an army.

People operating from this stage identify with their roles, with their particular place in the organization.

Amber Organizations have invented and generalized the use of titles, ranks, and uniforms to bolster role identification.

Social stability comes at the price of wearing a mask, of learning to distance ourselves from our unique nature, from our personal desires, needs, and feelings; instead, we embrace a socially acceptable self.

holy fuck!!!!

Social belonging is paramount in the Conformist-Amber paradigm.

ah here's an opportunity for a shared identity no?

To deflect internal strife within a group, problems and mistakes are routinely blamed on others.

The possibility of dismissal therefore carries a double threat: employees risk losing both the identity the work gives them as well as the social fabric they are embedded in.

For those who feel unfulfilled in Amber Organizations and decide to leave, it is often a painful process—akin to shedding an old life and having to reinvent a new one.

Effectiveness replaces morals as a yardstick for decision-making: the better I understand the way the world operates, the more I can achieve; the best decision is the one that begets the highest outcome.

With this cognitive capacity one can question authority, group norms, and the inherited status quo.

Unencumbered by deep soulful questions, our ego reaches the peak of its dominance at this stage as we invest it with all our hopes of achievement and success. In this material world, more is generally considered better. We live our lives on the assumption that achieving the next goal (getting the next promotion, finding a life partner, moving to a new house, or buying a new car) will make us happy. In Orange, we effectively live in the future, consumed by mental chatter about the things we need to do so as to reach the goals we have set for ourselves. We hardly ever make it back to the present moment, where we can appreciate the gifts and freedom the shift to Orange has brought us.

Achievement-Orange Organizations ratcheted this up another level, achieving results on entirely new orders of magnitude, thanks to three additional breakthroughs: innovation, accountability, and meritocracy.

Amber Organizations are entirely process driven; Orange Organizations are process andproject driven.

Experience shows that unfortunately, Orange Organizations don’t always deliver on the promise of management by objective. The fears of the ego often undermine good intentions.

Take the notion that decisions need to be pushed down to foster innovation and motivation: this makes perfect sense for leaders operating from Achievement-Orange. But in practice, leaders’ fear to give up control trumps their ability to trust, and they keep making decisions high up that would be better left in the hands of people lower in the hierarchy.

Achievement-Orange thinks of organizations as machines, a heritage from reductionist science and the industrial age.

As with any new paradigm, the more light it shines, the more shadow it can cast. One of Orange’s shadows is “innovation gone mad.” With most of our basic needs taken care of, businesses increasingly try to create needs, feeding the illusion that more stuff we don’t really need—more possessions, the latest fashion, a more youthful body—will make us happy and whole. We increasingly come to see that much of this economy based on fabricated needs is unsustainable from a financial and ecological perspective. We have reached a stage where we often pursue growth for growth’s sake, a condition that in medical terminology would simply be called cancer.

Green leaders should not merely be dispassionate problem solvers (like in Orange); they should be servant leaders, listening to their subordinates, empowering them, motivating them, developing them.

In some innovative companies, managers are not appointed from above, but from below: subordinates choose their boss, after interviewing prospective candidates.16 The practice naturally induces managers to act as servant leaders.

Some people have become disillusioned with and scoff at the notion of shared values. This is because Orange Organizations increasingly feel obliged to follow the fad: they define a set of values, post them on office walls and the company web site, and then ignore them whenever that is more convenient for the bottom line.

The focus on culture elevates human resources (HR) to a central role. The HR director is often an influential member of the executive team and a counselor to the CEO.