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

by Frederic Laloux

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.

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.

When growth and the bottom line are all that count, when the only successful life is the one that reaches the top, we are bound to experience a sense of emptiness in our lives.

Bringing about consensus among large groups of people is inherently difficult.

The shift to Evolutionary-Teal happens when we learn to disidentify from our own ego.

What replaces fear? A capacity to trust the abundance of life. All wisdom traditions posit the profound truth that there are two fundamental ways to live life: from fear and scarcity or from trust and abundance.

In Evolutionary-Teal, we cross the chasm and learn to decrease our need to control people and events. We come to believe that even if something unexpected happens or if we make mistakes, things will turn out all right, and when they don’t, life will have given us an opportunity to learn and grow.

The ultimate goal in life is not to be successful or loved, but to become the truest expression of ourselves, to live into authentic selfhood, to honor our birthright gifts and callings, and be of service to humanity and our world. In Teal, life is seen as a journey of personal and collective unfolding toward our true nature.

If we “go Teal,” then instead of setting goals for our life, dictating what direction it should take, we learn to let go and listen to the life that wants to be lived through us.

We can start to grasp the spiritual insight that there are no mistakes, simply experiences that point us to a deeper truth about ourselves and the world. In previous stages, life’s roadblocks (an illness, a bad boss, a difficult marriage) are seen as unfair rolls of the dice.

A team should not grow larger than 12 persons. Beyond that number, it should split.

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.

With the advice process, no one has power over anybody else. The process transcends the need for consensus by giving everyone affected a voice (the appropriate voice, not an equal voice), but not the power to block progress.

People are systematically considered to be good.

There is no performance without happiness.

Value is created on the shop floor.

(Shop floor operators craft the products; the CEO and staff at best serve to support them, at worst are costly distractions)

The temptation to not be ourselves and look good in the eyes of a boss is much diminished, as it is hard to constantly look good to a dozen colleagues. We just give up even trying to play that game.

The tasks of management—setting direction and objectives, planning, directing, controlling, and evaluating—haven’t disappeared. They are simply no longer concentrated in dedicated management roles.

how can everyone have equal power? It is rather: how can everyone be powerful?

So really, these organizations are anything but “flat,” a word often used for organizations with little or no hierarchy. On the contrary, they are alive and moving in all directions, allowing anyone to reach out for opportunities. How high you reach depends on your talents, your interests, your character, and the support you inspire from colleagues; it is no longer artificially constrained by the organization chart.

I realized these events are saying to people, “You get to be a whole person. This part of you, it may not fit to do it as part of your job every day. … But the fact that you can now juggle five balls is actually cool. And on a Friday afternoon, we want to sit back and have a glass of wine and watch you do this and acknowledge this part of you.” That is part of what I think makes people feel [that] the wholeness of who they are is actually welcome. Because we do welcome it, we want to see it.86

Several of the companies in this research start meetings with a round of check-in and finish with a round of check-out. At check-in, participants are invited to share how they feel in the moment, as they enter the meeting.

Step 1: Here is how I feel. Step 2: Here is what I need. Step 3: What do you need?

Employees have no recruitment targets to make, and they tend to be much more honest about their workplace. After all, they will have to live with the consequences if they oversell the company to their potential new teammate.

The initial Buurtzorg training also includes techniques for conflict resolution and Nonviolent Communication.

I’ve been a businessman for almost fifty years. It’s as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit to being an alcoholic or a lawyer. I’ve never respected the profession. It’s business that has to take the majority of the blame for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and poisoning the earth with the effluent from its factories. Yet business can produce food, cure disease, control population, employ people, and generally enrich our lives. And it can do these good things and make a profit without losing its soul.

“You visualize yourself going into the center of the Earth to tap into fresh waters and bring them to the surface. It’s weird; totally new ideas just emerge. The visualization calms down the chatty mind and creates the space for vision to come forward.”

Companies like FAVI or Morning Star that put together budgets have found that there is no value in tracking differences between forecast and reality; they don’t waste energy doing it.

“In the new way of thinking, we aim to make money without knowing how we do it, as opposed to the old way of losing money knowing exactly how we lose it.”

Does the organization’s purpose resonate with me? Is this a place I feel called to work? What do I really feel called to do at this moment in my life? Will this place allow me to express my selfhood? Will it help me grow and develop?

Here are some questions that can be weaved into the recruitment discussions: What is your sense of your life trajectory? How could working here fit with what you sense you are called to be and to do in the world? What aspect of the organizational purpose resonates with you? What unique talents and gifts could you contribute to the organization’s journey?

As we’ve distributed accountability down and throughout the organization, I’ve had much less of my attention on the culture. In an operating system that’s dysfunctional, you need to focus on things like values in order to make that somewhat tolerable, but if we’re all willing to pay attention to the higher purpose, and do what we do and do it well, the culture just emerges. You don’t have to force it.

“Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”).