More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 1 - April 23, 2017
key overarching organizational processes such as strategy, marketing, sales, operations, budgeting, and controlling; the main human resources processes, including recruitment, training, evaluation, compensation; and critical practices of everyday life like meetings, information flow, and office spaces.
Abraham Maslow famously looked at how human needs evolve along the human journey, from basic physiological needs to self-actualization. Others looked at development through the lenses of worldviews (Gebser, among others), cognitive capacities (Piaget), values (Graves), moral development (Kohlberg, Gilligan), self-identity (Loevinger), spirituality (Fowler), leadership (Cook-Greuter, Kegan, Torbert), and so on.
A lottery at birth defines what caste you are born into. From there, everything is mapped out for you—how you are to behave, think, dress, eat, and marry is in accordance with your caste.
Social belonging is paramount in the Conformist-Amber paradigm. You are part of the group, or you are not—it is “us” versus “them.”
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.
Green is powerful as a paradigm for breaking down old structures, but often less effective at formulating practical alternatives.
In Orange Organizations, strategy and execution are king. In Green Organizations, the company culture is paramount.
If evolution were music, stages of development would be musical notes, vibrating at certain frequencies. Human beings would be like strings, capable of playing many different notes. The range of notes they can play depends on the range of tensions they have learned to accommodate.
That is the true genius of organizations: they can lift groups of people to punch above their weight, to achieve outcomes they could not have achieved on their own.
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.
It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two—to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged.23
Intuition is a muscle that can be trained, just like logical thinking: when we learn to pay attention to our intuitions, to honor them, to question them for the truth and guidance they might contain, more intuitive answers will surface.
In most organizations, especially of the Orange sort, job titles are a currency for status. Like all currencies, job titles are subject to the law of inflation. In many companies, they seem to swell and multiply—there are vice presidents, senior vice presidents, executive vice presidents, junior or senior directors, and ever more types of chief officers. It is a common expectation, in the Orange worldview, that people will work hard to achieve the next promotion and a bigger title.
(the beautiful German word “Herausforderung” literally means “being called to grow from the inside out”).
People are systematically considered to be good.
There is no performance without happiness.
The conflict resolution process (called “Direct Communication and Gaining Agreement”),
Organizations should be the same; structures need to appear and disappear based on the forces that are acting in the organization. When people are free to act, they’re able to sense those forces and act in ways that fit best with reality.68
the point is not to make everyone equal; it is to allow all employees to grow into the strongest, healthiest version of themselves.
Everybody needs to grow up and take full responsibility for their thoughts and actions—a steep learning curve for some people.
I’ve always appreciated the Karpman Drama Triangle model of Persecutor, Rescuer, Victim. We see it play out in organizations all the time, where people end up in this Drama Triangle pattern.
We must learn to discern and be mindful of the subtle ways our words and actions undermine safety and trust in a community of colleagues.
As a member of the RHD community, it is important to be able to do two things: a) Separate from our own need to be “right” in order to hear and respect others’ realities and perspectives: and, b) Differentiate between thoughts (what’s going on inside your head) and behaviors (what you do or say).79
At Buurtzorg, all nurses are trained in “Intervisie,” a peer-coaching technique that originated in the Netherlands.
Offering individual coaching at certain stages of people’s careers has become standard practice in many organizations today. Most often, it is reserved for senior leaders, stars on their way up, or underperformers on their way out. Not surprisingly, Teal Organizations expand coaching to all colleagues, whatever their role in the organization.
Many wisdom traditions affirm that when we act from deep integrity and align with what we feel called to do, the universe conspires to support us.
[A bad hire is] someone who is a chronic complainer, who is not happy, who blames others, who doesn’t take responsibility, who’s not honest, who doesn’t trust other people. A bad hire would be someone who needs specific direction and waits to be told what to do. A poor hire would be someone who wasn’t flexible and who says, “It’s not my job.”
When it comes to in-house training, most of the organizations in this research stopped using external trainers. Classes are presented by colleagues who are passionate about the subject, and who tailor material to the language and culture of the organization.
They shoot explicitly not for the best possible decision, but for a workable solution that can be implemented quickly. Based on new information, the decision can be revisited and improved at any point.
Wilber, the founder of Integral Theory, uncovered a profound truth about the nature of reality: any phenomenon has four facets and can be approached from four sides. To understand it well, we should both look at it objectively from the outside (the tangible, measurable, exterior dimension) and we should sense the phenomenon from the inside (the intangible interior dimension of thoughts, feelings, and sensations). We must also look at the event in isolation (the individual dimension) and look at the event in its broader context (the collective dimension). Only when we look at all four aspects
...more
SELF-MANAGEMENT Trust We relate to one another with an assumption of positive intent. Until we are proven wrong, trusting co-workers is our default means of engagement. Freedom and accountability are two sides of the same coin. Information and decision-making All business information is open to all. Every one of us is able to handle difficult and sensitive news. We believe in collective intelligence. Nobody is as smart as everybody. Therefore all decisions will be made with the advice process. Responsibility and accountability We each have full responsibility for the organization. If we sense
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Experience shows that efforts to bring Teal practices into subsets of organizations bear fruit, at best, only for a short while. If the CEO and the top leadership see the world through Amber or Orange lenses (Green’s tolerance allows for more hope), they will consider the Teal experiment frivolous, if not outright dangerous.
Creating a healthy version of the existing, dominant paradigm, like in this example, has a much higher chance of succeeding, and the example could easily spread from your unit to the entire organization.
joie-de-vivre.
Activity, he refers to the energy of action, the “what we do and how we do it.” Relationship refers to the energy brought to the interactions; what we say, how we say it, how we relate to each other. Context in turn is the energy of meaning and purpose, of connection with a larger whole.
Eckart Wintzen founded BSO/Origin, a software-consulting firm, in the Netherlands in 1973.
B-Corporation
“Boomeritis”—wanting
When people have little emotional investment in the organization and in its purpose, when employees consider work as a burden to be minimized, then don’t be surprised that given freedom, they take the freedom but not the responsibility.
If there is no clarity around the purpose of the organization, or if that purpose doesn’t feel inspiring, this area might need to be addressed before switching to self-management
How could colleagues feel emotionally invested in their work and their achievements towards a purpose?
If there is a common metric across teams, such as productivity at Buurtzorg, then simply publishing teams’ results on a monthly basis can do the trick.
People will follow you as a leader only when word gets around that you are somehow different, that you truly care, and that they can trust you even when you are about to do the craziest thing: to relinquish your own power.
Whereas self-management consists of interlocking practices (if you take the boss out, you need new processes, for example, to handle conflict, channel information, decide on roles and salaries), when it comes to wholeness you can introduce practices in the order and at the speed you feel best suits the organization.
You can also invite the whole organization jointly to reflect upon wholeness and together design concrete practices to incorporate wholeness into day-to-day work. There are many large group approaches (Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, Open Space, and others) that make it possible to do this with hundreds or even thousands of employees at the same time.
Liberating previously unavailable energies
Through purpose: Individual energies are boosted when people identify with a purpose greater than themselves.
Through distribution of power: Self-management creates enormous motivation and energy. We stop working for a boss and start working to meet our inner standards, whi...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Through learning: Self-management provides a strong incentive for continuous learning. And the definition of learning is broadened to include not only skills but the whole ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Through better use of talent: People are no longer forced to take management roles that might not fit their talents in order...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
