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

by Frederic Laloux

This dividing line can be found throughout Amber Organizations—nurses versus doctors versus administrators,

Douglas McGregor developed in the 1960s when he was a professor at MIT. 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).

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.

fear breeds fear and trust breeds trust.

When someone senses that a new role must be created, or an existing role amended or discarded, he brings it up within his team56 in a governance meeting. Governance meetings are specific meetings where only questions related to roles and collaboration are to be discussed, separate from the rumble and tumble of getting work done. (Everything that has to do with getting business done is discussed in what are called “tactical meetings” with specific meeting practices.) Governance meetings are held regularly—generally every month—and any member of a team can request an extra meeting at any point in time. They follow a strict process to ensure that everybody’s voice is heard and that no one can dominate decision-making. A facilitator guides the proceeding. Anybody who feels a role needs to be created, amended, or discarded (called the proposer) can add it to the agenda.

Each such governance item is discussed in turn and brought to resolution with to the following process: 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, until all are removed.

when employees are empowered to make all the decisions they want, the urge to climb the ladder recedes.

On the company’s intranet is a file where colleagues can “rate” every role they currently fill, using a scale of -3 to +3: If they find the role energizing (+) or draining (-) If they find their talents aligned (+) or not (-) with this role If they find their current skills and knowledge conducive to (+) or limiting in (-) this role Using the same scale of -3 to +3, people can also signal their interest in roles currently filled by other people.

practice of team appraisal

CEO’s salary is capped to a maximum of 14 times the lowest salary in the organization.

[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.”

Delivering

We have so many free thinkers, gifted people who could have lived their whole lives without knowing they had the talents they’ve been forced to discover here.

Looking forward: What are you most excited about in this next year? What concerns you most? What changes, if any, would you suggest in your functions? What ongoing professional development will help you to grow in your current job and for your future? How can I be of most help to you and your work? Setting goals: When you think about your work in the year ahead,

when an organization truly lives for its purpose, there is no

go? At what speed? Are we being bold enough? Too bold? Is there something else that needs to be said or discussed? Heiligenfeld’s use of small hand cymbals in meetings essentially boils down to the same. Whenever a person makes the cymbals sing, people are asked to reflect on the question “Am I in service to the topic we’re discussing and to the organization?” Sounds True has built a variation of the empty chair method into a New Year’s ritual, where colleagues at the beginning of the year bless the office building for the year to come.111 At the end of the ritual, colleagues sit together in silence and listen in to what Sounds True, the