Abstract
Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness” provides a thought-provoking way to understand an emerging form of organizing in the new society. Drawing insights from the work of developmental psychology, the author analyzes organizations from the evolutionary perspective and inquires into what future organizations would look like given the history of human development. The book is comprised of three chapters, the first of which sets the foundation for the discussion of the main findings of Evolutionary-Teal organizations in the following chapter. Specifically, Chapter 1 introduces different operational logics of organizations from the evolutionary lens, defining each stage with its own features and representative colors. Then, after addressing some misunderstandings of developmental stages in human evolution, it moves on to characterize the shift to the management paradigm of Evolutionary-Teal, which is letting go of one’s ego and following one’s authentic inner voice.
After researching organizations around the world in various sectors, the author found three major breakthroughs that penetrate Evolutionary-Teal organizations, distinguished from organizations operating within previous paradigms. Chapter 2 describes these three principles, namely (1) self-management, (2) wholeness, and (3) evolutionary purpose. First of all, self-management refers to an organizational structure where all people have the full capacity to be self-authored in what they do in the system. Unlike traditional organizations run by authoritative leaders who unilaterally command things to subordinates, mutual power is taken up by all organizational members regardless of their positions. Specific job titles no longer exist, and people find their unique areas of strength and potential contribution, and assign relevant responsibilities through dialogs in an organic manner. Their autonomous and participatory way of engaging in organizational life is not limited to role assignment, but encompasses a wide range of practices including personnel selection, promotion, compensation, conflict resolution, and decision making, just to name a few. Compared to a conventional view on the binary relationship between an individual and an organization, self-management enables the empowerment of individuals, through which the interdependence between the two, the self-actualization of the individual and the maintenance of the organization, is accomplished simultaneously.
Next, wholeness refers to bringing an authentic self to a professional organizational environment. Thinking about traditional organizations where politics and power dynamics prevail, it is natural for individuals to self-protect and become defensive in interacting with other organizational members. However, in self-managing organizations, people do not have to worry anymore about being counterattacked for expressing their own voices. Under the system of holacracy, they freely share their perspectives, go through processes of reaching a consensus, and take actions with great responsibility, instead of spending time and efforts inefficiently covering up their intentions, thoughts and feelings associated with a given issue. “Self-management goes a long way toward helping us show up more fully” (p. 144). By inviting one’s full self and focusing on what is true for oneself and the organization, extraordinary things start to happen with lived energy and unlimited potential.
Last but not least, evolutionary purpose refers to listening to and following the direction that an organization takes as a living organism. One of the biggest differences that Evolutionary-Teal organizations show in contrast to traditional organizations is the absence of competition. In an egocentric environment, people and organizational practices lean on external factors such as power, rules or structure, and effectiveness. Even culture serves as a means to invisibly control normal employes and secure the status of the management. Yet, people in Evolutionary-Teal organizations turn their attention from external to internal and begin to give themselves to the evolutionary growth of the organization. Their primary goal is not to perform better and generate more profits like before; however, they now seek a purpose, meaning, and calling of their being in a larger community and society. For them, “Profit is like the air we breathe. We need air to live, but we don’t live to breathe” (p. 197). Overcoming the fear of losing control and taking steps to the unknown with genuine courage and curiosity, Evolutionary-Teal organizations can be in the forefront of creativity and possibilities.
Then, how can organizations put these management principles into practice? Chapter 3 is devoted to discussing necessary conditions and ways in which transformation toward the Evolutionary-Teal paradigm can take place. The author asserts that the conviction of senior leadership and board members on Evolutionary-Teal is of most importance as they can provide a holding container where various experiments can be undertaken with employees’ psychological safety and deep trust among each other. With their strong support, since there is no one single absolute way to transform an organization, any of the three principles outlined above can be carefully considered and implemented. Most of all, self-management is suggested as a promising space for facilitating wholeness and evolutionary purpose by liberating organizational members, and the freedom coming from it eventually helps them do what they are called for collectively as well as become who they are individually.
Overall, this book serves as an insightful pathway to call for and explore the next paradigm of management where human flourishing lies at the center of leading and organizing. It allows readers to have a vivid picture of how Evolutionary-Teal organizations would look and be experienced. Yet, the lack of rationale for transitioning to and adopting their transformative practices seems to be an area of further clarification. In other words, in answering the question of how effective the author’s attempt was to sell Evolutionary-Teal, his initial approach to hastily conclude that organizations in previous management paradigms are filled with pathologies does not seem to be convincing enough for readers to fully appreciate the value of investing in the new organizational model and buy into it. Looking at other scholars bringing a developmental lens in organizational studies, for example, learning and growth are viewed as a crucial purpose of organizational development, and organizational transformation occurs either as an effort to support continuous individual learning or as a result of it expanding to second-person (relational) and third-person (organizational) dimensions (Fisher et al., 2003; Kegan and Lahey, 2016).
Although the compelling explanation of why current organizations need to pay more attention to Evolutionary-Teal is not sufficient, this book does a tremendous job of articulating its key principles that cut across multiple cases more than any other books. Thus, this book is highly recommended for organizational leaders or those who aspire to fundamentally improve and advance their organizations from the status quo to have an image of the desired state. I sincerely hope that this book will open up the readers’ boundaries and be the starting point of exciting journey with their organization.