The Soulful Workplace

By Gail and Richard West

We have been studying Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux and discussing how its ideas relate to ICA Taiwan where we work. What kind of organization are we? What kind do we intend to be? The following article is a brief from the ICA Taiwan newsletter TRENDS.

Laloux uses a colour scheme based on Integral Theory to describe the historical development of human organizations: Red > Orange > Green > Teal (a dark greenish-blue). He lists three characteristics of “teal organizations” which he feels are breakthroughs in development:

• Self-management: it runs on peer relationships. Any person, in any team, can make any decision for the company in consultation with others who would be affected.

• Wholeness: It involves the whole person at work. The point is not to make all employees equal but to allow them to grow into the strongest, healthiest version of themselves.

• Evolutionary purpose: The organization is allowed to adapt and grow rather than be driven. Anyone can lead. No one dictates. You get to choose your cause. You don’t have to put up with bullies and tyrants. Excellence usually wins. Great contributions get recognized and celebrated.

Laloux is concerned with the changes in consciousness, culture, and social systems that are emerging. In a foreword to the book, Ken Wilber highlights its focus on the values, practices and structures of organizations, large and small, that seem to be driven by this transformation that is occurring around the world.

The advances in human history would not have been possible without organizations as vehicles for collaboration. But the way they are run leaves us disillusioned. For those at the bottom of the pyramid, work is often dread and drudgery, not passion or purpose. That Dilbert cartoons have become cultural icons says much about how organizations make work miserable and pointless. Life at the top isn’t much more fulfilling either. The frantic activity of corporate leaders is often a cover up for a sense of emptiness. Power games, politics and infighting take their toll on everybody.

Surveys show that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. In the US an epidemic of organizational disillusionment has led to teachers, doctors and nurses leaving their professions in record numbers. Government agencies and nonprofits have a noble purpose but working for them often feels soulless and lifeless. All these organizations suffer from power games at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, infighting and bureaucracy, endless meetings and a never-ending succession of changes and cost-cutting programmes.

We long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion and purpose. An enlightened management is not enough. In most cases, the system beats the individual. When managers and leaders go through an inner transformation, they often leave because they no longer want to put up with a place inhospitable to their deeper longings.

Teal organisations, on the other hand, have enlightened structures and practices. Despite their selfmanaging nature, their leaders still play an important role, says Laloux. Even if the management team or the CEO are no longer the sole source of decision making, they help create and maintain a “space of development” and role-model the new culture and practices, he says. In the words of Otto Scharmer (author of Theory U): “The quality of results produced by any system depends on the quality of awareness from which people in the system operate”. Laloux shows this is also valid for organizations operating at “Teal Consciousness.”

According to him, every time humanity shifts to a new stage of consciousness, it invents a new way of structuring and running organizations, and brings in breakthroughs in collaboration. A shift in consciousness is now under way. Could it help us invent a more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals?

The organizations that Laloux cites in this book have already “cracked the code.” Their founders have questioned every aspect of management and come up with new organizational methods. Though they operate in very different industries and geographies and were not aware of each other’s experiments, there is a similarity about the structures and practices they have developed. A new organizational model seems to be emerging and it promises a soulful revolution in the workplace.

“Reinventing Organizations” describes in practical detail how organizations, large and small, can operate in this new paradigm. In terms of structure, this involves self-organized teams, no executive team meetings, radically simplified project management, most staff functions performed by team members themselves, interviews of job candidates focused on “fit” with values and purpose, significant training in relational skills and company culture, personal freedom with authority as well as responsibility, no job titles, individual purpose being compatible with organizational purpose, candid discussion of work/life issues and commitments, focus on team performance, self-set compensation with peer calibration of base pay, no promotions but fluid rearrangement of duties and responsibilities, and dismissal only as the very last step in mediated conflict resolution. Leaders, founders, coaches and consultants will find Laloux’s work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples and inspiring stories.

Gail and Richard West are director and executive director, respectively, of ICA Taiwan. If you would like a copy of their chart and notes on the book, please email icamail@icatw.com