Comments on: A critique of the ‘subtle hierarchism’ of the Teal Organizations concept in the book ‘Reinventing Organizations’

By: J Garwood

J Garwood — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 22:28:44 +0000

I think it is really nice that Jon Freeman defends the book in the same way in different places. I’ve been taught a bit about the model, but not read the book. The model without the dodgy science is quite interesting – but I know enough evolutionary psychology to know where I stand. Gore has been great, flat, organization for years. I think we can learn a good deal from that…

By: Alice

Alice — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 03:38:02 +0000

You may find a 1 page synthesis of the ‘Teal’ concept in French here: https://organisationsopale.wordpress.com/

By: François Dupuy

François Dupuy — Sun, 07 Aug 2016 10:39:15 +0000

As a sociologist, my most important concern is that Laloux seems to deeply ignore the knowledge that has been build by organizational sociology. This book is neglecting Herbert Simon and the notion of “bounded rationality” as well as the concept of “strategy” as has been developed by Crozier and Friedberg in “Actors and systems”. To make it short it’s strange to write a book on organizations without knowing anything about the most important inputs of the best specialists in this field.

François Dupuy

By: Jon Freeman

Jon Freeman — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 09:58:54 +0000

This is not a well-informed critique, nor is it an objective one. Mr Hassan has his own competing schema. He has not troubled to understand the developmental model – the Graves Schema that was incorporated into integral and morphed into Spiral Dynamics. As a result he doesn’t understand the evidence base that Graves compiled over decades before he produced the theory. He doesn’t understand how the stages of existence function in human psychology – hence the ludicrous idea that someone “chooses” between Ben and Jerry’s and the mafia. He seems to be unaware that Frederic Laloux has deliberately and necessarily simplified the presentation of the schema in order to write his book. He doesn’t understand at all the redefinition and re-articulation of hierarchy that is required (and which will vary from one organisation to the next). Because he doesn’t understand the theory (or chooses not to) he misconceives the nature of transcend and include.

I also dispute the suggestions in Benjamin Taylor’s comment that anyone working in this area would not expect that learning approaches are essential. And the management of complexity is quite the opposite of what he seems to have taken it to be. Self-organisation seems simpler because it is less effortful. The very reason why Teal thinking is arising at this time is that our life conditions demand that we raise our game. The new level of consciousness is not some kind of new age fluff (though admittedly some people in that arena present it in that way). It is a concrete and pragmatic response to a world in which change happens faster, with more interactivity and interdependency. The responsiveness (whether societal or organisational) requires intelligence to be applied responsively and interactively, not determined by linear thinking at the pace of command and control hierarchies. Self-organising systems are, ultimately, a requirement for our adaptation to the new conditions of existence. Yes, it will be a challenge to transition the traditional hierarchical organisations. Those of us who practice in these areas know that. Not all organisations will need to change. Some will be OK as they are. But those that do need to change will need the new toolkits that are more completely presented in the Spiral Dynamics model than in Laloux’s book. Laloux has addressed a specific task, and done it well.

Hassan treats Teal as if it is something imposed. It is the reverse. It is an emergent property of complexity in socio-psychological evolution. You could not run cities with the red system, so it was necessary that Amber would emerge. You cannot run a planet from Orange and Green, as is being demonstrated in our many known global problems. Whether through Laloux’s model or not, these issues have to be addressed. A new paradigm is not optional.

By: @antlerboy - Benjamin Taylor

@antlerboy - Benjamin Taylor — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 23:52:04 +0000

Thanks for a thoughtful and well-informed critique.

I also have concerns about the levels of development argument, although I think that this kind of thinking can be a useful tool for personal self-development. I’ve played around with both Jacques’ levels of work (which I seem to recall he drew from someone else – must look it up!) and Torbert’s developmental levels, and when I asked a vaguely Jacquesian question about individual capabilities in ‘teal’ systems, I got the really interesting answer that ‘life seems to get somewhat simpler in teal organisations’ and doesn’t necessarily demand the long-term complexity thinking which these models of ‘vertical development’ talk about.

You are right that the book deals (once, as Matthew Taylor slightly rudely stated at the start of the RSA video, you’ve skipped the first ?3 chapters) in prescriptions. My two concerns are:
1- that people are being encouraged to ‘implement’ ‘answers’; not a fundamentally learning-based mode. In social complexity and the conditions which are usually postulated as the conditions which call forth ‘new ways for the future’ (always a rhetorical move, if not actually propaganda), it’s my belief that a learning approach is fundamentally required.
2- that the very lack of hierarchy is likely to lead to a situation where (with considerable rule-sets and overheads constituting the control system) issues at different levels of complexity and long-term thinking will all be dealt with at the same level. In short, is the system capable of managing not just its operations but also the emergent properties and results of the system?

Note that Frederick is a cheerful and thoughtful chap who it’s impossible not to warm to – even though, like all of use, he has his own chips on his shoulder – and cheerfully acknowledged at an event I was at that his choice to focus on ‘reinventing’ (new) organisations is the easier task. The harder path is to help those billions in traditional hierarchical organisations that are not functioning well to find evolutionary ways to enable the nice things set out in the case studies.

He did also recognise and return several times to the issue of determination of form and outcomes by both the leaders and the owners of the system. You have covered this in some depth in the article.

BTW, I’d dispute that ‘transcend and include’ is completely incompatible with ‘incommensurable’, though I admit that such understanding I have of Kuhn comes from Alasdair Macintyre) – surely the point is that a paradigm survives while it adequately predicts interactions with the world. And when that model breaks down, the new paradigm must explain not only what the old paradigm failed to predict, but also why it failed, AND adequately explain everything that the old paradigm predicted?