A quick introduction to the Teal Organizations concept... to start thinking about how we can create more sustainable organizations https://medium.com/sustainability-school-blog Presented at Empowering Sustainability on Earth Conference 2016 http://empowering-sustainability.weebly.com/

1. Teal Organizations:
Reinventing organizations to promote sustainability
Karla Córdoba Brenes
karla@sustainability.school

2. Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

3. From the Introduction
Most books on organizations are written for people hoping to find the
secret key to gaining market share, beating competition and increasing
profits. They offer advice on how to better play the game of success
within the current management paradigm.
"Reinventing Organizations" comes from a different place. It is written
for people (founders of organizations, leaders, coaches, and advisors)
who sense that something is broken in the way we run organizations
today and who feel deeply that more must be possible… but wonder
how to do it.

4. Yet, how come that year after year survey results show that organisations around the
world come up short? Employees continue to feel unappreciated, demotivated,
disengaged – and 4 out 5 blame old-fashioned management styles…

5. Developed in the Industrial Revolution
How we think about organisations shapes our view of employees and determines
the way we structure and operate. Problem is, the current mind-set was …

6. Large masses of uneducated labour where
required to perform repetitive tasks to do
things like build large ships, railroads etc.
It required a particular kind of worker –
creativity and initiative
were NOT desired!

7. Implicit assumptions
• Employees are not capable of understanding
important matters that affect the economic
performance of the company – therefore we don’t
involve employees in decision making and don’t share
company information with them. Because they are
not capable to see the “bigger picture”, they need
central planning, budgeting and controlling functions
– even though practices of large scale central
planning have been thoroughly discredited.
• Employees do not want to be responsible for their
actions or for decisions that affect the performance of
the organization, therefore we install parent-like
bosses to tell them what to do and make these
decisions for them.
Worse, this mind-set implies some harsh views on the
employees. The very structures, processes and controls
we apply in organisations indicate that we belief that
• Employees and Workers are lazy and must be
watched closely -hence we use timesheets, clocking
in tools, and ban access to non-business sites on their
computers.
• Money motivates. Employees will do what it takes to
make as much money as possible, so we use
monetary rewards such as bonuses – despite
evidence that it invite adverse behaviours.
• Employees put their own interest ahead of what is
best for the organization, so they cannot be trusted.
That is why we limit the information we allow them to
see.

8. Is there an
alternative?

9. “Organizations as we know them today are
nothing more than the reflection of our
worldview and our level of development as
a society.”
- Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations

10. “Organizations cannot evolve far
beyond the level of evolution of their
leaders”
- Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations

11. Magic / Tribal
Traditional / Agrarian
Scientific / Industrial
Post-modern
/Information
…
*Ken Wilber, a philosopher of human consciousness, refers to these stages using colors

12. Magic / Tribal
Started emerging around
10,000 years ago
The world is dangerous.
The way to safety is power.

13. Red Organizations
Street gangs
Mafias
Mercenaries
Command authority
Key breakthroughs
1
Division of tasks2

14. Magic / Tribal
Started emerging
around 5,000 years ago
The world is governed by
immutable laws.
Traditional / Agrarian

15. Amber Organizations
Catholic Church
Army
Government agencies
Public school systems
Formal hierarchy
Key breakthroughs
1
Replicable processes2

16. Magic / Tribal
Started emerging around 500
years ago
The world is a complex
clockwork. The better we
understand it, the more profit
we can reap
Traditional / Agrarian
Scientific / Industrial

17. Orange Organizations
Global corporates
Wall street
Innovation
Key breakthroughs
1
Accountability2
Meritocracy3

18. Magic / Tribal
Started emerging around
50 years ago
The world is made of
relationships.
Traditional / Agrarian
Post-modern
/Information

19. Green Organizations
Culture-driven
organizations
(Southwest Airlines,
Zappos.com,
Ben&Jerry’s…)
Values-driven culture
Key breakthroughs
1
Empowerment2
Stakeholder model3

20. A framework is a useful simplification.
But no organization is 100% “Orange” or “Green.”

21. Magic / Tribal
Traditional / Agrarian
What’s next?

22. Magic / Tribal
Currently emerging.
The world is a place for
personal and collective
unfolding.
Traditional / Agrarian
…

23. Teal Organizations
A few extraordinary
pioneers in many
different industries
Self-management
Key breakthroughs
1
Wholeness2
Evolutionary purpose3

24. Self-Management
• Teal organizations have found the key to upgrading their structures
from hierarchical, bureaucratic pyramids to powerful and fluid
systems of distributed authority and collective intelligence

25. Wholeness
Organizations have always been places that encourage people to show
up with a narrow “professional” self and to set aside other parts of the
self at the door. Rationality rules as king, while the emotional,
intuitive, and spiritual parts of ourselves often feel unwelcome, out of
place. Teal Organizations have developed a consistent set of practices
that invite us to reclaim our inner wholeness and bring all of who we
are to work.

26. Evolutionary purpose
Teal organizations are seen as having a life and a sense of direction of
their own. Instead of trying to predict and control the future (with
thousands of Gantt diagrams, projections and operative annual plans),
members of the organization are invited to listen in and understand
what the organization wants to become, what purpose it wants to
serve.
It is a process of constant discovery
and observation of the environment
and how the organization interacts
with that environment.

27. “This is the first major breakthrought of Teal
Organizations: transcending the age-old problem of
power inequality through structures and practices
where no one holds power over anyone else, and yet,
paradoxically, the organization as a whole ends up
being considerably more powerful.”
- Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations

28. A new metaphor:
organizations as living
systems
Imagine what organizations would be
like if we stopped designing them like
soulless machines.
What could organizations achieve, and
what would work feel like, if we treated
them like living beings, if we let them
be fueled by the evolutionary power of
life itself?

29. Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

30. “Our planet is experiencing a transitional moment in
many areas: financial, environmental and social. And
this is equally true for organizations. The notion of
Teal Organizations is not something new, it has been
here for decades. Organizations that are currently
leading our world are becoming obsolete. It’s time to
reinvent them!”
- Karla
https://medium.com/sustainability-school-blog