Frederic LalouxReseñas
Autor de Reinventing Organizations
Reseñas
Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating… por Frederic Laloux
Overall the book reaches a bit too far and does not offer enough long term evidence for the organisations it sees changing and like many ideas what it proposes will likely not work with all businesses. Nevertheless worth taking into account and inspiration.
Bei Laloux' "Reinventing Organizations" habe ich das anders empfunden. Kann man sich Unternehmen und Organisationen ohne Hierarchie und formale Arbeitsteilung denken? Kann der Maschinist eine neue Maschine kaufen, ohne die Chefetage auch nur fragen zu müssen.
Ja, er kann, es gibt ja keine Chefetage. Warum das geht und unter welchen Voraussetzungen, zeigt diese illustrierte Kurzversion eines umfassenderen Bandes recht eindrücklich: Als prominentestes Beispiel ist Buurtzorg, ein holländisches Pflegedienstleistungsunternehmen, in dem es keine Hierarchien gibt, sondern in dem dezentrale Teams selbst die Entscheidungen treffen. Dier Firma habe mittlerweile 75% des holländischen Pflegepersonals bei sich.
In drei Schritten "1. Selbstführung", 2. "Suche nach Ganzheit" und "Evolutionärer Sinn" zeigt Laloux real existierende grundlegende Alternativen zum herkömmlichen Organisationsverständnis. Insgesamt hat mich der Ansatz sehr überzeugt.
Nur die Vorschläge im Kapitel "Suche nach Ganzheit" sind mir etwas fremd geblieben, weil mir scheint, Emotionen werden dort als Habitus instrumentalisiert. Im Betrieb sollen sich z.B. alle mit Zugewandtheit und "Liebe" (!) begegnen. Manche Menschen mag man aber vielleicht einfach nicht. Wenn dieser Habitus dann auch noch in wöchentlichen Ritualen gelebt werden soll, kann das Ganze sehr schnell eine hohle Fassade der Harmonie werden.
Nichtsdestotrotz wirklich lesenswert, auch wegen der Illustrationen!
There are books, which make you think, wonder, reconsider and eventually act in a certain way. This is one of those rare gems.
It is by far the most comprehensive and complete (while still easy to read) book about Organization Development and Evolution, you can currently find.
I don't say this often, but this is a must-read for anybody, who wants to be in any kind of relevant role in future organizations.
Laloux looks at multiple organizations that have figured out a way of working that seems better at dealing with the complexities of modern problems. The variety of organizations that he looks at is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because we get to see how similar practices play out in different ways across organizations. It is a weakness because the overall model is something of a collage. It's hard to get an idea of what any one of these organizations is really like. In a way, this book presents an organizational model that is an archetypical ideal. Like all archetypes, taking it too literally as an ideal will make you blind to the challenges associated with achieving that ideal. (Archetypes are better north stars than blueprints.) That said, it is still useful as a proof of concept that organizations can operate differently, in ways that are more flexible, adaptable, resilient, and meaningful. How generalizable this is, how much this scales, and whether or not these current organizations are a stable species or an intermediate species on the way to something else is unclear.
For those familiar with adult development theories or other similar theories of development of individuals or groups, you'll quickly recognize Laloux's use of developmental stages. The basic idea behind these stages is that the world can be approached with different postures. Each posture creates new problems that cannot be solved from that posture and so requires new ways of thinking. More complex postures are not better; they are just fit for more complex circumstances. As a concrete example, being focused on individual wholeness is a death sentence in war zone, be it literal or figurative. On the other hand, focusing on zero-sum win/lose logic when the goal is innovation leads to stale ideas.
Laloux maps a generalized notion of these development stages onto organizational structures. He primarily focuses on three: Achievement-Orange, Pluralistic-Green, and Evolutionary-Teal (yes, the colors are kind of annoying; that's all it's worth saying about it). Achievement-Orange is the paradigm of today's standard successful business organization: objective and achievement oriented, focused on growth, profit, and worldly success. Pluralistic-Green focuses on culture, equity, individual empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and multiple stakeholders. Evolutionary-Teal is characterized by a focus on wholeness. Individuals are less attached to their own ideas and able to see how seemingly disparate ideas integrate. Learning and creating shared worldviews are valued.
One of my frustrations with this book is that the Evolutionary-Teal model is primarily compared to the Achievement-Orange paradigm. In some ways this is fair: Achievement-Orange is the dominant business paradigm. In another way it is unfair: I suspect many of the advantages that Evolutionary-Teal has over Achievement-Orange are also shared by Pluralistic-Green. Thus, comparing to Achievement-Orange makes it harder to truly understand the differentiating advantages Evolutionary-Teal over Pluralistic-Green.
After introductory chapters which lay out some of the fundamental concepts above, the bulk of the book is spent discussing the three fundamental practices of Evolutionary-Teal organizations: self-management at scale, a focus on individual wholeness within organizations, and a evolutionary sense of purpose where the direction of the organization depends on the signals that the organization itself provides.
The chapters on self-management are the most extensive. Self-management is a set of interlocking practices that need to work together for the practice to be effective. Self-management is, roughly, exactly what it sounds like. Instead of individuals being slotted into a hierarchical authority structure, they are in more egalitarian structures where they act as teams or individuals who have high level of autonomy to achieve their purpose. The best structure depends on how the organization realizes value (there's a nice appendix to that effect). Distilling the key elements to their essence, there are three key practices for self-management.
An advice process requires that all decisions be made by asking for and seriously taking into consideration advice from all people affected by the decision. There are different formats for the advice process, but a common feature is that they do not require consensus but they do require addressing all substantial objections. People don't have to vote yes, but they can vote no.
The next key piece is a conflict resolution mechanism. Conflict will occur and some amount of conflict is good for the organization — as long as it's based on conviction, not ego. Conflict resolution processes can vary. Their common core is to try to resolve problems as autonomously as possible. Even when others are brought in, they are considered to be giving advice, not dictating a resolution to the conflict. The other key element of the conflict resolution process is that resolving conflict becomes the responsibility of everyone in the organization.
The final key practice is peer based evaluation and salary processes. People need to be evaluating each other to ensure that they are getting developmental feedback and, to be more blunt than the book was about it, to handle slackers. Peer based salary processes promote equity. They also ensure that people understand whether or not the work they are doing is valued by their peers.
One thing that was hiding between the lines throughout the book is that self-management requires people to be __tough__. Laloux uses the term responsibility a lot. I don't think that term is incorrect. However, it doesn't quite capture how on-the-ball people need to be to make self-management as described work. Individuals need to be masters of what Kim Scott calls Radical Candor: the ability to care personally while also challenging directly. This is hard to do, and expecting everyone in an organization to be able to do this is a high bar to set. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it does make me wonder what a variation of self-management that could scale to a broader population would look like.
Another related concern I have is that because self-management depends on people acting with good intent, it feels prone to sabotage from the inside. There is always bias that makes it harder to be valued if you are productive but uncongenial and bias that makes it easier to be a friendly slacker. However, I do wonder if these biases might be magnified even more in a self-managing organization where there's more flexibility and less clear lines of accountability.
The professional mask that we wear often leads to work being exhausting and limiting rather than helping it be part of what helps us have a meaningful life. The next key pattern of teal organizations is finding ways to encourage wholeness in the workplace. This entails letting people find a way to bring their humanity to work rather than expecting them to conform to an artificially constrained sense of what is acceptable.
Key wholeness practices include clear and explicit ground rules for creating psychological safety. These rules come with the expectation that everyone is responsible for following these rules and raising concerns when the rules are violated. Beyond just psychological safety, practices which help to encourage showing humanity at work, such as check-ins and storytelling, can help to make work a more meaningful and welcoming place.
Concrete things that can be done to encourage bringing one's humanity include having a physical space which reflects the humanity, purpose, and individual personality of the organization — one which is neither corporately sterile nor designed by outsiders who create an artificial sense of quirkiness. The onboarding process needs to take time to thoroughly introduce new hires to the organization's principles — especially since those principles are likely to be unfamiliar. Meeting practices need to invite wholeness and promote psychological safety to avoid getting focused on individual ego.
Unlike the self-management or wholeness, the idea of introducing organizational purpose is probably the easiest to get support for. It's standard organizational practice these days to want to have a sense of purpose the organization is trying to achieve. However, a sense of evolutionary purpose goes beyond often empty, often bland corporate statements of purpose.
A sense of evolutionary purpose acknowledges that the organization itself emergently defines its purpose. Authentic purpose cannot be imposed from above. Organizations need to listen for this purpose and listen for the ways it is changing. They also need to articulate the purpose frequently so that it becomes a living part of the organization's decision making process, including creating space to listen at each meeting for whether or not the meeting is upholding the organization's purpose. Alignment with the organization's purpose should be a key part of the hiring process.
In addition to deep diving into all of these areas with details and examples, the book discusses how to create or pivot organizations to be more teal. It also briefly discusses how these ideas might apply beyond organizations.
Overall, I think Laloux's perspective on organizational development is valuable if you take it as an exploration of an archetype rather than as a guidebook. I do believe that we can create organizations where people have more autonomy, more room for humanity, and a deeper sense of individual and organization purpose than is typical today. Does it look exactly like this? I don't know. Does it look more like this than the Achievement-Orange paradigm? Quite possibly.
On a personal note, while I have never worked in an Evolutionary-Teal organization, I have worked in a organization where for some roles, at some times, the world was nearly Evolutionary-Teal: there were high levels of autonomy and flexibility in what work to do (within the given role), there were official organizational programs which encouraged wholeness and being more than just your professional mask. This didn't last. It depended on the organization having high revenue growth which allowed for slop at the margins. It depended on an organizational culture which didn't realize that hiring for a particular conception of the "best" selected for a narrow, homogenous culture. Given both the good and bad of this experience, I approach the idea of a sustainable, equitable, diverse Evolutionary-Teal organization with some trepidation. Yet I can enthusiastically speak the feelings of meaning, purpose, joy, and intrinsic motivation that come when the conditions do point in an Evolutionary-Teal direction.
1 
eri_kars | 15 reseñas más. | Jul 10, 2022 |
eri_kars | 15 reseñas más. | Jul 10, 2022 | Non una di queste domande trova risposta in questo libro. Ma gli spunti per ragionare su altri mondi possibili sono molti.
Qui alcune citazioni che meritano una riflessione:
Mostrarci completamente appare rischioso. Abbiamo bisogno di spazi in cui sentirci al sicuro, se vogliamo condividere con gli altri la nostra personalità più profonda, i nostri talenti, i nostri desideri e le nostre preoccupazioni.
Abbiamo raggiunto uno stadio in cui cerchiamo spesso di crescere solo per l'interesse di crescere, una condizione che in ambito medico verrebbe semplicemente definita cancro.
Tuttavia, le persone tendono ad indossare ora una maschera professionale. Bisogna sempre essere all'altezza della parte: essere impegnati ma composti, competenti e in controllo della situazione. La razionalità è valutata sopra ad ogni cosa; le emozioni, i dubbi e i sogni è meglio tenerli dietro la maschera, per non mostrarsi così vulnerabili. La nostra identità non è più fusa con il livello o con il titolo; è invece fusa con il nostro bisogno di essere riconosciuti come competenti e affermati, pronti per la prossima promozione.
I vari tipi di organizzazioni che abbiamo inventato nel corso della storia si rivelano legati alla visione del mondo e alla coscienza prevalenti. Ogni volta che noi, come specie, abbiamo cambiato il nostro modo di osservare e pensare il mondo, abbiamo scoperto nuovi e più potenti tipi di organizzazione.
Vedere non è credere, credere è vedere! Tu vedi cose, non come sono, ma come sei tu. (Eric Butterworth)
Non sottostimare mai il potere di poche persone molto motivate a cambiare il mondo. Alla fine questa è l'unica cosa che da sempre accade.
Per saperne di più sull’autore:
https://www.reinventingorganizations.com
Cerco in rete informazioni sul libro di Frederic Laloux 𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐳𝐚𝐳𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢 e trovo questa bella recensione di Maria Terlizzi.
Mi piacciono le parole con cui si conclude l’articolo:
𝑙𝑎 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎 𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑧𝑧𝑎 𝑒 𝑙𝑎 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑖 𝑠𝑢𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑜 𝑒̀ 𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑎̀ 𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒 𝑙’𝑢𝑜𝑚𝑜, 𝑐𝑜𝑛 𝑙𝑎 𝑠𝑢𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎 𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑎, 𝑙𝑎 𝑠𝑢𝑎 𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑎̀, 𝑙𝑎 𝑠𝑢𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑒.
le-persone-nella-lean-e-teal-organization
1 claudio.marchisio | 15 reseñas más. | Jun 17, 2022 |
claudio.marchisio | 15 reseñas más. | Jun 17, 2022 | [VII] - Prefácio.
001] - Introdução - O surgimento de um novo modelo organizacional.
(.)
[013] - Parte 1 - PERSPECTIVAS HISTÓRICAS E DO DESENVOLVIEMNTO.
[015] - 01.01 Mudando Paradigmas: Os modelos organizacionais do passado e do presente;
[051] - 01.02 Sobre os estágios de desenvolvimento;
[059] - 01.03 Evolutivo-TEAL.
(.)
[073] - Parte 2 - AS ESTRUTURAS, PRÁTICAS E CULTURAS DAS ORGANIZAÇÕES TEAL.
[075] - 02.01 Três vanços e uma metáfora;
[083] - 02.02 Autogestão (Estruturas);
[137] - 02.03 Autogestão (Processos);
[199] - 02.04 Busca pela integridade (Práticas gerais);
[245] - 02.05 Busca pela Integridade (Processos RH);
[273] - 02.06 Escutando o propósito evolutuvo;
[321] - 02.07 Traços culturais comuns.
(.)
[335] - Parte 3 - SURGIMENTO DAS ORGANIZAÇÕES TEAL
[337] - 03.01 Condições necessárias;
[369] - 03.02 Iniciando uma Organização TEAL;
[379] - 03.03 Transformando uma organização TEAL;
[405] - 03.04 Resultados;
[417] - 03.05 Organizações e sociedade TEAL.
(.)
[435] - APENDICES
[437] - 01 Questões de pesquisa;
[445] - 02 Além do Evoluitvo-TEAL;
[448] - 03 Estruturas da Organizações TEAL;
[457] - 05 Panoramas das estruturas, práticas e processos das Organizações TEAL.
(.)
[463] - Leituras selecionadas.
[469] - Agradecimentos.
[471] - Agradecimentos da edição brasileira.
When I first became a manager, I started to introduce styles of self-management into my work. First, out of respect for the team of engineers with whom I used to work alongside. Then, out of practicality. Given the number of projects I oversaw, the amount of stakeholders I needed to keep updated, I knew that I could no longer go deep into a problem to make informed decisions on my own.
While I didn't have any precedence nor a MBA to show me the way, as someone fresh out of the team, it just "made sense". Having been on the receiving end of layers of management, I knew exactly how I (and those in the team) didn't want to be led. I knew that there was a lot of knowledge and real care for customers within the teams. I also knew that there was an unnecessary, yet growing gap between management and the team, which led to a lot of mistrust, scapegoating and political intrigues.
Eight years later, I've been able to set up conclaves of self-managing styled teams within Amber-Orange styled organizations. It's not an easy spiel to keep up, yet the success rate is baffling.
For those of us, who truly believe that the future of work needs to be more human, more considerate, more authentic. Thanks to Frederic Laloux, we now have the language, the case studies and community to move this agenda forward!
When I first became a manager, I started to introduce styles of self-management into my work. First, out of respect for the team of engineers with whom I used to work alongside. Then, out of practicality. Given the number of projects I oversaw, the amount of stakeholders I needed to keep updated, I knew that I could no longer go deep into a problem to make informed decisions on my own.
While I didn't have any precedence nor a MBA to show me the way, as someone fresh out of the team, it just "made sense". Having been on the receiving end of layers of management, I knew exactly how I (and those in the team) didn't want to be led. I knew that there was a lot of knowledge and real care for customers within the teams. I also knew that there was an unnecessary, yet growing gap between management and the team, which led to a lot of mistrust, scapegoating and political intrigues.
Eight years later, I've been able to set up conclaves of self-managing styled teams within Amber-Orange styled organizations. It's not an easy spiel to keep up, yet the success rate is baffling.
For those of us, who truly believe that the future of work needs to be more human, more considerate, more authentic. Thanks to Frederic Laloux, we now have the language, the case studies and community to move this agenda forward!
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is its presentation of the "evolution" of organization concepts moving from the strongly centralized and authoritarian approach of a "Red" organization towards the more decentralized "Green" and "Teal" structures. The book supplements the discussions on centralization vs. decentralization found in "Perils of Cetnralization" by Kollman and "The Science of Success" by Koch.
His description of the Red organization provides a great characterization of one of this year's political candidates: "the chief of a Red Organization must demonstrate overwhelming power and bend others to his will to stay in position. In order to provide some stability, the chief surrounds himself with family members. Overall there is no formal hierarchy and there are no job titles. Impulsive Red Organizations don't scale well for these reasons. the chief must regularly resort to public displays of cruelty nad punishment, as only fear and submission keep the organization from disintegrating."
Our author Laloux is particularly interested in what he calls the Teal stage in Spiral Dynamics. Teal organizations, as defined in this text have three core components:
1. Self-management: dynamic peer-to-peer project management; neither hierarchical nor consensus-based.
2. Wholeness: emotions, intuition, and spirituality are encouraged alongside rationality in members of an organization.
3. Evolutionary purpose: attitudes of service and stewardship enable the purpose of the organization to adapt over time.
His study surveys twelve Teal organizations, ten of which have over 100 employees. Most of these businesses operate exclusively in the Extractive Economy [as opposed to the Regenerative Economy].
What fascinates me most is that such enterprises can so effectively integrate these practices in an Extractive setting.
This gets me into some of the shortcomings of this book.
Spiral Dynamics seems to be rooted in a worldview of progress and development. For example, it doesn't seem to leave room for the possibility that there might have been advanced civilizations in prehistory. It's explicit that one stage isn't better than another, and yet management theory doesn't share this belief. So there's a little bit of dissonance in the application. This isn't yet a coherent thought, but there's something about this simplicity of Spiral Dynamics that seems naive. At the same time, Spiral Dynamics is much more nuanced than the worldview that people aren't influenced by their environments [which we might call the Persevering Individual worldview].
Laloux is already onto the primary shortcoming of the book. In his last chapter, he looks at where Teal might lead us, and points to shareholdership and porous organizations. One of the flaws of Laloux's investigation for me is that it doesn't look his three core tenants of a Teal organizations from all four Integral Quadrants. For example, holism isn't just a personal experience, it's also about an organization's relationship to it's context. In the Extractive Economy, organizations fail to fully relate with their context, and this separation results in violence, or dismemberment. Wholeness requires organizations to operate with an awareness for their contexts, from their supply chains, to their legal and tax paradigm, to their concept of money, and the organizations that Laloux surveys don't go this deep.
In conclusion, this is an excellent book. It isn't quite as far-reaching as I would like, but this makes it more appropriate for mainstream audiences, which seems like the right choice.
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