Is there such thing as Spiral Dynamics?

Wholeness, self-management, evolutionary purpose – those are the key ingredients of an ideal "teal organisation". In his world-famous management bestseller, Laloux analyses a dozen companies, which he judged to have reached a worthy level of consciousness, and transcribes their most relevant practices. Indeed, so his hopeful doctrine suggests, the primordial force for the reinvention of our organisations is humankind’s continual awakening – relentlessly spiralling upwards, throughout the centuries, on a colourful staircase of spiritual stages. The colour system, first introduced by Beck and Cowan in their classical “Spiral Dynamics”, and further expanded by integral philosopher Ken Wilber, has fascinated consultants and faithful followers ever since. Conveniently, the big jump into a new “teal era” was postulated in 2014. Alas, the prophecy rests on shaky ground…

Revolution Disrupted: Deconstructing Teal

As fascinating and desirable a “teal” future appears to many of us, still fettered in the shackles of bureaucracy, Laloux’s conjectures are fraught with challenges:

1. The “spiral of consciousness” is (mostly) wishful thinking: Laloux, like Wilbers, assumes that human consciousness inevitably shifts “upwards” throughout history; and that organisations will necessarily transform to healthier ways of management every time spirituality reaches the next “colour”.

Sadly, evidence for this rather flamboyant model of psycho-social evolution is scarce. Plus, the allegedly imminent overthrow of bureaucracies by a teal revolution has been slow to take hold. In fact, whilst there have been numerous attempts to render organisations more flexible - under fancy headings like “new work”, agile, humanocracy - a grassroot teal-ization of large companies is nowhere to be found.

Seven years after Laloux’s predictions went to print, most corporate rebels continue to fight lonely battles as “teal dots in an orange world”, and more purposeful work remains a lofty ideal for most…

2. Wholeness is not enough (to reinvent organisations): Whilst Laloux demystifies much of Wilber’s integral psychology, vestiges of ideology remain.

For example, there is a strong notion of integratedness of teal – it somehow encompasses all previous colours. Thus, “living” teal organisations mysteriously contain and transcend the power hunger of a red organisation, the clarity of rules of an amber one, the eagerness to compete of an orange one and the community orientation of a green one. It is alleged that teal thus corresponds to the “self-actualisation” level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - which, however, as we have learned decades ago was never meant to be a hierarchy. Needs are not simply hierarchical and most probably neither are stages.

At the same time, it is also suggested, sotto voce, that later colours are not “better” than earlier ones - only ‘more complex’. Whilst maybe helpful to restrain feelings of superiority amongst teal disciples, tealorology thus appears to rather carelessly mixes personal development theory, moral philosophy and feel-good esotericism.

Truth is, we are continuously exposed to many colours (and infinite shades) in our daily lives. Whilst meditation and yoga classes may indeed help us to self-manage, they seldom teach us to how to make collective choices. We ultimately need a robust ethical framework to make “good” contextual decisions. Bringing our “whole selves to work” remains an imprecise logic to follow when arguing over budgets: just try telling your CEO that his "investment proposals are not teal enough"…

3. Teal ain’t real and (sadly) ignores management science: Frederic Laloux carefully chooses and analyses twelve different companies in order to develop his acclaimed teal practices.

As Laloux freely admits and as even people with limited familiarity of academic research will instantly realise: evidence for a novel organisational model could never be deducted from such a small and strikingly diverse sample. Whilst many of the identified management practices are innovative and interesting in their own right, there is no way to prove effectiveness, coherence or correlation with a “teal” mindset. In fact, most of the referenced organisations would hardly identify with the book’s spiritual theme.

Most unfortunately, like other management consultants, Laloux focuses on spectacular case studies and ignores a cornucopia of pre-existent research on management practices and their impact on organisational health. Thus, a critical opportunity has been lost to craft a more consistent and compelling case for organisational transformation. Contrary to the book’s inspirational subtitle, teal eventually remains largely this: a thought-provoking “guide to creating new organisations” inspired by Laloux’s own level of consciousness.

4. A dominant (orange) paradigm supplants all others: In my personal experience, business transformations do not simply fail because practitioners are immature, uncapable or unwilling, but also because much deeper cultural assumptions and beliefs go unexamined.

Different to the teal narrative, which often focuses on developmental psychology - as if large organisations were simply immature children who need to grow up – I will suggest that wider change is as much about an organisation’s cognitive capacity as about its context. In spite of colourful choices, most businesses remain stuck in the invisible force field and power structures of our most dominant worldviews. In order to progress towards more responsible and conscious organisations we must start at the system level and “rebalance society”, as Henry Mintzberg admonishes.

Indeed, post enlightenment, a pre-existent belief in universal morality and religion was thoroughly eradicated in industrialised Western societies. Progressively, scientific management filled gaps of meanings with a gospel of growth, and the pursuit of individualistic freedom and success became the uncontested aim of postmodern capitalism. Consequentially, management thinking today is focused on value extraction and competition, innovation and endless growth and, ultimately, profits and share prices.

Hence, reinventing our organisations and our economy will require not only consciousness and wholeness, but a wider societal rebalancing of profit vs purpose, individual vs collective; and a debate about the fact that we simply do not “own” the world – we are solely its trustees, for ourselves and generations to come. As Robert Putnam compellingly demonstrates, during the last two centuries we have gone full circle from an “I” society to a “We” society and back again. A change will require renewed commitment to mutual reciprocity across education, economy, government and civil society. We must re-learn to own the commons, without possessing them.

And, yes, it will come at a cost. But unless we truly embrace collective accountability for the future, countering the dominant selfish and short-sighted “orange” narrative with a more solidaric and humanistic vision of life, any revolution will ultimately fail. 

Link to the original article published by Haufe New Management: https://newmanagement.haufe.de/strategie/frederic-laloux-reinventiog-organizations-revisited