Words&Dirt

I’m not sure I’ve ever been so annoyed by a book that taught me so much. Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations is, in some ways, exactly what it claims to be––a guide for creating organizations with internal dynamics that radically diverge from prevailing models. But it’s also a highly repetitive text with a lot of fuzzy language. It was truly perplexing to read a book that exhibited a firm, clear vision in some sections, and that merely oozed schmaltz in others. But we have to mine value where we can, and the good news is that there appears to be quite a lot of genuine innovation and wisdom mixed in with the garbled, feel-goody gab.

The central claim here is the suggestion that the organizations of the future (what Laloux calls “Teal Organizations”) will look and operate not like machines, but like living systems:

Life, in all its evolutionary wisdom, manages ecosystems of unfathomable beauty, ever evolving toward more wholeness, complexity, and consciousness. Change in nature happens everywhere, all the time, in a self-organizing urge that comes from every cell and every organism, with no need for central command and control to give orders or pull the levers.

The metaphor opens up new horizons. Imagine what organizations would be like if we stopped designing them like soulless, clunky 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? (56)

This passage is useful not just as a summary of the book’s thesis, but also as a demonstration of the weird conceptual blurring that pervades the text. It’s certainly true that life appears to evolve into increasingly complex systems, many of which include vast networks of self-organizing structures. It also seems perfectly valid that we can learn from and model this dynamic when structuring human organizations. However, there is no evidence whatsoever that life uses “wisdom” to evolve toward “more wholeness” and “unfathomable beauty”; these are human constructs that only apply to nature when we observe it through an aesthetic lens. While the human brain is certainly not a command center in the traditional sense, it is definitely the primary seat of executive control for the human body, and contains many hierarchical structures. Also, I know of no company that has abandoned fossil fuels or renewable energy sources in favor of running its offices on “the evolutionary power of life itself”.

Snarkiness aside, there is actually a lot of great stuff here. The most important takeaway is the remarkable power organizations can harness by allowing members to self-organize. Laloux demonstrates that Teal Organizations are typically comprised of teams (usually 10-20 people) that eschew traditional pyramidal hierarchies in favor of systems where “no one holds power over anyone else, and yet, paradoxically, the organization as a whole ends up being considerably more powerful” (62). This might seem like a wild notion, but Laloux has plenty of evidence to back it up.

For his research, Laloux examined twelve organizations ranging from small (approx. 100 employees) to global (approx. 40,000 employees). These organizations varied widely in their products and missions, but shared a fundamental set of internal structures. The most critical of these was some version of the aforementioned self-managing teams. These teams, which function with almost full autonomy, obviate the need for most or all middle management, allowing organizations to make decisions and pursue goals without constantly running requests and directives up and down a chain of command.

Most Teal Organizations do not put time and energy into developing targets for production or streamlined plans that apply to the organization as a whole. Instead, they leverage the power of distributed intelligence, trusting that teams will act responsibly and make the right decisions. Teams are responsible for HR activities and other processing responsibilities that are usually handled by middle management, in addition to production. Each team has the freedom to decide how to tackle any particular need, whether to hire or fire a member, or what the budget for the next quarter might be. All of this might sound like a recipe for disaster in a competitive world demanding ever more quantification and efficiency, but all of the companies Laloux studied have remarkable records of success (with the exception of one or two that have recently forsaken the Teal model, and consequently languished).

If you’re after information about how the Teal model works and advice about how to implement it, I recommend Appendices 3 and 4, as well as Sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3. Those are the only sections I recommend. The rest of the book, in my estimation, is neither necessary nor enlightening. Laloux’s tone becomes increasingly saccharine as he describes ad nauseam the various “beautiful” practices of Teal Organizations. A handful of these practices seem great, but most come off as weird habits that will certainly work for some individuals and organizations, but that also run contrary to what most people look for in a “professional” environment. Here are a couple examples:

As people operating from Evolutionary-Teal in general become quite comfortable with and interested in transrational ways of knowing, I believe it’s a reasonable assumption that such techniques might one day find their way into organizational settings. (204)

Sounds True has built a variation of the empty chair method into a New Year’s ritual, where colleagues at the beginning of the year bless the office building for the year to come. At the end of the ritual, colleagues sit together in silence and listen in to what Sounds True, the organization, wants from them for the year to come. (205)

I immediately balk when anyone throws out a word like “transrational” without even bothering to define it; despite the murkiness of the term, I have a strong feeling that I should not be clamoring for coworkers who are steeped in “transrational” thought. And, honestly, I think I’d be creeped out if my coworkers wanted me to bless an office building and “listen in” on the “wants” of an organization. I desire a workplace that is fun and exciting, but this sort of behavior seems more laughable than anything else.

I agree with Laloux that we need to take a hard look at the idea of professionalism and revise it for the 21st century. People should feel relaxed enough to be themselves at work, and I fully support many of Laloux’s proposed methods for conflict resolution and inclusion. But I’m also skeptical of the idea that my job should be responsible for nurturing my “soul”––something I don’t even believe in. I, like everyone else, crave work that is meaningful, but I also don’t want my job to be my sole, or even primary, source of meaning. That may seem like a merely semantic distinction, but to me it’s a critical one.

Overall, this was an informative and frustrating read. I’m grateful for how Laloux helped me think about the importance of autonomy and self-management within complex organizations, but I also have no trouble seeing why his ideas haven’t become mainstream.

Rating: 5/10