Beyond Teal Organizations -
What might a Turquoise organization be like - Part 1
The context for this exploration is the massive global movement energized by the publishing of Frederic Laloux's book Reinventing Organizations, in which, using Ken Wilber's developmental framework terminology, he traces stages of development of organizational consciousness through Teal/Yellow/Integral, characterizing the positive breakthroughs of each stage compared to the previous one.
Now "going Teal" is all the rage, and it might be time to take an exploratory peek ahead. What is the "next stage" after "the next stage?" What might a Turquoise organization be like? What might be the "Turquoise breakthroughs?" And what limits on Teal would prompt those?
Let's explore these questions. This is a helicopter trip around the tip of an iceberg. So much more could be said. But it's a question which is going to begin to arise as more and more organizations move toward Teal as their "next-stage consciousness." What's the "next stage" after Teal?
Laloux's "breakthroughs" of each stage of organizational consciousness were discerned empirically, by his observing organizations and forming generalizations. There are really few Turquoise organizations, but I know of two, and am part of one, and have observed any number of Turquoise groups, so my descriptions are formed empirically from generalizing also. The descriptions might be sharper, probably are even "missing the point" in some ways. But I offer them as a springboard for those who think they might be moving beyond Teal somehow, and want a bit of a map to the new territory. (This video is Ken Wilber's delightful description of the functions and limitations of (verbal) maps of new territories of consciousness.)
My fervent hope would be for some map-makers to engage with one another to chart THIS territory as well. Some excellent maps already exist in the many articles and books emerging on "Higher We-spaces" from within the Integral community; those can easily be transferred to guiding us within new organizational territories. I'm just making a tiny beginning of doing that.
If the overall metaphor for a Teal organization is "a living system," then the overall metaphor for a Turquoise organization might be "a web/morphic field of consciousness."
