A guide in human consciousness
The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. Organizations suffer from power games played at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, from infighting and bureaucracy, from endless meetings and a seemingly never-ending succession of change and cost-cutting programs.
Deep inside, we long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose. We need more enlightened leaders, but we need something more: enlightened organizational structures and practices. But is there even such a thing? Can we conceive of enlightened organizations?
In the groundbreaking book Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux shows that every time humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness in the past, it has invented a whole new way to structure and run organizations, each time bringing extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a radically more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools, and hospitals?
The pioneering organizations researched for this book have already “cracked the code.” Their founders have fundamentally questioned every aspect of management and have come up with entirely new organizational methods. Even though they operate in very different industries and geographies and did not know of each other’s experiments, the structures and practices they have developed are remarkably similar. It’s hard not to get excited about this finding: a new organizational model seems to be emerging, and it promises a soulful revolution in the workplace.
“Reinventing Organizations” describes in practical detail how organizations large and small can operate in this new paradigm. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories.
Why we love this book?
When you start all over again, building a new organization from scratch (like we did 😊) you get the opportunity to reflect on organizations with an open mind and a critical eye. This was the moment we began to marvel why everyone seems to consider it quite normal that, when Monday comes, and we go to work, we all fall back on a parent-child relationship with our employer. Isn’t that strange? Outside of work we are perfectly capable of managing everything on our own and making our own decisions and choices. That’s why we asked ourselves the question: why should your relationship with your work be any different from all the other important relationships in your life?
This was the start of our dream. We wanted to shatter the stuffy hierarchy and make people the heart and soul of everything we do. That was the big challenge that lay ahead of us, with no answers in advance. Our investigation started by talking to people and reading a lot of books. Step by step, we became convinced that a structure of self-organization could offer the solution. In the end, Frederic Laloux gave us the necessary self-confidence we were looking for. This was the guidance we needed to start our own journey and make our dream come true.
