Reinventing Organizations

This book should be five stars. But it has problems. If you run an organization today, you should definitely read it... you are no doubt reading much worse business literature with much less insightful content. The research is great. The examples are clear and practical. It's just a slog.

Here are my caveats:

Caveat One: Sounds True Publishing

The author has inexplicably included Sounds True Publishing (soundstrue.com), a company which bears nothing in common with any of the other organizations mentioned. When Pratul suggested the book, I was hesitant about the theme and waited to pick the book up for months thanks to the blue butterflies hovering over an Apple keyboard. As it turns out, this cover art has nothing to do with the contents of the book and I was saved from stories about obnoxiously hip technology companies or groan-worthy metaphorical references to metamorphosis. Most of the stories, structures, process, and advice were about real organizations filled with real people — a school in Germany, a non-profit nursing agency in the Netherlands, a tomato paste factory in the mid-western United States, a brass car parts manufacturer in France. Most of these organizations were bootstrapped and extremely profitable. In fact, not a single example stood out and made me think "well, this is just some new-age bullshit and/or a pointless indulgence of venture capital."

Except Sounds True Publishing, which was both. Sounds True is VC-backed. It is based on questionable ethics: to build a for-profit business out of selling literature from the world's various wisdom traditions, which almost exclusively distribute their literature for free or the cost of production. It sounds like an incredibly obnoxious workplace. From the CFO who was forced to leave because he refused to indulge the founder when she insisted he open up emotionally to her — to the twenty dogs the company "employs" — to "wine and music Fridays" which are the upper-middle-class equivalent of trading firms "beer o'clock"... all three equally repulsive to those of us who happen to be introverts, allergic to dogs, and/or recovering alcholics.

The coup de grâce comes on page 187 when the author admits "Sounds True ... still has a hierarchical structure." At that point I literally put the book down and asked out loud "THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU INCLUDE IT?"

Sounds True ruins this book. Where it is mentioned or where its practices are highlighted, the book sinks down to airport-bookstore-new-age-spiritual meaninglessness. About halfway through the book, there is a burst of these. If you skip Chapter 2.5 ("Striving for Wholeness"), you will avoid phrases like "When it feels unsafe to speak our truth, we shut down our inner voice..." and "...safe enough to reveal our selfhood..." and "something-something... purpose circles" and "...express their selfhood..." and "do [our job] from our selfhood". Ugh. Barf.

There are other spots in the book which get stuck in this talk of "listening each other into selfhood and wholeness", references to Tingsha bells in the office, and other vomit-worthy blurbs. But if you skip Chapter 2.5 you will largely be saved.

Oh, and the foreword by Ken Wilber. Do not read that. It's impenetrable.


Caveat Two: Laloux misunderstands co-operatives

Laloux mentioned co-operatives only once or twice in the entire book but seems almost proud to announce that not a single co-operative is included in his research. It is perhaps valuable for him to demonstrate that the principles and practices he advocates work in all manner of more commonly-understood legal structures.

However, when he gets to the foundation of organizations capable of adopting the practices, he openly admits "Ownership is make-or-break for Evolutionary-Teal [his term for self-managing organizations]." Uhm... what? Then why risk getting ownership wrong? He then goes on to expound on failed Teal organizations which once thrived in self-management but collapsed due to misplaced ownership: "The stories of AES and BSO/Origin illustrate that Teal organizational practices are vulnerable when investors and board members don't share in the paradigm." Feels like removing the very concepts of "investors" and "board members" would solve that problem for you, Fred.

This hits its most frustrating note on page 269 and 270 when he insists that "psychological ownership" of the company is essential at every level to transform an existing, old-fashioned command-and-control company into a self-managing Teal company. There is a really short path to irrevocably providing your employees "psychological ownership": give them real ownership. Surely this isn't that complicated?


Why you, Ms. CEO, should read the book

I have given you all the hints for making this book readable... and it's quite an important book to read if you are running an organization of any kind: a school, a business, a non-profit, a hospital, or a government agency. I have yet to see these ideas in print anywhere else.

His research about the actual, real-life, concrete concepts is honestly fantastic. "This is how the largest tomato processing plant in the USA makes self-management work: step 1, 2, 3." In these sections, his prose is lucid and the ideas he has borrowed from the companies he researched are concrete and immediately actionable. (Though he did research two non-profits and one school, his subjects of research are, by and large, for-profit corporations.)

His research regarding models for conceptualizing organizations, and society as a whole, is also extremely valuable. Wilber's 4-Quadrant Model is perhaps the most valuable idea presented in A Brief History of Everything and Laloux incorporates it into his conceptual model quite flawlessly.

I wish he had stuck entirely to this theme and dropped all the new-age spirituality mumbo jumbo. The world's corporations and schools desperately need to hear what he has to say.