Reinventing Organizations

Frederic Laloux argues that each time humanity has moved to a new stage of consciousness, it has also invented a new way to structure and run organizations. He gives five stages a colour each, Red, Amber, Orange, Green and Teal, and describes the management structures each one produced, such as meritocracy and replicable processes. His research covered more than fifty organisations, among them Buurtzorg Nederland and The Morning Star Company, each with at least a hundred staff and five years of operation. The Teal model rests on three pillars: self-management, wholeness and evolutionary purpose. Laloux frames it as an answer to disengaged employees, bureaucracy and power games at the top.

Meebo co-founder Elaine Wherry called it one of the few recent books on organizational theory that is thorough and free of self-promotion. Adore Me CTO Bogdan Lucaciu said several people he admired pointed him to it at once, and that it matched his own unconventional views on organisation design.