By George Pór for Enlivening Edge Magazine
The movement for reinventing organizations and its companion-movements are in their toddler years and demonstrate an amazing vitality. The number (published or in-the-works) of translations of Laloux’s book is approaching 20 languages. The meetups of ResponsiveOrg, Teal, U.Lab, and similar initiatives are popping up all over the world and touch the lives of tens of thousands of people.
It’s not too difficult to anticipate a tipping point, when a number of CEO’s of large organizations will recognize that their best bet to stay relevant in the 21st century is “going Teal.” When that happens mainstream media will pick up and amplify the news. But we’re not waiting for mainstream media to reflect what is happening. The movements need their own collective sensing and meaning-making organs.
Enlivening Edge is also swept by a wind of changes. First of all, we don’t have to solicit as many articles as for the first two issues; authors started sending their materials and asking to be published in EE. As a result, in the current issue you will find more content written originally for EE, compared with the curated blogs that we are republishing from other places.
As inspirations for more authentic and soulful organizations are manifesting in more and more places and contexts, we gear up to serve them better. That’s why we evolved the news site of our modest beginning into an online magazine complete with such departments as COUNTRIES, SECTORS, and MOVEMENTS. See the menus waiting for your browsing:
In this issue we expand the scope of our coverage from reinventing organizations to reinventing society. You will also find articles that address the complexity of scaling self-organization, and introduce some tools/practices for taming that complexity.
In NEWS, you can learn about the Future of U.Lab, The OpenTeal Project, and Laloux Is Asking Your Advice.
From our ORGANIZATIONS department you can find out about what’s happening in Fitzii, the Dutch recruiting and job-matching company; Matt Black Systems, a UK-based manufacturer that introduced a very unique self-managing system 12 years ago; what communities of practice can do for the National Health System; and how Evolving Organisations supports the shift to ‘next stage.’
The SECTORS department includes articles related to cities, education, government, healthcare, manufacturing, road transportation, retail, software, and startups.
The REFLECTING department has stories about Escaping the Prison of Orange, whether Teal organizations are “responsible,” Holacracy disrupting management hierarchies, the relationship between self-authorship and self-organization, what wholeness means in Teal organizing, and Reinventing Social Systems.
The FEATURES section highlights an interview with Sudhakar Ram, the CEO of a Mumbai-based self-managing company, and also a leading Holacracy practitioner shares her thoughts on Implementation issues. The article on Where Is All This Teal Stuff Going is based on conversations with Frederic Laloux about the future of Reinventing Organizations. Bridging U.Lab and Teal is the beginning of a personal, collective and societal journey.
TOOLS & PRACTICES has stories about recruiting, the blockchain: a new infrastructure for online commons, constitutional organizing, and the magic of meetings in Teal.
Our FIELD REPORTS cover the NHS Employers Summit 2015, midwifing a community of practice in Australia, the first meeting of the Reinventing Work Network, and lessons from a conversation about Barry Oshry with Frederic Laloux.
In RESEARCH you will find studies on Communicating Across Boundaries and the science behind wholeness.
Chronicling the developments around EE in the two months since the publication of the previous issue wouldn’t be complete without telling you about some exciting news and plans:
- Enlivening Edge is a sponsor of the Integral European Conference 2016, where we convene a Teal Organizations track
- We started conversations with some Teal-inspired organizations about co-developing a re-branded version of EE, tailored to their audience
- We heard of companies curating certain EE articles and posting them on their intranet
- A group approached us to develop a Spanish edition of Enlivening Edge
One more thing: Does our work resonate with what you care for? If yes, pay it forward: think of who in your network could benefit from our news and articles, and send them a note along with the URL where they can subscribe to our bi-monthly issues: https://enliveningedge.org/subscribe/. Using any of the “share” buttons below will help us reaching even more people and organizations. That’s a win-win-win for everyone! And if you really love us and share our passion and purpose, consider getting involved and energizing any of the roles listed here.
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Hi George,
Thank you for your lovely work. Very inspiring.
Within the countries, sectors and movements page I sort of miss some other initiatives though, including the already quite internationally spread Teal for Teal community (with local meetups in 14 countries – over 20 locations – http://www.tealforteal.com). The largest community and local groups are actually in Frederic’s Belgium where more than 100 people gather for two introduction-sessions. The first session, on October 7th, brought together 46 people in Antwerp and over 60 people will gather to learn more about teal and the why of Teal for Teal Belgium in Brussels on December 2nd. Subsequently already 6 local/provincial meetups are in preparation for the following months (2 in November to start – Antwerp on Nov. 19th and Limburg on Nov. 24th). The sector we aim at is quite spread, towards all interested innovators, however, more specifically, the gatherings are intended to peer-feed the consultancy, coaching, training, HR-sector, including managerial facilitators. We strive to make them ready to help out with the organizational and society evolution towards the teal-principles (not forgetting about the green first where necessary). I am only one proud insitigator (amongst so many others) of Teal for Teal Belgium, looking at how the interest for our movement is growing constantly. Maybe sad to say this, in light of the terrorist attacks in Paris, but we can start looking at the abundance of opportunities that come out of all incidents that are, sadly enough, occuring worldwide, which are making the bases of our society into loose sand, which might force a more fluid and rapid way of reinventing organizations and even the whole of our known society. When we look at the examples of VW, FIFA, IAAF, Refugees in Europe, terrorist threat worldwide, the ongoing rise of ISIS, bankers that still work out of ego and personal gain, etc. we also know that this will not last nor will it be resolved in the way we have Always tried to resolve things. The whole Teal movement, including all these wonderful initiatives to spread these basic essential human values-principles, can fill in the gaps that are arising through all of these dreadful situations. Teal for Teal is a community that puts this result (better organizations and society holding the ‘teal’-principles) forward as the major goal, no matter what kind of method, system, model or theory one uses to get there. In our vision they can all become compatible towards the ultimate goal and be used for what they are… tools to help people forward. It would be great of course if we sort of could channel all these initiatives instead of all working on diverse islands, starting from a competitive state of mind. I am sure the EE and Teal for Teal can play a wonderful mediating and connecting role in that channeling. Hence the reason for this mail. Maybe we could talk a bit more on this via Skype or in other ways. Btw. Frederic knows about this initiative, since we have talked about it in Antwerp after his Dutch book presentation. He is very ok with it, as long that we do it out of ‘wholeness’ and evolutionary purpose, which of course is our main objective. Next to all this I also want to mention that at this moment I am able to make my own team very self-managing, out of the wide carried and common team-values and wholeness we have towards our organization, the local police force of Leuven. This is now happening with total facilitation of our Chief of Police. We aim to be an internal and external role-model towards other departments, services and organizations. A lot of people will think that if we can do it in a very amber/orange police force, they might be able to do it as well. Looking forward to your feedback. Have a lovely day.
Kind regards,
Erwin Van Waeleghem
Thank you Erwin for the update about the “Teal for Teal” initiative. Would you want to write an article for our January issue about how Teal breakthroughs work in the police force and/or the practice of TfT events? (If so, drop me a line to discuss details, and remember that the deadline is Dec 15.)
Hi George, sorry about the late reply. Was quite busy the last week. I would love to write an article on the suggested items. Will get back to you as soon as possible on this. Thanks,
kind regards,
Erwin
Hi George,
sorry but couldn’t make the deadline due to lots of wonderful initiatives happening the last few weeks. When is the deadline for the next issue? would still like to share our evolution towards self-managing team within the police force of Leuven. thank you,
kind regards,
Erwin.
Erwin, I tried to reply to you by email, but it got bounced. Please use the contact form https://enliveningedge.org/contact/ so that we can keep this comments stream related to the Intro to the November issue.