Mapping Our Way to the Tipping Point

By George Pór for Enlivening Edge Magazine

The ecosystem of next-stage organizations and initiatives is experiencing an unprecedented growth, aliveness, and diversification.

We, at Enlivening Edge, are in the enviable and scary position of being an attractor of Teal news from all over the world. It is enviable because we can keep our finger on the pulse of the Teal ecosystem, feel its vibrancy, and rejoice in the new species that come to life every day.

It becomes scary only in light of our mission “Boosting the emergent collective intelligence, consciousness, and impact of the ecosystem of next-stage organizations and initiatives, until they become the new mainstream of organizing work, because we don’t have the resources to provide adequate coverage of all the Teal-tinted new publications, networks, platforms, practices, startups, and organizatonal change efforts.

Supporting the emergent collective intelligence (CI) of all that demands from EE to become an ever-better amplifier, sensing-organ and meaning-making organ of the movement. To do that, we need good maps of the territory. Only then shall we be able give you a better sense of what on Earth is happening, what are the most innovative experiments, new Teal organizational practices worth replicating, and where to find fellow “co-conspirators,” maybe even in your own country.

In 2015, when Enlivening Edge published the first map of the ecosystem of movements for next-stage organizations, we received responses to it like these:

“I do hope that we will soon see emergence of co-creation networks that link all these change-makers and innovators together into an ecosystem of next-generation organisations… We need to work together and establish easy ways to map-out the knowledge of best practices, patterns and ideas for building the new world.” Victor Vorski

“And, what I find even more impressive, is that this ecosystem lies inside a bigger one, incarnating a society’s transition from competitive to collaborative models, including things like collaborative and sharing economy, crowd-funding, alternative moneys, makers movement, transition movement, open source, decentralised renewable energies, co-design, etc…” Martin Mahaux

“Thanks for sharing George. It’s beautiful and amazing to see the exponential convergence of movements and groups coming together to form our next stage of human consciousness. We live in an amazing time, one for which I am truly grateful.” Malek Jaber

Last December, we re-published an infographic depicting “7 Movements That Will Help You Understand the Future of Work,” and few months later we added information about another 7 movements. All these maps lack the depth and granularity that would make them truly useful to those who are seeking, for example, for a Teal organization to work with in their industry, or seeking people experienced in facilitating the introduction of the three Teal breakthroughs.

Here’s another reason why we need such maps and why we need them ASAP:

In May last year, I heard Frederic Laloux speaking, in a video message sent to the Integral European Conference (IEC 2016), about the possibility of the Teal movement reaching the tipping point in 10 years. Wow! Of course, it’s just a possibility; it might take much longer, or even a bit shorter time, who knows… Let’s think: how would we know when we are there? Imagine a world in which wholeness, evolutionary purpose, and self-management have become the mainstream way of organizing work. Can you? Try feeling into what it is like living and working in that next-stage world.

To get there, we should enable successful, transformative practices to travel far, in ways that facilitate their rapid take-up everywhere where they are applicable. That would ensure, for example, that an innovative method combining “centres of excellence” and “project teams” in Mastek, a Teal-inspired software organization in India, would rapidly find its way to self-managing IT companies in other countries.

The better our maps of the ecosystem are, the easier it will be for people to find companies to work in their region, where their calling is honoured and their wholeness is welcome. It will be easier also for change leaders and facilitators to find peers in other organizations that they can learn from and with, and inspire their own Teal journey.

But how to create a good, data-rich and visual representation of the “next-stage org” ecosystem that keeps becoming more diverse and expanded, by the day? Even thinking only of the Teal stream’s 7 movements map, the task is bigger than what Enlivening Edge can carry out alone.

If you have a passion for staying in touch with the tip of the Teal wave, and helping others do the same, then why not come and help shape the Teal Mapping Project?

Presently, we have:

• several initial lists of Teal-ish organizations to map
• a carefully crafted list of information types worth collecting
• a mapping process that includes a survey, generative interviewing, and data visualization
• access to a visual mapping software
• some people ready to start conducting generative interviews

What the project still needs is YOU to (co-)energize one of the Teal mapper roles, get trained in generative interviewing, do your interviews, and fill in our data collection templates. (If you have experience in project management, your skill and talent in that area, too, would be much appreciated.)

• Do you want to conduct interviews with pioneers of next-stage organizations?
• Are you a founder/member of an organization with at least 5 members, and if yes, do you want to be interviewed and featured on the map?
• Do you have some experience/interest in data visualization, or managing virtual projects?

If your answer to any of those question is a resounding YES, or if you want to receive some specific clarification, please contact us and tell us why and how you want to help.

P.S. If you’re interested in the broader, evolutionary context of this mapping work, visit my blog on Mapping Our Way to the Next Civilization.

George Pór is an evolutionary thinker and a strategic learning partner to visionary leaders in business, government, and civil society. He is the originator of Enlivening Edge, and has been publishing the Blog of Collective Intelligence since 2003. A select list of his articles and book chapters on the fields of collective intelligence, organizational and social renewal can be found here.  More about George’s work on the enlivening edge of planetary transformation is here.