By Margaret Ricci for Enlivening Edge Magazine
Note: Margaret will tell the story of her personal journey into and through Teal organizations as Enlivening Edge Community Conversation’s First Thursday storyteller on December 1. Here in this article she shares some of her views and learnings. If you are not yet subscribed to get notifications of the Community Conversations, go here and subscribe by the end of your day on Tuesday November 29, to receive access information for participating in this video conversation.
Our World needs to awaken, but instead, we’d rather slumber. What we teach needs to change.
What Has Been
I’ve seen the evolution of business in the last 40 years in the workforce. It was the age of C-suites and Middle Managers – a formal “climbing of the corporate ladder.” It was a caste system as poignant as the feudal systems of the Middle Ages where “power over” and power-brokering was the norm.
From the 1970s-1980s, those who were not executives had no future and were “value-less.” We could be easily replaced with others who had nearly the same skill sets. There was no one who valued us at our cores and no reason for leadership to keep one of us over another. We were homogeneous and expendable.
It was sobering and humiliating to feel this “valuelessness” perspective. But it kept us in our places if we wanted a paycheck, especially if we didn’t have a college degree. Leadership and middle managers were allowed to malign us and each other anytime and for any reason they wanted. It wasn’t unusual to hear managers yelling and screaming at each other or their staff, every day. It also wasn’t unusual for the rest of us to cower at our desks, waiting for the screaming to be aimed at us. We dared not breathe. These old business models didn’t even hint that we could have something richer and far better for humanity.
Where We Are Now
In more recent years, we have discovered that people are different, and that these differences enrich us as we work within our organizations. Nothing says this more profoundly than the acceptance of the Positive Psychology movement. There is an extreme beauty that we can lend to each other as we learn how to give of ourselves into teaming, morphing, and releasing into other teams, which then morph and release into multiple teams.
Never has there been a time such as we’ve seen in the last 5-15 years where an organization’s competitive and comparative advantages have resided inside the strengths of its internal teaming capabilities. And yet, we still function within the “valuelessness” of our older business models.
We are ready for new models that value the humans first inside our businesses, while we also work on behalf of the organization. To survive and reach for the future good of humanity and for the good of our planet, we need to change our models. The intuition of Teal is at-hand. Are we ready for what we must contribute? If we’re not, the movement might surely die from starvation. As a caterpillar gorges itself prior to spinning its cocoon, that is what is before us.
We want to change, but our models have broken and there is nothing to replace them for the moment until we can intuit them inside a new model. Stripping us of our valuelessness is needed to clear the way for the changes inside our futures as we reach for a Teal worldview and its ways of organizing. We have intuited the future as the metamorphosis of a new model but the strictures of the old models have not given way yet and do not lend themselves to the fullness of the change we intuit. We are straitjacketed.
Here’s What We Need to Change
We have multiple inflection points where we can affect change:
- Our Colleges: Nothing says “old school,” quite literally, more than our colleges continuing to teach that Amber, Orange and Green models are the only business models to study. We need an army of educators to help our college systems understand that things are changing. This is especially true for colleges and universities that have Entrepreneurship Degrees. It can also be a differentiation factor for college selection by the student, as college enrollment continues to decrease. And yet, unfortunately, colleges and universities are not usually on the leading edge of movements. Their teaching follows along after a movement has been established. How can we get them up-to-speed?
- New Startups, Incubators and Accelerators, along with their ecosystems: New Startups can and should be given an education on Teal mindsets. They should be allowed to choose their models, but shouldn’t they also know that whatever model they choose at startup may be transitioning shortly to Teal?
If we are only 8-15 years away from the 10% Tipping Point of Teal becoming mainstream, why not get the educational jump on this now, rather than set up something that may be going away? Forward-thinking founders, especially if they have grown up on the old models, are young pioneers, or early adopters, who are ready for this.
But in order to gain funding, these forward-thinking startups also need their Incubators, Accelerators, and VCs to understand Teal models. Educating this mass of individuals can influence a multitude of new organizations. After a 40-year decline in US entrepreneurship, Covid sparked a 24% increase from 2019 to 2020, with 2021 and 2022 figures that continued to increase at a high pace, and with projections of continued growth in 2023+. (US Census Bureau, October 2022 ).
- Educating Current Organizations: As Erik Østergaard discusses in his excellent book, Teal Dots in an Orange World, we need to help existing organizations intuit, and gradually replace their current practices with Teal Dots. Swallowing small doses of change that can increase their success for their employees and their business now, and get them ready for the future is a win-win proposition.
We should be ready with a global clearinghouse of consultants who can help organizations capture their “Teal Dots” no matter what country they’re in, where they can find or select a consultant that fits their needs. This repository of consultants should be able to be searched by Teal tenet, or by Beginning Advanced Integrations. How could we leverage it for the future?
We, who know and love what our world is intuiting in the Teal model, are the warriors who can help our world change its business practices. But we dare not be halfhearted in this movement, for our world’s sake. This higher calling is a call to action for humanity and might be the first step toward different kinds of world change. A world that connects its humans into its own heart-throb is ready for more. Are we ready for what’s needed? Can you see yourself contributing to the education of our world?
Margaret Ricci’s Life Purpose is to help usher in the new organizational model called “Teal Organizational Paradigm” in the US and around the world.
She’s been a part of Amber and Orange Organizations since she was 18 and knows the good they have done in fulfilling an organization’s objectives, while at the same time, acknowledging the damage they have done in human relationships at the employee and leadership levels.
Margaret says we must ask ourselves this basic question now: Can’t we have both well-working, profitable organizations AND high care of and highest purpose for every employee? She works on behalf of the intersection of both of these beliefs. https://culturalstrategiesllc.com/
