Devaluing Humanity: How the Coming Teal Organizations Movement is Shaping Change in Our World

“An inequitable world based on extraction, exploitation, and expropriation cannot sustain itself. It is mere common sense to work towards a world that works for all or else we implode. It is the only way out.”
– Sahana Chattopadnyay
As my Teal sister in India, Sahana Chattopadhyay, writes, we are at a crossroads in our world’s vital path. Will we choose our present profit-centered and humanity-depleted organizations because we are still so besotted with wealth gain? Or will we take the highest path possible – gaining the best that humanity and our world have to offer?

We are approaching a time in our organizations when we must make the ultimate choice: carry on with focused wealth gain for the sake of a few, or pivot toward the truth that we live in an interconnected world where what hurts one, hurts all.

When Covid and George Floyd’s murder hit our world in 2020, I hoped that we would finally create something of lasting importance for the good of our collective world.

But our “one-world” didn’t last long. In fact, many scams surfaced as we came back to our ultra-profitability. Now we see the pendulum swing from profit focus to employees holding their organizations hostage while Quiet Quitting, or leaving altogether in The Great Resignation. Yet, both movements are only the current names to something that has been happening for centuries: the devaluing of humanity.

How can we start the real work of changing our organizations, which will change our world?

We are on the precipice of a major business model change that has the potential to transform our world. This is the time to build virtuous organizations of purpose and good that can create wealth enough for all.

There are many books on these changes, yet none of them has taken the world by storm as much as Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, 2014 (see Sahana’s article). What we are seeing and intuiting inside local and global businesses today has a name: Teal Organizations.

Author – Frederic Laloux:
·      From Brussels, Belgium; now in Upstate NY
·      Former McKinsey & Company Organizational Consultant
·      His 3-year research culminated in the book, “Reinventing Organizations”
·      Thinkers50* – Ranking #39 in 2019 and #33 in 2021 (trending ↑)

Book – Reinventing Organizations:
·      Self-published, 2014 – with NO PR
·      800,000+ copies sold (a nonfiction book with 10,000 copies sold over its lifetime is considered a success)
·      Voluntarily translated into 19 languages

Thinkers50 is a global ranking of the top 50 business authors.

THIS IS a Global Movement – one whose time has come. Are we ready for it?

Join me as we explore the Teal Organizational Paradigm – and the changes coming our way as we bridge the gap from 1st Tier to 2nd Tier Thinking.

Let’s have a discussion about Teal – exploring what got us here and how we can make this crucial pivot for humanity in our organizations.