Teal Dots/Orange World

I’ve been a fan of Erik Korsvik Østergaard‘s work for a couple of years and have loved what this Danish consultant lends to the Teal Movement. In 2021, I read his book, “Teal Dots in an Orange World,” and thought it was brilliantly constructed as the way to start Teal conversations in an already built organization. Believe me – I have crib notes all over that book! We help organizations ask themselves the questions about where to start first, even though there may be caveats in all three of the Teal Breakthroughs as we move from one type of organizational structure into our futures.

Instead, we ask, “Where does it make the most sense to start?” Our leadership teams may throw up their hands and say, “It’s too difficult to change – we’re used to our hierarchy or matrix. What Teal offers is pie in the sky when we’re still trying to get things done, make money, make products, or create service offerings. We can’t change now.” But the question really is, “What can we start, on a limited basis, that can help us achieve even a small measure of one of the Teal Breakthroughs?”

In Erik’s post, he helps us take stock of what signals exist in the Future of Work. They can be weak or strong, but movement on intuitive strong signals make better changes for the Future of Work. Whichever way we think about our futures, they either doom us to continue our status quo march or can set the stage for persistence in moving our organizations forward toward Teal.