The Model comes from the book Reinventing Organisations. The model provides a clear picture of how culture may evolve in an organisation
In the book reinventing organisations, Frederic Laloux recounts the history of how people have worked together in organisations.
He proposed different paradigms, each with their own colour and characteristics.
A summary of each paradigm or perspectives is shown in the table below
Red | Amber | Orange | Green | Teal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Guiding Metaphor | Wolf Pack | Army | A machine | A Family | Living Systems |
Defining Characteristic | Powerful Leader | Strict Hierarchical Structure | Competition within and with other organisations, focus on financial profit and growth and objectives-based management | Delighting customers, making decisions based on a set of shared values and high engagement from everyone in the organisations. | Anti-Fragile organisational structures, alignment through and evolutional purpose and distributed decision making. |
Breakthrough Ideas | Command Authority and division of labour | Long term focus, Strong Processes, Formal Roles | Balancing the needs of all stakeholders, a focus on culture over strategy and true empowerment of members in the organisation regardless of their level. | Balancing the needs of all stakeholders, a focus on culture over strategy and true empowerment of members in the organisation regardless of their level. | Wholeness, Self Management and an Evolution Purpose |
Example organisations: | Mafia, street gangs and tribal militia | Public Schools (USA), Governments, Traditional Churches | Most Large Corporations and many Public Universities | Southwest Airlines and Ben & Jerries ice cream | Morning Star, Patagonia and Buurtzorg |
Limitation | Shortsightedness | When conditions change which require new approaches | When the profit motive is not fulfilling enough | Consensus building leads to slow decision making | ??? |
Paradigms / Perspectives
Red
The metaphor of the wolf pack is useful when describing the red paradigm as people would organise into tribes with a powerful leader who inspires fear with the group's enemies and compliance within the group. This paradigm is most useful in Chaos where the powerful leader might be the only reason the group survives.
The breakthrough ideas command authority where a leader sets a direction and people follow allowing them to work towards a common goal and the division of labour where people specialise in a specific type of work that benefits the overall group
The main limitation for red organisations is that they are shortsighted which is required to survive the chaos
Guiding Metaphor: Wolf Pack
Defining Characteristic: Powerful Leader
Breakthrough Ideas: Command Authority and division of labour
Example organisations: Mafia, street gangs and tribal militia
Limitation: Shortsightedness
Amber
These organisations evolved as organisations in Red which are fear-based were not able to have long term success.
Amber emerged as hierarchical patterns (Roman Army or Catholic Church) enabled the focus on long term goals which is only possible with stable leadership.
A strict hierarchical structure leads to stability and exerts control over lower levels of the hierarchy.
Guiding Metaphor: Army
Defining Characteristic: Strict Hierarchical Structure
Breakthrough Ideas: Long term focus, Strong Processes, Formal Roles
Example organisations: Public Schools (USA), Governments, Traditional Churches
Limitation: When conditions change which require new approaches
Orange
This paradigm evolved when Amber organisations were not able to adapt to changing conditions.
Orange emerged in the age of reason along with American and French revolutions, where individual meritocracy meant that the best ideas had a chance of competing regardless of an individuals status.
Most large organisations are in the orange paradigm and allow individuals to rise in the organisation based on their skills, intelligence and creativity.
The limitation of the orange paradigm is when people feel the profit motive is not fulfilling enough, often viewing themselves as a cog in the machine. A 2013 Gallop poll found that only 30% of US workers were engaged at work.
Guiding Metaphor: A machine
Defining Characteristic: Competition within and with other organisations, focus on financial profit and growth and objectives-based management
Breakthrough Ideas: Innovation, Accountability and Meritocracy
Example organisations: Most Large Corporations and many Public Universities
Limitation: When the profit motive is not fulfilling enough
Green
Green has emerged as people seek more meaning in their work. The Agile and lean movement emerged from companies with this perspective.
A part of the limitation is when consensus building leads to slow decision making and the hierarchy structures start to conflict with peoples desires to have more autonomy.
Guiding Metaphor: A Family
Defining Characteristic: Delighting customers, making decisions based on a set of shared values and high engagement from everyone in the organisations.
Breakthrough Ideas: Balancing the needs of all stakeholders, a focus on culture over strategy and true empowerment of members in the organisation regardless of their level.
Example organisations: Southwest Airlines and Ben & Jerries ice cream
Limitation: Consensus building leads to slow decision making
Teal
This level is emerging as organisations have discovered how to work effectively without hierarchal structures
Anti-fragile organisational structures which are either flat or based on interlocking circles of evolving roles aligning around and evolution purpose, making the world a better place.
Distributed decision-making authority uses the advice process where any colleague can make any decision in the organisation so long as they have considered the advice from anyone which the decision might impact.
The breakthrough idea of wholeness allows people to bring their whole selves to work; creative, spiritual and intellectual and they feel safe that they will not be judged for being themselves.
In most team organisations there are no managers and the purpose of the organisation is not owned by anyone person, it evolves as different people join the organisation and what the organisation learns about how to make a difference in the world.
Examples of teal organisations include Morning Star which is responsible for 40% of the tomato products in the US and Buurtzorg a 7,000 home care nursing organisation.
Guiding Metaphor: Living Systems
Defining Characteristic: Anti-Fragile organisational structures, alignment through and evolutional purpose and distributed decision making.
Breakthrough Ideas: Wholeness, Self Management and an Evolution Purpose
Example organisations: Morning Star, Patagonia and Buurtzorg.
Limitation: ???
With Agile and Lean
Agile and Lean are rooted in the green paradigm and most of the struggles with adoption are in organisations whose leaders have an orange perspective.
For leadership in orange organisations, agile and lean are seen as process improvements to improve productivity, efficiency or profits.
However, without adopting the cultural perspective of green, only practices that align with orange are adopted and overlayed with orange approaches like top-down management.
Agile thrives in organisations with a green perspective. In a teal organisation, agile practices become almost overkill as the organisation has evolved with their own practices which include agile values.
How to move from Orange to Green?
Seek out other companies and individuals adopting the green paradigm and perspective, especially those in leadership positions and work with them to drive the cultural change required to make agile work as it was designs
From Laloux research, it indicates that only the top leader in an organisation can successfully transfer it vertically, for example from orange to green.
However, horizontal transformation is possible, for example working within the orange perspective to make it more vibrate place with innovation and objective-based management and away from micromanagement
Complexity
One colour might is not necessarily better than another, there are valuable ideas in each perspective
However, there is data that shows the newer perspectives are better at handling increasing levels of complexity and interconnectedness.
This does not mean every situation require this and it doesn't mean only green and teal organisations will be successful.
Newer perspectives also include older ones, so using the example of a Russian doll, so an organisation with a teal perspective can and should still use the orange or amber ideas when they might best meet the needs of the organisation.
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