Episode 03: Evolutionary organizations

The Gender at Work Podcast

In our third episode, hosted by Aruna Rao and David Kelleher, we would like to share a discussion on Fredric Laloux’s popular book, Reinventing Organisations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness, published in 2014. In his book, Laloux discusses the evolution of organisational structures and he labels each type by a different color. The focus of the book is on the colour TEAL, which represents organizations with an evolutionary purpose and a non-hierarchical management style. We are joined by Michel Friedman, our Senior Associate based in South Africa, Tania Principe, our Director of Management and Operations and Kailee Jordan, a G@W Associate based in Somaliland. Some of the questions we asked ourselves were: (i) what are the evolutionary stages of organizations according to Laloux and why are they important? (ii) what is meant by the “evolutionary purpose of organization”? (iii) what is needed for discovering an organization’s evolutionary purpose? (iv) what stops this from happening?