Frederic Lau discovering the organizations of the future. Frederic Lalu discovering the organizations of the future. About Discovering the Organizations of the Future by Frederic Laloux


This book is well complemented by:

From good to great

Why some companies make breakthroughs and others don't

Jim Collins

Great by choice

Jim Collins, Morten Hansen

Corporate Lifecycle Management

Itzhak Adizes

Managing change

How to effectively manage change in society, business and personal life

Itzhak Adizes

Reinventing Organizations

A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Frederic Lalu

Discovering the Organizations of the Future

"Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"

Information

from the publisher

Scientific editor Evgeny Golub

Published with permission from Frederic Laloux and Johannes Terwitte

Published in Russian for the first time

Lalu, Frederick

Discovering the organizations of the future / Frederic Lalu; per. from English. V. Kulyabina; [scient. ed. E. Golub]. - M. : Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2016.

ISBN 978-5-00057-786-8

Modern management skills are hopelessly outdated. Traditional recipes offered by books on organizational development are part of the problem, not the solution. The author of this book, based on many years of in-depth research, tells what will be the organizations of the future, built on completely different principles - integral, self-managed and evolutionary. It shows how such companies develop - both from scratch and evolving from existing organizations.

This is a book for business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, students and anyone interested in management and organizational development.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by law firm Vegas Lex.

© Frederic Laloux, 2014

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2016

Science editor's preface

I bought Frederic Lalu's book Reinventing Organizations a little over a year ago. Downloaded to Kindle and went to the airport. The plane took off, and I leisurely began to read, not expecting any revelations from the author. After two hours, I realized that I would do everything in my power to get this book published in Russian.

For twenty years I have climbed the winding career ladder of the largest international companies. The rules of a business visit will forever remain in my memory. sales representative and a list of values Mars. My immunity to corporate mythology has been tempered by my five years on the board of directors at Danone. I know hundreds of successful corporate managers from the world's most innovative companies. We've devoured tankers of coffee comparing our experiences, and this experience, alas, paints the same bleak picture.

Corporations put potential candidates through an elaborate selection process that takes weeks and months. Huge amounts of money are spent on training promising employees. As a result, these talented and well-trained people will spend most of their time simulating meaningful activities. The vast intellectual resource of nations is now busy inventing reasons why sales targets are not met (or exceeded). The geniuses of combinatorics advocate brilliant versions of budgets, fit only for virtuoso splurge in the eyes of shareholders. Born leaders expend megawatts of charisma to get their teams to believe in the reach and necessity of obvious nonsense.

Are we doomed to humbly accept this everyday mockery of common sense? How long will consumers pay for a performance in this theater of the absurd? After all, is there really no other way to organize the large-scale production and distribution of necessary goods and services?

Many researchers undertook to answer these damned questions. Books on the topic organizational culture, which I had to meet so far, for the most part belonged to two conditional genres:

Science fiction- description of the structure of the "correct" corporation and a collection of magic recipes for turning any company into the "correct" one;

satire - a mocking description of the hopelessness of life in a corporation, plus a set of myths about how to find yourself in downshifting, startup or freelancing.

In practice, magic recipes, instead of the desired increase in the "involvement" of employees, only increase the degree of their cynicism, and the authors of satirical essays offer nothing but bile.

The book you now hold in your hands belongs to a completely different genre. This practical guide to create organizations of the future - organizations fed by the inexhaustible creative energy of a Human being engaged in labor filled with Meaning.

After for long years working as a McKinsey consultant, Frédéric Laloux decided to get serious about finding and systematically studying alternative ways company management. For three years, with all the thoroughness of a professional consultant, he studied examples of outstanding organizations of our time, analyzing their development from the standpoint of existing theories of the evolution of organizational culture.

As a result painstaking work Lalu, like a natural scientist, discovered the new kind organizations. He compares these organizations with “aliens from other worlds”, their culture and principles are so different from what we are used to. Over the past decades, these aliens have begun to quietly appear on different continents in a variety of industries: from engineering and food production to medical care and school education. They have managed to not only succeed in what has become Meaning for employees and founders, they achieve incredible results where, it would seem, nothing can be improved.

The founders of the organizations studied in the book did not know each other. However, their views and values ​​surprisingly coincide and can be presented as a special type of worldview. Frederic details how this worldview transforms the way we know how to manage. From a detailed description of everyday management practices and organizational processes, it becomes clear that it is impossible to enter the next round of organizational development with the help of declarations of values. Magic works only if you have managed to grow into full height human dignity. You can't pretend to be "different", you can become.

The author of the book calls the special worldview of the founders Turquoise organizations main ingredient for success. These organizations, like good messengers from our future, are encouraging: humanity is able to overcome the threatening contradiction between the desperate need of modern man for Meaning and that ersatz of meanings that the dominant control systems based on the fears of the oppressed ego can offer.

This book was published on English language in early 2014 as a PDF file on the website www.reinventingorganizations.com, which Frederick made up himself. Since then, thanks to the efforts of thousands of grateful readers, it has been published in many languages ​​and has become one of the most talked about books on organizational culture around the world.

I am proud to have helped expedite the publication of this book in Russian, and I believe that Frederic will be able to inspire you as he inspired me.

Frederic Laloux

Reinventing Organizations

A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Scientific editor Evgeny Golub

Published with permission from Frederic Laloux and Johannes Terwitte

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by Vegas Lex law firm.

© Frederic Laloux, 2014

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2016

* * *

This book is well complemented by:

Why some companies make breakthroughs and others don't

Jim Collins, Morten Hansen

How to effectively manage change in society, business and personal life

Itzhak Adizes

Science editor's preface

I bought Frederic Lalu's book Reinventing Organizations a little over a year ago. Downloaded to Kindle and went to the airport. The plane took off, and I leisurely began to read, not expecting any revelations from the author. After two hours, I realized that I would do everything in my power to get this book published in Russian.

For twenty years I have climbed the winding career ladder of the largest international companies. The rules of a business visit by a sales representative and the list of values ​​of the Mars company will forever remain in my memory. My immunity to corporate mythology has been tempered by my five years on the board of directors at Danone. I know hundreds of successful corporate managers from the world's most innovative companies. We've devoured tankers of coffee comparing our experiences, and this experience, alas, paints the same bleak picture.

Corporations put potential candidates through an elaborate selection process that takes weeks and months. Huge amounts of money are spent on training promising employees. As a result, these talented and well-trained people will spend most of their time simulating meaningful activities. The vast intellectual resource of nations is now busy inventing reasons why sales targets are not met (or exceeded). The geniuses of combinatorics advocate brilliant versions of budgets, fit only for virtuoso splurge in the eyes of shareholders. Born leaders expend megawatts of charisma to get their teams to believe in the reach and necessity of obvious nonsense.

Are we doomed to humbly accept this everyday mockery of common sense? How long will consumers pay for a performance in this theater of the absurd? After all, is there really no other way to organize the large-scale production and distribution of necessary goods and services?

Many researchers undertook to answer these damned questions. The books on organizational culture that I have come across so far have mostly fallen into two conventional genres:

Science fiction - a description of the structure of the "correct" corporation and a collection of magic recipes for turning any company into a "correct" one;

Satire is a mocking description of the hopelessness of life in a corporation, plus a set of myths about how to find yourself in downshifting, startup or freelancing.

In practice, magic recipes, instead of the desired increase in the "involvement" of employees, only increase the degree of their cynicism, and the authors of satirical essays offer nothing but bile.

The book you now hold in your hands belongs to a completely different genre. This is a practical guide to creating organizations of the future - organizations fed by the inexhaustible creative energy of a Human being engaged in labor filled with Meaning.

After many years as a McKinsey consultant, Frédéric Laloux decided to get serious about finding and systematically exploring alternative ways to manage companies. For three years, with all the thoroughness of a professional consultant, he studied examples of outstanding organizations of our time, analyzing their development from the standpoint of existing theories of the evolution of organizational culture.

As a result of painstaking work, Lalu, like a natural scientist, discovered a new kind of organization. He compares these organizations with “aliens from other worlds”, their culture and principles are so different from what we are used to. Over the past decades, these aliens have begun to quietly appear on different continents in a variety of industries: from engineering and food production to medical care and school education. They have managed to not only succeed in what has become Meaning for employees and founders, they achieve incredible results where, it would seem, nothing can be improved.

The founders of the organizations studied in the book did not know each other. However, their views and values ​​surprisingly coincide and can be presented as a special type of worldview. Frederic details how this worldview transforms the way we know how to manage. From a detailed description of everyday management practices and organizational processes, it becomes clear that it is impossible to enter the next round of organizational development with the help of declarations of values. Magic works only if you have managed to grow into the full height of human dignity. You can't pretend to be "different", but you can become.

The author of the book calls the special worldview of the founders of the Turquoise organizations the main component of success. These organizations, like good messengers from our future, are encouraging: humanity is able to overcome the threatening contradiction between the desperate need of modern man for Meaning and that ersatz of meanings that the dominant control systems based on the fears of the oppressed ego can offer.

This book was published in English in early 2014 as a PDF file on the website www.reinventingorganizations.com, which Frederick made up on his own. Since then, thanks to the efforts of thousands of grateful readers, it has been published in many languages ​​and has become one of the most talked about books on organizational culture around the world.

I am proud to have helped expedite the publication of this book in Russian, and I believe that Frederic will be able to inspire you as he inspired me.

Evgeny Golub

Introduction
Formation of a new organizational model

Nothing can be changed by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that will make the existing one hopelessly obsolete.

Richard Buckminster Fuller

In 350 BC. e. the great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, in one of his fundamental works, stated that women have fewer teeth than men. Today we know very well that this is nonsense. But for almost two thousand years the Western world considered this statement to be an unshakable truth, until one fine day someone was visited by a frankly revolutionary thought: let's count!

The scientific method of hypothesizing and then testing is so deeply rooted in modern thinking that it's hard for us to imagine how anyone could trust authority to such an extent and not test it. Weren't people in the past as intelligent as we are now? However, before we strictly condemn our ancestors, let us ask ourselves the question: will future generations not make fun of us in the same way? Haven't we also been captured by a simplified approach to understanding the world?

There is every reason to believe that this is so. For example, let me ask a simple question: how many m O zgov in a person? I guess the answer is: one (or, suspecting a trick, you will say - two, meaning the right and left hemisphere). According to the available data, the correct answer is three. First, of course, a large brain, but secondly, a small brain in the heart, and thirdly, another one in the digestive tract. The last two are much smaller than the first, yet they are completely autonomous systems.

And here the most interesting begins. The brain in the heart and the brain in the gut are relatively recent discoveries, although surveillance technologies have been able to detect them much earlier. All you need to see them is a corpse, a knife and a simple microscope. Actually, the brain in the digestive system discovered quite a long time ago, in the 1860s, by the German physician Auerbach. The discovery was further confirmed by two of his English colleagues Bayliss and Starling. And then something out of the ordinary happened: in medical circles, for some reason, they forgot about the brain in the intestine. He disappeared from sight for a century! And it was rediscovered only in the late 1990s. American neurogastroenterologist Michael Gershon.

How could this be forgotten in medical circles? I believe this is due to the peculiarities of the modern worldview: in a hierarchical picture of the world, only one brain can control everything. Likewise, there should be only one boss at the head of any organization. In everyday life, the expressions “understand with the heart” and “feel with the gut” have long been used. But it is impossible to imagine the coordinated work of three autonomous O zgov, based on the need for hierarchy in the world. And it may not be a coincidence that the other two brains were (re)discovered just as the Internet became the dominant force in our lives. The age of the Internet has accelerated the emergence new painting world in which distributed control is provided instead of a top-down hierarchy. Having accepted such a picture of the world, we will also accept the idea that we have not one brain, but several, and all work together.

It is difficult for us to understand how people in the Middle Ages could believe Aristotle's claims that women have fewer teeth than men. At the same time, we ourselves can become hostages of our own ideas - just like our ancestors. Modern scientists have not looked into the microscope because "only one brain is possible"; in the same way, Galileo's contemporaries refused to look through a telescope, because it is inconceivable that our God-created planet would not be the center of the universe.

Limitations of modern organizational models

The subject of my research is organizations and teamwork rather than medicine and astronomy. But the essence of the question does not fundamentally change: is it possible that our ideas about organizations are limited to the current worldview? Can we create a more productive, more meaningful, more human process of working together if we just change our mindset?

The question is rather strange. It can be perceived as a manifestation of ingratitude towards what has already been achieved. For thousands and thousands of years, people lived on the brink of starvation, in fear of epidemics, in the full power of drought and even the common cold. And then, for no apparent reason, in two centuries we gained unprecedented wealth and previously unattainable life expectancy. Exceptional progress has occurred not as a result of the efforts of individuals, but as a result of the joint work of people in organizations.

Large and small business of the West in the conditions market economy created previously unthinkable wealth, and is now lifting millions of people out of poverty in India, China, Africa, everywhere in the world. We have built incredibly complex supply chains that increasingly connect everyone to everyone and thereby strengthen peace among peoples better than any political mechanism.

A dense network of organizations - research centers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, medical schools, health insurance companies - weaves into a very complex healthcare system, unimaginable a hundred years ago. Over the past century, thanks to this extensive network, life expectancy in the United States has increased by almost 20 years. Child mortality has been reduced by 90% and maternal mortality by 99%. Such eternal scourges of the human race as polio, leprosy, smallpox and tuberculosis, even in the poorest countries of the world, for the most part, are found only in history books.

In education network educational institutions– primary and secondary schools, colleges, graduate schools and graduate schools – has given millions of children and young people an education that was once the privilege of a few. Never before in the history of mankind have there been free government systems learning available to every child. The highest level of universal literacy today taken for granted is without precedent in history.

Over the past decades, non-profit organizations around the world have been creating jobs at an accelerated pace, far ahead in this direction. commercial enterprises. An increasing number of people are giving their time, energy and money to what is important to them personally and to the world.

The modern principle of organization has caused the sensational progress of mankind in less than two centuries - one moment in the history of the development of our species. None of the latest achievements in the history of mankind would be possible without organizations as forms of cooperation. However, now many feel that the current method of management has practically exhausted itself. We are becoming more and more disillusioned with the way modern organizations work and function. Numerous surveys consistently show that for those who work at the foot of the pyramid, work is more often associated with oppressive fear and dull routine than with a thirst for creativity and meaningfulness. The Dilbert comics have become a significant cultural phenomenon and can tell a lot about how far organizations go to make collective work something pathetic and pointless.

And this applies not only to the foot of the pyramid. There's a shameful secret that I've discovered in fifteen years as a consultant and coach to executives: life at the top of the pyramid is hardly more fulfilling. Behind the beautiful facade and the bravado of the leaders of powerful corporations lies the same silent suffering. Often feverish activity is an unsuccessful attempt to hide deep inner disappointment. Muscle-flexing, intrigue, and intra-corporate strife eventually take their toll on everyone. Organizations most often become arenas for the struggle of our "egos", indifferent to the deepest aspirations of humanity.

Intuitively, we feel that management is outdated. We see that its traditions and established order look ridiculous in the 21st century. Therefore, from the dense characters of the Dilbert comics or episodes from the TV series The Office, we immediately cringe.

Those who work in government offices and non-profit organizations, are also often devoid of enthusiasm for their work. Even those who work by vocation are not immune from disappointment. Teachers, doctors and nurses are abandoning their calling en masse. Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers go for the sake of appearances. And we have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions, where doctors and nurses are deprived of the opportunity to show their heartfelt concern for patients.

Questions that prompted the author to research

The current ways of dealing with organizations' current problems often exacerbate rather than solve them. Most organizations, blazing intricate ways of material incentives, go through many rounds of reorganization, centralization and decentralization, through the introduction of new information technologies, the proclamation of new tasks and new systems key indicators. But the impression that existing method management has practically exhausted itself, is increasing, and all traditional recipes often turn out to be part of the problem, not its solution.

We strive for something more, for fundamentally new and better ways organizing collaboration. But is this really possible or is it a pipe dream? If organizations in which the potential of an employee will be fully revealed can still be created, then what should they look like? How to breathe life into them? These are the questions at the heart of this book.

For me, they are of not only theoretical, but also quite practical interest. More and more people are striving to create organizations based on humanity. The catch is that we do not quite understand how to do this. Many of us no longer need to be convinced of the urgent need to renew companies, businesses, schools and hospitals. All we need is faith that this is possible and answers to very specific questions. The hierarchical pyramid is already perceived as something outdated, but what can replace it? How to make decisions? It's good to have everyone involved in making important decisions, not just the bosses, but won't that lead to chaos? How to deal with promotions and promotions wages? Is it possible to solve these issues without intrigues and politicking? How do you run meetings in a way that is productive and uplifts the participants? How can we ensure that in meetings we speak sincerely, and not only guided by selfish motives? How can we be guided by the most important purpose in everything we do, and at the same time not give free rein to the cynicism that often permeates the pompous programs of many companies? We don't need some grand concept of a new kind of organization. We need concrete answers to the many questions that arise.

The greatest danger in times of instability is not instability itself, but actions in accordance with the logic of yesterday.

Peter Drucker

Such a practical approach does not at all prevent taking into account possible global social and environmental consequences. Planet Earth is no longer capable of sustaining the way we do business. Our organizations are to a large extent responsible for the attrition natural resources, destruction of ecosystems, climate change, merciless exploitation of water resources and invaluable topsoil. We play dangerous and adventurous games with the future, hoping that with the help of new technologies we can heal the wounds that modernity continues to inflict on the planet. Economic model, focused on unbridled growth with limited resources, is fraught with disaster.

The current financial crisis may be just one of the first shocks that herald the coming powerful earthquake. It is no exaggeration to say that the very survival of many species, ecosystems and all of humanity depends on our ability to climb higher high form consciousness, so that, having learned to cooperate on a new level, we begin to improve our relations with the outside world and reduce the harm we have already caused.

The Evolution of Organizations in Historical Perspective (Part I)

Einstein owns the assertion that no problem can be solved at the level of consciousness at which it arises. Perhaps we need to reach a new level of consciousness, come to a new worldview, in order to reinvent the principles of organizing the joint work of people. For some, the idea that society can change the worldview and create a fundamentally new type of organization with the help of a new worldview will seem ridiculous. Nevertheless, in the history of mankind, everything happened just like that, and today there are all signs that another change in the way of thinking, as well as in the organizational model, is just around the corner.

Many scientists, including psychologists, philosophers and anthropologists, have analyzed the development of human consciousness. They found that in the entire history of mankind, which is approximately 100 thousand years old, we have successively passed through a series of stages. At each, we made a grand leap forward in the ability to deal with the outside world - in terms of knowledge, morality and psychology. But there is one important aspect that researchers have so far overlooked: every time humanity has risen to a new level, it has invented new way cooperation, a new model of organization.

In the first part of the book, we will talk about how the consciousness of mankind has evolved and how at each stage we have invented new organizational models(These successive models are still relevant today, so the proposed historical review will help to understand the various types of modern organizations and the essence of today's debate about the principles of management).

Developmental psychologists have a lot to say about the next stage in the development of human consciousness, the transition to which has just begun. At this stage, we curb selfishness and begin the search for more original, healthy and holistic forms of being. Judging by the experience of past generations, as we ascend to the next level of consciousness, we will develop an appropriate model of organization.

. “Males have more teeth than females, and in humans, and in sheep, and goats ...” (Aristotle, History of Animals, book 2, chapter 3).

The nervous system in the heart and intestines has 40 million and 100 million neurons, respectively, compared to the 85 billion (on average) neurons in the brain.

Dilbert is the protagonist of Scott Adams comics about office life, about managers and organizations. Note. ed.

Font: Smaller Ah More Ah

Frederic Laloux

Reinventing Organizations

A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Scientific editor Evgeny Golub

Published with permission from Frederic Laloux and Johannes Terwitte

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by Vegas Lex law firm.

© Frederic Laloux, 2014

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2016

* * *

This book is well complemented by:

Why some companies make breakthroughs and others don't

Jim Collins, Morten Hansen

How to effectively manage change in society, business and personal life

Itzhak Adizes

Science editor's preface

I bought Frederic Lalu's book Reinventing Organizations a little over a year ago. Downloaded to Kindle and went to the airport. The plane took off, and I leisurely began to read, not expecting any revelations from the author. After two hours, I realized that I would do everything in my power to get this book published in Russian.

For twenty years I have climbed the winding career ladder of the largest international companies. The rules of a business visit by a sales representative and the list of values ​​of the Mars company will forever remain in my memory. My immunity to corporate mythology has been tempered by my five years on the board of directors at Danone. I know hundreds of successful corporate managers from the world's most innovative companies. We've devoured tankers of coffee comparing our experiences, and this experience, alas, paints the same bleak picture.

Corporations put potential candidates through an elaborate selection process that takes weeks and months. Huge amounts of money are spent on training promising employees. As a result, these talented and well-trained people will spend most of their time simulating meaningful activities. The vast intellectual resource of nations is now busy inventing reasons why sales targets are not met (or exceeded). The geniuses of combinatorics advocate brilliant versions of budgets, fit only for virtuoso splurge in the eyes of shareholders. Born leaders expend megawatts of charisma to get their teams to believe in the reach and necessity of obvious nonsense.

Are we doomed to humbly accept this everyday mockery of common sense? How long will consumers pay for a performance in this theater of the absurd? After all, is there really no other way to organize the large-scale production and distribution of necessary goods and services?

Many researchers undertook to answer these damned questions. The books on organizational culture that I have come across so far have mostly fallen into two conventional genres:

Science fiction - a description of the structure of the "correct" corporation and a collection of magic recipes for turning any company into a "correct" one;

Satire is a mocking description of the hopelessness of life in a corporation, plus a set of myths about how to find yourself in downshifting, startup or freelancing.

In practice, magic recipes, instead of the desired increase in the "involvement" of employees, only increase the degree of their cynicism, and the authors of satirical essays offer nothing but bile.

The book you now hold in your hands belongs to a completely different genre. This is a practical guide to creating organizations of the future - organizations fed by the inexhaustible creative energy of a Human being engaged in labor filled with Meaning.

After many years as a McKinsey consultant, Frédéric Laloux decided to get serious about finding and systematically exploring alternative ways to manage companies. For three years, with all the thoroughness of a professional consultant, he studied examples of outstanding organizations of our time, analyzing their development from the standpoint of existing theories of the evolution of organizational culture.

As a result of painstaking work, Lalu, like a natural scientist, discovered a new kind of organization. He compares these organizations with “aliens from other worlds”, their culture and principles are so different from what we are used to. Over the past decades, these aliens have begun to quietly appear on different continents in a variety of industries: from engineering and food production to medical care and school education. They have managed to not only succeed in what has become Meaning for employees and founders, they achieve incredible results where, it would seem, nothing can be improved.

The founders of the organizations studied in the book did not know each other. However, their views and values ​​surprisingly coincide and can be presented as a special type of worldview. Frederic details how this worldview transforms the way we know how to manage. From a detailed description of everyday management practices and organizational processes, it becomes clear that it is impossible to enter the next round of organizational development with the help of declarations of values. Magic works only if you have managed to grow into the full height of human dignity. You can't pretend to be "different", but you can become.

The author of the book calls the special worldview of the founders of the Turquoise organizations the main component of success. These organizations, like good messengers from our future, are encouraging: humanity is able to overcome the threatening contradiction between the desperate need of modern man for Meaning and that ersatz of meanings that the dominant control systems based on the fears of the oppressed ego can offer.

This book was published in English in early 2014 as a PDF file on the website www.reinventingorganizations.com, which Frederick made up on his own. Since then, thanks to the efforts of thousands of grateful readers, it has been published in many languages ​​and has become one of the most talked about books on organizational culture around the world.

I am proud to have helped expedite the publication of this book in Russian, and I believe that Frederic will be able to inspire you as he inspired me.

Evgeny Golub

Introduction
Formation of a new organizational model

Nothing can be changed by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that will make the existing one hopelessly obsolete.

Richard Buckminster Fuller

In 350 BC. e. the great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, in one of his fundamental works, stated that women have fewer teeth than men. Today we know very well that this is nonsense. But for almost two thousand years the Western world considered this statement to be an unshakable truth, until one fine day someone was visited by a frankly revolutionary thought: let's count!

The scientific method of hypothesizing and then testing is so deeply rooted in modern thinking that it's hard for us to imagine how anyone could trust authority to such an extent and not test it. Weren't people in the past as intelligent as we are now? However, before we strictly condemn our ancestors, let us ask ourselves the question: will future generations not make fun of us in the same way? Haven't we also been captured by a simplified approach to understanding the world?

There is every reason to believe that this is so. For example, let me ask a simple question: how many m O zgov in a person? I guess the answer is: one (or, suspecting a trick, you will say two, meaning the right and left hemispheres). According to the available data, the correct answer is three. First, of course, a large brain, but secondly, a small brain in the heart, and thirdly, another one in the digestive tract. The last two are much smaller than the first, yet they are completely autonomous systems.

And here the most interesting begins. The brain in the heart and the brain in the gut are relatively recent discoveries, although surveillance technologies have been able to detect them much earlier. All you need to see them is a corpse, a knife and a simple microscope. Actually, the brain in the digestive system discovered quite a long time ago, in the 1860s, by the German physician Auerbach. The discovery was further confirmed by two of his English colleagues Bayliss and Starling. And then something out of the ordinary happened: in medical circles, for some reason, they forgot about the brain in the intestine. He disappeared from sight for a century! And it was rediscovered only in the late 1990s. American neurogastroenterologist Michael Gershon.

How could this be forgotten in medical circles? I believe this is due to the peculiarities of the modern worldview: in a hierarchical picture of the world, only one brain can control everything. Likewise, there should be only one boss at the head of any organization. In everyday life, the expressions “understand with the heart” and “feel with the gut” have long been used. But it is impossible to imagine the coordinated work of three autonomous O zgov, based on the need for hierarchy in the world. And it may not be a coincidence that the other two brains were (re)discovered just as the Internet became the dominant force in our lives. The age of the Internet has accelerated the emergence of a new picture of the world in which distributed control is provided instead of a top-down hierarchy. Having accepted such a picture of the world, we will also accept the idea that we have not one brain, but several, and all work together.

It is difficult for us to understand how people in the Middle Ages could believe Aristotle's claims that women have fewer teeth than men. At the same time, we ourselves can become hostages of our own ideas - just like our ancestors. Modern scientists have not looked into the microscope because "only one brain is possible"; in the same way, Galileo's contemporaries refused to look through a telescope, because it is inconceivable that our God-created planet would not be the center of the universe.

Limitations of modern organizational models

The subject of my research is organizations and teamwork, not medicine and astronomy. But the essence of the question does not fundamentally change: is it possible that our ideas about organizations are limited to the current worldview? Can we create a more productive, more meaningful, more human process of working together if we just change our mindset?

The question is rather strange. It can be perceived as a manifestation of ingratitude towards what has already been achieved. For thousands and thousands of years, people lived on the brink of starvation, in fear of epidemics, in the full power of drought and even the common cold. And then, for no apparent reason, in two centuries we gained unprecedented wealth and previously unattainable life expectancy. Exceptional progress has occurred not as a result of the efforts of individuals, but as a result of the joint work of people in organizations.

Large and small businesses in the West, in a market economy, have created previously unthinkable wealth, and now they are lifting millions of people out of poverty in India, China, Africa, everywhere in the world. We have built incredibly complex supply chains that increasingly connect everyone to everyone and thereby strengthen peace among peoples better than any political mechanism.

A dense network of organizations - research centers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, medical schools, health insurance companies - weaves into a highly complex healthcare system, unimaginable even a hundred years ago. Over the past century, thanks to this extensive network, life expectancy in the United States has increased by almost 20 years. Child mortality has been reduced by 90% and maternal mortality by 99%. Such eternal scourges of the human race as polio, leprosy, smallpox and tuberculosis, even in the poorest countries of the world, for the most part, are found only in history books.

In education, a network of educational institutions—primary and secondary schools, colleges, graduate schools, and graduate schools—has given millions of children and young people an education that was once the privilege of a few. Never before in human history have there been free public education systems available to every child. The highest level of universal literacy today taken for granted is without precedent in history.

Over the past decades, non-profit organizations around the world have been creating jobs at an accelerated pace, far ahead of commercial enterprises in this direction. An increasing number of people are giving their time, energy and money to what is important to them personally and to the world.

The modern principle of organization has caused the sensational progress of mankind in less than two centuries - one moment in the history of the development of our biological species. None of the latest achievements in the history of mankind would be possible without organizations as forms of cooperation. However, now many feel that the current method of management has practically exhausted itself. We are becoming more and more disillusioned with the way modern organizations work and function. Numerous surveys consistently show that for those who work at the foot of the pyramid, work is more often associated with oppressive fear and dull routine than with a thirst for creativity and meaningfulness. The Dilbert comics have become a significant cultural phenomenon and can tell a lot about how far organizations go to make collective work something pathetic and pointless.

And this applies not only to the foot of the pyramid. There's a shameful secret that I've discovered in fifteen years as a consultant and coach to executives: life at the top of the pyramid is hardly more fulfilling. Behind the beautiful facade and the bravado of the leaders of powerful corporations lies the same silent suffering. Often feverish activity is an unsuccessful attempt to hide deep inner disappointment. Muscle-flexing, intrigue, and intra-corporate strife eventually take their toll on everyone. Organizations most often become arenas for the struggle of our "egos", indifferent to the deepest aspirations of humanity.

Intuitively, we feel that management is outdated. We see that its traditions and established order look ridiculous in the 21st century. Therefore, from the dense characters of the Dilbert comics or episodes from the TV series The Office, we immediately cringe.

Those who work in government agencies and non-profit organizations are also often unenthusiastic about their work. Even those who work by vocation are not immune from disappointment. Teachers, doctors and nurses are abandoning their calling en masse. Our schools, unfortunately, are for the most part soulless machines where students and teachers go for the sake of appearances. And we have turned hospitals into cold, bureaucratic institutions, where doctors and nurses are deprived of the opportunity to show their heartfelt concern for patients.

Questions that prompted the author to research

The current ways of dealing with organizations' current problems often exacerbate rather than solve them. Most organizations, blazing sophisticated ways of material incentives, go through many rounds of reorganization, centralization and decentralization, through the introduction of new information technologies, the announcement of new tasks and new systems of key indicators. But the impression that the existing way of managing has practically exhausted itself is growing, and all the traditional recipes are often part of the problem, not the solution.

We strive for something more, for fundamentally new and better ways of organizing collaboration. But is this really possible or is it a pipe dream? If organizations in which the potential of an employee will be fully revealed can still be created, then what should they look like? How to breathe life into them? These are the questions at the heart of this book.

For me, they are of not only theoretical, but also quite practical interest. More and more people are striving to create organizations based on humanity. The catch is that we do not quite understand how to do this. Many of us no longer need to be convinced of the urgent need to renew companies, businesses, schools and hospitals. All we need is faith that this is possible and answers to very specific questions. The hierarchical pyramid is already perceived as something outdated, but what can replace it? How to make decisions? It's good to have everyone involved in making important decisions, not just the bosses, but won't that lead to chaos? What about promotions and salary increases? Is it possible to solve these issues without intrigues and politicking? How do you run meetings in a way that is productive and uplifts the participants? How can we ensure that in meetings we speak sincerely, and not only guided by selfish motives? How can we be guided by the most important purpose in everything we do, and at the same time not give free rein to the cynicism that often permeates the pompous programs of many companies? We don't need some grand concept of a new kind of organization. We need concrete answers to the many questions that arise.

The greatest danger in times of instability is not instability itself, but actions in accordance with the logic of yesterday.

Peter Drucker

Such a practical approach does not at all prevent taking into account possible global social and environmental consequences. Planet Earth is no longer capable of sustaining the way we do business. Our organizations are to a large extent responsible for the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of ecosystems, climate change, the merciless exploitation of water resources and invaluable topsoil. We play dangerous and adventurous games with the future, hoping that with the help of new technologies we can heal the wounds that modernity continues to inflict on the planet. An economic model focused on unbridled growth with limited resources is fraught with disaster.

The current financial crisis may be just one of the first shocks that herald the coming powerful earthquake. It is no exaggeration to say that the very survival of many species, ecosystems, and all of humanity depends on our ability to rise to a higher form of consciousness in order to learn to cooperate on a new level, to begin to improve our relations with the outside world and reduce the harm we have already caused.

The Evolution of Organizations in Historical Perspective (Part I)

Einstein owns the assertion that no problem can be solved at the level of consciousness at which it arises. Perhaps we need to reach a new level of consciousness, come to a new worldview, in order to reinvent the principles of organizing the joint work of people. For some, the idea that society can change the worldview and create a fundamentally new type of organization with the help of a new worldview will seem ridiculous. Nevertheless, in the history of mankind, everything happened just like that, and today there are all signs that another change in the way of thinking, as well as in the organizational model, is just around the corner.

Many scientists, including psychologists, philosophers and anthropologists, have analyzed the development of human consciousness. They found that in the entire history of mankind, which is approximately 100 thousand years old, we have successively passed through a series of stages. At each, we made a grand leap forward in the ability to deal with the outside world - in terms of knowledge, morality and psychology. But there is one important aspect that researchers have so far overlooked: every time humanity has risen to a new level, it has invented a new way of cooperation, a new model of organization.

The first part of the book will discuss how the consciousness of mankind has evolved and how at each stage we have invented new organizational models (these successively replacing each other models are relevant to this day, so the proposed historical overview will help to understand the various types of modern organizations and the essence of today's organization). controversy about the principles of governance).

Developmental psychologists have a lot to say about the next stage in the development of human consciousness, the transition to which has just begun. At this stage, we curb selfishness and begin the search for more original, healthy and holistic forms of being. Judging by the experience of past generations, as we ascend to the next level of consciousness, we will develop an appropriate model of organization.

. “Males have more teeth than females, and in humans, and in sheep, and goats ...” (Aristotle, History of Animals, book 2, chapter 3).

The nervous system in the heart and intestines has 40 million and 100 million neurons, respectively, compared to the 85 billion (on average) neurons in the brain.

Dilbert is the protagonist of Scott Adams comics about office life, about managers and organizations. Note. ed.

Buy and download for 349 (€ 4,84 )

This book is well complemented by:

From good to great

Why some companies make breakthroughs and others don't

Jim Collins

Great by choice

Jim Collins, Morten Hansen

Corporate Lifecycle Management

Itzhak Adizes

Managing change

How to effectively manage change in society, business and personal life

Itzhak Adizes


Reinventing Organizations


A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Frederic Lalu


Discovering the Organizations of the Future


"Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"


Information


from the publisher

Scientific editor Evgeny Golub

Published with permission from Frederic Laloux and Johannes Terwitte

Published in Russian for the first time

Lalu, Frederick

Discovering the organizations of the future / Frederic Lalu; per. from English. V. Kulyabina; [scient. ed. E. Golub]. - M. : Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2016.

ISBN 978-5-00057-786-8

Modern management skills are hopelessly outdated. The traditional recipes offered by organizational development books turn out to be part of the problem, not the solution. The author of this book, based on many years of in-depth research, tells what will be the organizations of the future, built on completely different principles - integral, self-managed and evolutionary. It shows how such companies develop - both from scratch and evolving from existing organizations.

This is a book for business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, students and anyone interested in management and organizational development.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by Vegas Lex law firm.

© Frederic Laloux, 2014

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2016

Science editor's preface

I bought Frederic Lalu's book Reinventing Organizations a little over a year ago. Downloaded to Kindle and went to the airport. The plane took off, and I leisurely began to read, not expecting any revelations from the author. After two hours, I realized that I would do everything in my power to get this book published in Russian.

For twenty years I have climbed the winding career ladder of the largest international companies. The rules of a business visit by a sales representative and the list of values ​​of the Mars company will forever remain in my memory. My immunity to corporate mythology has been tempered by my five years on the board of directors at Danone. I know hundreds of successful corporate managers from the world's most innovative companies. We've devoured tankers of coffee comparing our experiences, and this experience, alas, paints the same bleak picture.

Corporations put potential candidates through an elaborate selection process that takes weeks and months. Huge amounts of money are spent on training promising employees. As a result, these talented and well-trained people will spend most of their time simulating meaningful activities. The vast intellectual resource of nations is now busy inventing reasons why sales targets are not met (or exceeded). The geniuses of combinatorics advocate brilliant versions of budgets, fit only for virtuoso splurge in the eyes of shareholders. Born leaders expend megawatts of charisma to get their teams to believe in the reach and necessity of obvious nonsense.

Are we doomed to humbly accept this everyday mockery of common sense? How long will consumers pay for a performance in this theater of the absurd? After all, is there really no other way to organize the large-scale production and distribution of necessary goods and services?

Many researchers undertook to answer these damned questions. The books on organizational culture that I have come across so far have mostly fallen into two conventional genres:


science fiction - a description of the structure of the "correct" corporation and a collection of magical recipes for turning any company into a "correct" one;

satire - a mocking description of the hopelessness of life in a corporation, plus a set of myths about how to find yourself in downshifting, startup or freelancing.

In practice, magic recipes, instead of the desired increase in the "involvement" of employees, only increase the degree of their cynicism, and the authors of satirical essays offer nothing but bile.

The book you now hold in your hands belongs to a completely different genre. This is a practical guide to creating organizations of the future - organizations fed by the inexhaustible creative energy of a Human being engaged in labor filled with Meaning.

After many years as a McKinsey consultant, Frédéric Laloux decided to get serious about finding and systematically exploring alternative ways to manage companies. For three years, with all the thoroughness of a professional consultant, he studied examples of outstanding organizations of our time, analyzing their development from the standpoint of existing theories of the evolution of organizational culture.

As a result of painstaking work, Lalu, like a natural scientist, discovered a new kind of organization. He compares these organizations with “aliens from other worlds”, their culture and principles are so different from what we are used to. Over the past decades, these aliens have begun to quietly appear on different continents in a variety of industries: from engineering and food production to medical care and school education. They have managed to not only succeed in what has become Meaning for employees and founders, they achieve incredible results where, it would seem, nothing can be improved.

The founders of the organizations studied in the book did not know each other. However, their views and values ​​surprisingly coincide and can be presented as a special type of worldview. Frederic details how this worldview transforms the way we know how to manage. From a detailed description of everyday management practices and organizational processes, it becomes clear that it is impossible to enter the next round of organizational development with the help of declarations of values. Magic works only if you have managed to grow into the full height of human dignity. You can't pretend to be "different", you can become.

The author of the book calls the special worldview of the founders of the Turquoise organizations the main component of success. These organizations, like good messengers from our future, are encouraging: humanity is able to overcome the threatening contradiction between the desperate need of modern man for Meaning and that ersatz of meanings that the dominant control systems based on the fears of the oppressed ego can offer.

This book was published in English in early 2014 as a PDF file on the website www.reinventingorganizations.com, which Frederick made up on his own. Since then, thanks to the efforts of thousands of grateful readers, it has been published in many languages ​​and has become one of the most talked about books on organizational culture around the world.

I am proud to have helped expedite the publication of this book in Russian, and I believe that Frederic will be able to inspire you as he inspired me.

Evgeny Golub

Introduction

Formation of a new organizational model

Nothing can be changed by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that will make the existing one hopelessly obsolete.

Richard Buckminster Fuller

In 350 BC. e. The great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, in one of his fundamental works, stated that women have fewer teeth than men1. Today we know very well that this is nonsense. But for almost two thousand years the Western world considered this statement to be an unshakable truth, until one fine day someone was visited by a frankly revolutionary thought: let's count!

This book is well complemented by:

From good to great

Why some companies make breakthroughs and others don't

Jim Collins

Great by choice

Jim Collins, Morten Hansen

Corporate Lifecycle Management

Itzhak Adizes

Managing change

How to effectively manage change in society, business and personal life

Itzhak Adizes


Reinventing Organizations


A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

Frederic Lalu


Discovering the Organizations of the Future


"Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"


Information


from the publisher

Scientific editor Evgeny Golub

Published with permission from Frederic Laloux and Johannes Terwitte

Published in Russian for the first time

Lalu, Frederick

Discovering the organizations of the future / Frederic Lalu; per. from English. V. Kulyabina; [scient. ed. E. Golub]. - M. : Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2016.

ISBN 978-5-00057-786-8

Modern management skills are hopelessly outdated. The traditional recipes offered by organizational development books turn out to be part of the problem, not the solution. The author of this book, based on many years of in-depth research, tells what will be the organizations of the future, built on completely different principles - integral, self-managed and evolutionary. It shows how such companies develop - both from scratch and evolving from existing organizations.

This is a book for business owners, executives, coaches, consultants, students and anyone interested in management and organizational development.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by Vegas Lex law firm.

© Frederic Laloux, 2014

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2016

Science editor's preface

I bought Frederic Lalu's book Reinventing Organizations a little over a year ago. Downloaded to Kindle and went to the airport. The plane took off, and I leisurely began to read, not expecting any revelations from the author. After two hours, I realized that I would do everything in my power to get this book published in Russian.

For twenty years I have climbed the winding career ladder of the largest international companies. The rules of a business visit by a sales representative and the list of values ​​of the Mars company will forever remain in my memory. My immunity to corporate mythology has been tempered by my five years on the board of directors at Danone. I know hundreds of successful corporate managers from the world's most innovative companies. We've devoured tankers of coffee comparing our experiences, and this experience, alas, paints the same bleak picture.

Corporations put potential candidates through an elaborate selection process that takes weeks and months. Huge amounts of money are spent on training promising employees. As a result, these talented and well-trained people will spend most of their time simulating meaningful activities. The vast intellectual resource of nations is now busy inventing reasons why sales targets are not met (or exceeded). The geniuses of combinatorics advocate brilliant versions of budgets, fit only for virtuoso splurge in the eyes of shareholders. Born leaders expend megawatts of charisma to get their teams to believe in the reach and necessity of obvious nonsense.

Are we doomed to humbly accept this everyday mockery of common sense? How long will consumers pay for a performance in this theater of the absurd? After all, is there really no other way to organize the large-scale production and distribution of necessary goods and services?

Many researchers undertook to answer these damned questions. The books on organizational culture that I have come across so far have mostly fallen into two conventional genres:


science fiction - a description of the structure of the "correct" corporation and a collection of magical recipes for turning any company into a "correct" one;

satire - a mocking description of the hopelessness of life in a corporation, plus a set of myths about how to find yourself in downshifting, startup or freelancing.

In practice, magic recipes, instead of the desired increase in the "involvement" of employees, only increase the degree of their cynicism, and the authors of satirical essays offer nothing but bile.

The book you now hold in your hands belongs to a completely different genre. This is a practical guide to creating organizations of the future - organizations fed by the inexhaustible creative energy of a Human being engaged in labor filled with Meaning.

After many years as a McKinsey consultant, Frédéric Laloux decided to get serious about finding and systematically exploring alternative ways to manage companies. For three years, with all the thoroughness of a professional consultant, he studied examples of outstanding organizations of our time, analyzing their development from the standpoint of existing theories of the evolution of organizational culture.

As a result of painstaking work, Lalu, like a natural scientist, discovered a new kind of organization. He compares these organizations with “aliens from other worlds”, their culture and principles are so different from what we are used to. Over the past decades, these aliens have begun to quietly appear on different continents in a variety of industries: from engineering and food production to medical care and school education. They have managed to not only succeed in what has become Meaning for employees and founders, they achieve incredible results where, it would seem, nothing can be improved.