A Learning Company — An Emerging Model for Business
I’m intrigued by the idea of a learning company as a new type of business. As technological change is accelerating and outpacing our human ability to adapt, we’ll need to significantly increase and change our learning capacity if we want to continue to evolve.
It would be wise to focus not merely on shrinking the gap so we could keep up with change, but to ask ourselves — who do we want to become, and what do we wish to create? Rather than continue to run in a race with no clear finish line, we have an opportunity to fundamentally shift the way we live, work and play — by tapping into the vast dormant potential that exists all around and among us.
It seems clear that this starts with values. What lies at the foundation of our cultures and societies today? Do we dare to peek under the rug of our existing reality, and consider how we make sense of it (or don’t) as it is? If we focus on the opportunity rather than worry about the doomsday scenario, we can plant seeds for exponential prosperity.
There’s a saying (I believe it was a medicine woman): “We don’t need time. We need alignment”. I’ve experienced this firsthand, that when there’s full alignment and coherence between myself and another person or group I’m working with, what we then come up with together is extraordinary, and seems to happen almost immediately. In that sense, time can bend, and we can shift out of the narrative/excuse of “but it takes so long for change to happen, so I might as well stick to the status quo”. Incredible things can happen right now when there’s alignment.
The goal of a learning company would be an active pursuit of learning, while reaching toward a vision that is an expression of emergence — a process whereby the parts come together in a way so as to bring to life something unexpected. This type of company would have a different DNA expression than the current model. It embodies power that serves the whole, rather than just a few. As such, it operates with new structures and management practices. It is more purposeful, and would bring an answer to something fundamental that we all deeply wish for — a way of working that is personally fulfilling and enables growth. Not just by means of perks or amenities, but rather a way of working that embodies the values at the foundation of the entity.
Frederic Laloux in his book, Reinventing Organizations, describes humanity as evolving in sudden leaps, or steps. He draws from the philosopher Ken Wilber’s color-based description of these steps, and outlines five stages of human consciousness. Positing that organizations evolve according to these same stages, he describes teal organizations, which are moving forward along an evolutionary spectrum, toward self-management, wholeness, and a deeper sense of purpose (See diagram below).
Laloux notes that in today’s knowledge-based economy, the static, top-down conception of management has proven to be inefficient; it wastes the talent, creativity, and energy of most people in these organizations. We all yearn for better ways to work together, for more soulful workplaces where our talents are nurtured and our deepest aspirations are honored. This new paradigm of teal organizations is emerging to answer the needs of humanity at a threshold.
In teal organizations, the key breakthroughs are: (1) Self-management replaces the hierarchical pyramid. Instead of rigid management structures, there’s distributed authority and collective intelligence; (2) Wholeness, where individuals bring their whole selves to work, not just the facade of what’s considered to be “professional”; (3) Evolutionary purpose, whereby the organization has a purpose of its own. Rather than rigidly trying predict and control its direction, members would sense into it, to listen and understand where it’s naturally orienting towards.
Imagining this type of business excites me, because these breakthroughs reflect the values I actually believe in, and I know that it empowers a new way of being that would make us feel good and healthy; one of leadership that inspires, and prosperity. It would no longer be about one person’s vision who sits at the top, but there would be a focused effort to tap into the wisdom of the collective. Underlying this is an understanding that the world is not fixed nor machine-like, but rather it’s viewed as a place where everyone is called by an inner voice to contribute based on their unique potential; whereby organizations are seen as living breathing entities, oriented toward realizing their potential. Our primary strategy would be to sense into the evolutionary purpose of the organization, and respond accordingly in grounded action.
I’m imagining a world in which learning companies become the norm, and we operate within a new paradigm, using the principles of teal organizations. With this approach to learning, experimentation, and even looking to nature for ways of being that bring about an emergence of something new — we have not only the capacity to adapt to a changing world and survive, but we have a real opportunity to evolve our consciousness such that we could shape our world into the place of our dreams.
