Reinventing Organizations: Are You Ready?
This article is an English translation of 「重塑組織，你準備好了嗎？」, originally published in Chinese on Future Organization Lab 未來組織實驗室 on July 6, 2020.
From Frederic Laloux’s talk at the 2018 Organizational Evolution Forum.
Before you read, consider
Why do you want to change how your organization is managed?
How can organizations break through in this new era?
Is there an experience in your life that makes you long for a different kind of organization?
We all come from different walks of life, yet one feeling connects us: there must be a better way to run organizations. And while we’re full of hope, we can’t help wondering: can we really change how organizations are managed in a sweeping way?
I think one reason we feel confused — sensing that the old model no longer works, yet unable to see clearly what the new world looks like — is that we’re in the middle of a major historical transition.
Four evolutionary leaps in human history
Looking back over 100,000 years of human history: from wolf-pack-style organizations in tribal times, to pyramid structures in the agricultural revolution — a good organization should be like an army — to the age of science and industry, when a good organization should be like a machine, constantly adjusted and optimized, to the idea that a good organization should be like a family, where people respect each other and listen to one another.
1. The tribal era
Thousands of years ago, humans began moving from small hunter-gatherer bands to large tribal systems. That was humanity’s first organizational model. These organizations were very simple. They usually had a very powerful leader who instilled fear in those below so that they would obey without question.
We can think of these first tribal organizations as wolf packs. Some mafia groups and street gangs still organize this way today.
2. The agricultural revolution
With the agricultural revolution, humans invented the fixed org chart — the pyramid — completely reinventing how organizations were structured and run. It had a very fixed class system: people at the top followed one set of rules, and those at the bottom followed completely different ones, with very strict, orderly, stable processes.
3. The scientific and industrial revolutions
With the scientific and industrial revolutions, people began questioning the pyramid. They believed we should keep innovating and optimizing and move faster than our competitors, because only then could we make a profit and win market share. Suddenly we invented all sorts of things around management: human resources, R&D, strategic planning, annual budgets and so on.
4. The information age
With the information age, another model emerged: the good organization as a good family, where everyone respects each other and listens to others’ views. People discovered that a good manager shouldn’t be a dictator or a boss, but a coach who supports people.
We discovered the importance of culture — cultivating a good culture is the most powerful thing we can do.
I’m showing you this evolution to make a point: when we hit a dead end we can’t escape, we completely rethink how our organizations are structured and run.
So what’s the next stage? How can organizations break through in this new era?
In these new organizations, which work completely differently from traditional ones, I’ve found three patterns. They use a completely different language, talking about organizations as living systems.
Three shifts in how organizations work
1. From power hierarchies → self-organizing systems
There’s a Dutch company called Buurtzorg. When Reinventing Organizations was published four years ago, it had 7,000 people; now it has 14,000. An organization of 14,000 people — and not one of them is a boss. No promotions, no one to report to.
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It sounds incredible — many people even think it’s impossible — but it really exists. Many organizations evolve slowly, gradually delegating power while keeping the pyramid structure. I just want to tell you: this is possible. There are many, many organizations that have adopted fully self-organizing models, and without exception, all of them have achieved remarkable things.
2. From finding safety in deliberate separation → workplaces where we can live our wholeness
From school to work, we’re always among other people. We know we’re supposed to present a certain professional self, and when we hide our true selves behind that professional mask, we also hide much of our passion, energy and creativity.
From the moment we started building organizations, we’ve been wearing masks and hiding who we really are. When we change that — when people can be their true selves at work — the energy, creativity and passion they bring to their work is astonishing.
3. From predict and control → sensing our way toward purpose
We’ve always held the view that a good leader’s job is to predict and control the future. We try to predict and control it, only to find it’s futile. The world changes too fast for prediction and control, so leaders of new organizations say: “What we want to do is sense and respond.” We’re clear about where we want to go, and we keep adjusting and adapting.
An organization is a living system with its own sense of direction, its own energy field and its own place it wants to go.
The leader’s role is to listen humbly to the organization — to hear where the organization itself wants to go — and to go with it. When we do this, all of the organization’s energy becomes available to us, and things become effortless.
Setting out on the journey of reinventing your organization
Hundreds, even thousands, of organizations around the world have set out on this journey, which takes courage. Let me remind you: once the arrow leaves the bow, there’s no turning back. Once you set out, you can’t go back.
As a leader, your organization can only go as far as you go inside yourself.
Please think about this:
Why do you want to transform your organization?
What deep inside you is pushing you onto this ship bound for a new continent?
When most people around you are dismissing you, what makes you ignore their misunderstanding and set out without hesitation?
Before you answer, let me share a few stories to help you feel this through others’ experiences.
Story 1:
A hospital director told me: “I want to transform my hospital. I want the nurses to manage themselves.”
She said: “One afternoon a year ago, at 3:45, I walked down the hospital corridor, and all I could see were nurses — nurses with their badges, waiting to clock out at four. At that moment, my organization disgusted me. They chose nursing as a calling; they wanted to care for others. And we built such a terrible work environment that nurses were waiting to leave fifteen minutes early. What have we done to these nurses?”
When she told me this story, I shivered. She had touched a real motivation — the reason she wanted to do this.
Story 2:
This one comes from childhood. RHD is a very special American organization with 5,000 employees. It provides housing for people who have committed crimes, people with mental illness and people struggling with alcoholism, and it lets people truly show up as whole human beings.
Its founder, Bob Fishman, grew up listening to his parents fight. So his lifelong quest became: how can people get along better? How can we handle our anger better? How can we go to work showing our brighter side? That’s why he founded RHD.
Story 3:
Let me share my own story. People sometimes ask me why I wrote Reinventing Organizations — what drove me? If I had to find a defining moment in my life, I think it was when I was eight, in third grade.
Other children shut me out; I was always alone and laughed at. The next year, when things had returned to normal, I had a wonderful teacher who made all of us children want to show our true selves. We shared stories from deep inside, things we usually wouldn’t tell anyone, and through that I felt that there’s a better way for people to be together.
So my question for you is: what in your life experience makes you long for a different kind of organization, a different kind of workplace? Is it a particular experience of your own?
We like to answer questions in abstract terms and say, “I want to empower people; I want people to be motivated and happy at work.”
But we often don’t really know what drives us — why this matters so much to me. I’ve found the best way to answer that question is to look back at your own experiences and find the defining moments that made it an important question.
So I’d like you to take a few minutes, form a small group with family, friends or colleagues around you, and see whether you can find at least one story from your past that explains why this matters to you. Ready? Go find it!
